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Programming Until Retirement?
DataDragon asks: "Here's the situation- I'm a now 30something computer programmer in Silicon Valley working for one of the local billion+ dollar tech companies. I'm unhappy with my present job, but am thankful that I've got one. Although I pride myself on having written over a million lines of code in my career, with nearly 15 commercial software products under my belt (8 of them were my own concepts from start-to-finish). I've had carpal tunnel for 6 years now, my skillset looks like it came from a 3 year old magazine, and I didn't make good on stock options. Since settling down in a quiet place somewhere and having a family sounds like a great idea to myself and my bride-to-be, I was wondering: instead of all the buzz I always get like Google's 'Do you <insert technology task> in your sleep?' job opportunities I've read about, are there any employers that would rather have a person who: wants to put in an honest day's work; get to know the job and the people well; and a desire to ultimately be a mentor for the company processes, instead of a here-today-gone-tomorrow programmer, who is interested in actually working there until retirement age?"
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no.
Get your carpal tunnel treated!
You really don't want to damage your wrists. if you are a programmer.
All of the software shops I've worked at or been involved with NEED a person in the role you seek, but none of them wants to pay the salary requisite to get a skilled veteran.
I wish you luck.
Have you considered starting your own company? Since you seem to be capable and understand that a good employee is vital to a company's overall success beyond each quarter, maybe you could do well if you did things yourself. You also may have a nest egg if you chose to sell the company as you retire.
I think more people should consider starting their own company since small businesses have always been a staple of the American economy.
That's just my 2 cents, so take it with a grain of sand I guess.
It's impossible to find that honest open warmth where companies have employees whose primary task is the result of the company being large, i.e. a beauracracy.
Conversely, many smaller companies are not as capitalized as larger companies so the long-term propects may not be as bright. Then again, most of the people I know working at smaller companies have been there longer than many folks I know working at big companies.
You might want to consider starting your own company with others who share your vision.
-_-
I'm a 30something programmer myself. I have worked for several tech companies in NorCal (startups that went nowhere), and after an 8 month stint of being unemployed I landed a programming job (mostly Perl no less) at a local CSU. Now I'm happy, I get lots of "perks" (Conferences, Training, etc.), and nobody busts my nuts when I "only" work 8 hours a day. I have good benefits, a good retirement & job stability (unless Schwartznegger screws me), and I work with good people who appreciate my work.
I'm not sure if you're refering to your own desire to find a company that you can happily work for till retirement, or asking if there are companies like that out there.
.com era, but I'm sure if you look hard and study well, you'll find someone who'd be as happy to keep you around till a ripe old age (again, DO research any company you're going to sign on with, talk to people who work there, read up on them a ton) and let your program your ass off till retirement.
There are plenty of companies that'd love to have an employee with as much experience as you've mentioned, and in addition, someone with the desire to work for the long term. Projects from start to finish are one thing, but people aren't sticking around for the long haul like they did generations back.
With outsourcing and mega job opportunities still pumping stock options and elevated pay (check Monster, there ARE companies actively seeking engineers and programmers, offering hugh pay incentives) people are jumping ship when it suits them, even if there seems to be a dearth of jobs for those of us w/o them.
Company mentalities are different in this post
Get a state or federal gov job. They don't merge or get bought out. They are much more secure than private sector tech jobs. Jobs at colleges can be that way too. But it depends some tech jobs at colleges can have there funding pulled out from under them. The programming most likely won't be exciting but your looking for stability more than cutting edge tech.
Often (in fact usually) programmers make the worst managers. I hate companies that try to force reluctant techies into pen-pushing jobs.... the best companies avoid this.
It's a totally different progression - Junior Manager -> Senior Manager is parallel to Junior Programmer -> Senior Programmer not part of the same progression (I'd expect a Senior Programmer to be paid more than a Junior Manager for a start).
I remember talking to an older engineer back in 2001 (when tech was crumbling and people were losing jobs) at the giant tech company I was working at. His advice was that these cycles are normal (I think he said he had been through 3 or 4? like the most recent, he was pushing 60) and if you want to remain in the tech industry you need to get used to basically relearning and retooling and regular layoffs. So unless you want to learn a new skill or language every 5 years or don't like dealing with industry ebb and flow then maybe you should look at going back and getting and MBA, there is always room for more managment ;)
Having worked in such situations, my experience is that such "promotions" usually end up being bad for the company, the promoted employee, and the poor bastards who get assigned to the new manager. Please refer to the Peter Principle and its corollary, the Dilbert Principle.
Most good s/w engineer types seem to have poor personnel management skills, probably due to careers of deeply detailed, logic driven work. Managing people means delegating (i.e, ignore the details), and handling illogical behavior (i.e., people). Conversely, some of the best managers I've worked for were abysmal software developers.
However, one alternative is project management. While it does require some people skills, its usually a couple degrees of separation away from the crap personnel managers have to deal with, and exploits the detail-level discipline us s/w types seem good at. And its a great way to leverage the offshoring trend.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
Yes, but not likely in programming/IT/CS. Why not?
College kids type fast, they know their stuff from programming classes, there's plenty of them, and they work for ramen noodles.
Have you considered trying to go to a community college and re-uping your skill set, possibly in a different (but somewhat related) field? Before I transfered, my community college was training dual IT/Medical Technology majors to work with medical equipment.
If you're sick and tired of programming, you might try something like social services or nursing. Those fields have appreciated; albeit underpaid, people that work until retiriment and beyond. Those fields value good, dedicated people with experience more than they ever will the college kid looking for more in the pizza budget.
My advice? If you're tired of programming, look at what else you're good at (get ahold of the STRONG interest inventory), try for some financial aid through the federal government, and get the heck out of dodge. Life's too short to be miserable with hurting wrists.
Well you have to make a choice. Are you going to be a programmer or are you going to be a manager. Just because you are a good programmer that does not mean you will make a good manager and vice versa. It's good that you are looking at alternatives though. In this economy I don't think you are expected to stay a programmer all your life. People expect forward progress on your resume and your managers are expecting some sort of an initive. Finally you might have to leave your company. In may companies the chances of upward movement depend on turnover and unless you expect people above you to be retiring or quitting soon you should start looking for other opportunities.
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"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
>>>> I've read about, are there any employers that would rather have a person who: wants to put in an honest day's work; get to know the job and the people well; and a desire to ultimately be a mentor for the company processes, instead of a here-today-gone-tomorrow programmer, who is interested in actually working there until retirement age?
You find a place like that let me know. I will be out of work in a couple weeks. The company I work for lost the contract and new company is only keeping the young/cheap. The old company is using this opportunity to clear out some people since they are moving a lot of work overseas.
That is what you will be fighting. Outsourcing and young people trying to get a start in the industry willing to work around the clock for half your salary.
Now some companies instead of going out of the country are moving to state with heavy unemployment and low taxes and opening up shop. But others like the big three letter company I work for are opening up center in Brazil to cut costs.
Just look at the marketing coming from the big computer companies they are trying to bring back the glass house approach to computing. Let them supply the computers, SA's, developers, and so on . That way you only play for these skills as you need them, why hire them long term.
So you have a good job hang on to it. If you're as good as you say let other companies know you're looking. Let them recruit you, then you will get a deal worth accepting.
The short answer to your question is, "yes." There are companies that want experience, leadership, and mentoring skills. There are companies that want experienced leadership to guide and direct younger minds (and younger wrists) in developing software. And no, Virginia, those companies are not all moving their jobs to India.
Focus on the technology, or on the business?
Programmers I've worked with over the years have tended to follow one of two tracks: focus on the technology, or focus on the business. If you focus on the technology, your skills are portable: the risk you take, however, is that your portable skills may be supplanted by a newer, better-marketed technology. (Case in point: Powersoft's PowerBuilder, which was all the rage ten years ago, and has all but disappeared from the marketplace.) To adopt a focus-on-the-technology view, you're committing to a permanent learning curve--and to constantly having to evaluate which of the new technologies are most likely to be worth pursuing.
Your question sounds to me like you're looking for the other tack: focusing on the business. In that role you're still working with the technology--but you're focused on how to improve the business. You're more technologically-agnostic: you know more about the specifics of the business than any particular tool.
The key: find a company that views you as an asset, not a cost
If you've been doing contract work, you're focused on the technology. And you've probably worked for a number of companies that view you as just another piece of meat to put in front of a computer to type code. To them, you're an expense. Far, far better is to find a company that views information technology as an asset--that says "if we do what we do better, smarter, faster, we have a competitive advantage." Those companies will, in turn, challenge you to do more, learn more, and offer more.
Where I work...
I work in Engineering, not in Information Systems--developing new products. The company very definitely wants me to do more, much more, of what I'm doing. From an accounting standpoint my work is booked as a depreciable asset--not as a line item on the expense ledger. I'm 46--while I still do quite a bit of coding (and I'm at work now, coding Transact-SQL for a big project), a lot of my day is spent teaching, coaching, and encouraging young programmers.
Want a gig like mine?
Some thoughts:
Is this just a young man's game?
I think you'll see
Well, as you put in your question, I guess this is every programmer's dream: to get a stable, 40 hours week programming job surrounded with people that you know and care about. But I think that programming is not the kind of job that one can do untill retirement - it is a highly-demanding job that requires up-to-date knowledge and brings higher levels of stress than other jobs.
So, I think that after certain age every coder gets tired of keeping up with the technology and stress, and this is the time when they either get pushed into a managerial role, or stay coders till retirement, maintaining legacy applications in legacy languages.
In a way, programming is like soccer: you play it till you reach the age when you no longer can keep up with the younger (or leave it early because of a bad injury, for example). And then you train the younger until retirement.
It is certainly not a something than man can do for all of his life.
I have used and learned many new technologies over that time. Besides that, I have gained a lot of non-IT knowledge in those industries. I know of a number of other people who eventually tired of programming and IT in general and moved into the business side of the industry they were doing IT work in. It can be a very easy move as having an IT background can be a valuable asset over and above the business knowledge aquired.
The problem with working somewhere until retirement is that companies and employees are becoming less loyal to each other. Companies will cut staff to save a few bucks and employees will often bolt to wherever they can find the biggest paycheck. Certainly there are a few places where an employee could catch on with a company and work until retirement, but they're becoming harder to find.
I've had fairly good experience with SMB's that write their own applications or need to customize packaged software. In my experience these have been less deadline-driven environments with less stress as a result. The difference may be that for these businesses, software is a business enabler, rather than the business itself.
I'm older than you. (57) I've been retired from this industry for a while now. This trend has been ongoing for years, but it seems to be accelerating of late.
Being a programmer has become a lot like being a musician or artist. It's very hard to make a normal living at these crafts. Many musicians have day jobs that pay the bills, and practice their craft on their own time, for the joy of it. This is analogous to programmers writing Free Software in their 'spare time'.
Big business in America seems to have given up on the traditional industrial model of employing workers, turning out products, making a profit on sales. The new model seems to be more like a very complex pump-and-dump stock scam. It's all about profiting from the sale of the company itself, products and workers are more for show.
This will, ultimately, destroy our economy and the country itself. You are experiencing a small part of this right now. It will get worse before the worker/consumers wake up and revolt.
I've worked commercial and academic. All of those were fun and interesting, but some (mostly commercial) demanded long hours. That late-night work never resulted in the promised recognition.
Now I work for a govt. research lab. Although money is sometimes tight, and the paperwork is sometimes a pain in the butt, there are some really nice things about it:
- The pay is good (not mind blowing, but quite good).
- I work with some of the smartest people I've ever worked with. Almost everyone has a master's degree, and a good fraction have their PhDs.
- The job stability is pretty good (although no guarantees)
- Because of the stability, I can feel free to dedicate my efforts to learning the problem domain, rather than staying abreast of each new glitzy programming language. I.e., I can focus on my current job rather than always focusing on being sellable in case I'm laid off.
- If you land the right job, you get the sense that you're work actually goes to help people, rather than just line the pockets of some rich sociopathological CEO. That's a nice feeling.
Maybe the most important thing is the regular hours. If you're planning on having kids, it's great for them to expect you home every night for dinner and for you to actually show up. Kids thrive with that kind of stability and with your actually being around when they're awake. They only have one childhood - don't miss it. A slightly more exciting career isn't worth it.
I've found the exact opposite to be true. If you switch the physical keys around while you're learning Dvorak, you'll just be tempted to look down at the keys to see where they are. If you look at the keys when you're learning, you're not memorizing their locations, and that's the only way to really learn well.
Except they're not any more, so I really need to get out. But how do I go about that? I can't just pick up and move somewhere and hope I'll find work. And the labor market is ovesupplied everywhere, so nobody will even look at a nonlocal resume. Even if you make it clear that you'll pay your own relocation.
Maybe this is a subject for a fresh Ask Slashdot!
Interesting read and I can't agree more (speaking as a mid-40's year old former software engineer then manager). It's definitely hard to devote the necessary time in IT toward keeping up with changing technology and business practices while simultaneously devoting more time to family and community activities.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
I think it depends on what sort of company you are with
I joined my current employer straight from university in 1972. At the time it was a small software development company, writing bespoke software for customers on a paid basis. They key to a long career in the same firm is to continue to re-invent yourself as the experience kicks in, and the industry changes, and to hope that the company continues to be a success and grows. For it is only the ability to take on more responsibility that allows the company to pay you more for the experience you have gained.
For the first 6 months I didn't really do any programming, more learning how the business worked (how to write proposals to customers! - when I started I didn't even know what a proposal was). Then I got an assignment at the space centre in Germany for a year, and when I came back I was seen as someone with a little experience. So then, not only did I program (I became the expert in RSX-11M on PDP 11s) but I was also expected to supervise others.
From there - right until the late 1980s, I combined technical work (not just programming, but as I got more experience I designed more and more complex systems) with project and eventually line management. The more senior I got, the less the technical work involved detail and the more it became strategic.
Some times this would combine with management responsibility for people (and profit) at other times I was setting technical policy for senior management (I was responsibly for getting networked PCs on to peoples desks in those early days of the PC).
At the beginning of the 1990s, the ability for our company to win projects in which you wrote a bespoke solution for a customer started to decline, and the new business was more about buying in products and configuring them to meet business requirements. So again, my career and my skill sets had to migrate. This time, it was more about understanding the business needs of the customer and being to select and propose the correct solution. So now my career became a combination of consultancy and pre-sales support. I still had to have a technical knowledge of what was possible, but it was now a long time since I had written serious amounts of software as a programmer, and the knowledge of how business operates and how IT can help it became more important.
And the type of business is changing again, and as it does so does my role. Business Process Outsourcing (possibly offshore) is where the real volume of business is now. My role therfore is to identify, on a worldwide basis, and in my specific business oriented field (IT necessary to allow competitive electricity and gas markets to work), where the market is spending money, and how our company can bring its experience to win business in the BPO area. I am then called upon to both present these issues to potential customers to help win business, but to also present in public forums (conferences, magazine articles etc) these ideas and why they are sound.
Each of these steps has been a step away from pure programming. Some steps have been scary (its very nerve racking having to present in public in front of a large audience), but ultimately the fact that you have met the challenge is very rewarding. And so today, I am far removed from the original career. But I am still with the same company, in the IT business, its just that I have changed with the times.
I have described my career, and I am not alone in the company of having people who have been around for a long time and continue to do (to a greater or lesser degree) technical (from an IT sense) sort of work (there are even more who have migrated into pure management). I don't think any of them do serious programming (although sometimes someone will write a small proof of concept or a quick demonstration for a customer), but somehow there careers have migrated to being the "liaison" between the business world and the technical world. I think all of them would say that its a rewarding type of role.
Wow, put me down as another "You only pay $10k?" asker.
For comparison, let's look at the situation for a reasonably qualified programmer with five years' experience in a decent company here in the UK -- probably someone in a pretty good developer position on a project, or starting to move into team leader roles. Typical salary for such a person might be in the 35-45k UKP region (currently around 65-85k USD).
Our income tax system works in stages. On salaries up to the mid-30s, you're paying about 33% altogether in income tax and National Insurance, less a small allowance that is untaxed or taxed at lower rates. Above the mid-30s, the NI drops out but the income tax goes up to 40% at approximately the same place. That means that just in income tax and NI, someone on 35k UKP gives back around 10k (nearly 20k USD), and someone on 45k UKP pays around 13k UKP (well over 25k USD).
Most purchases then carry a 17.5% "Value Added Tax" on them, though in fairness a lot of basic necessities are exempted from this. And of course, about 105% of the purchase price of fuel is tax. ;-) Then there are a few other significant taxes, covering things like profits from selling expensive goods or shares that have increased in value significantly since they were bought.
I've seen figures suggesting that an average person over here ultimately pays around 75% of their total income to the government through taxes. That seems a bit steep to me intuitively, but I could easily believe well over 60%. Sure, we get some things paid for by the government in return, though not as much as many people seem to think: we do have the National Health Service, which is supported through those NI payments, but my ashthmatic SO still has to buy her own inhalers, for example.
Anyway, if you had a combined income of 130k and were only paying 10k tax on it, you were amazingly lucky compared to many people. Even if that was only the income tax, I'd imagine you were still a lot better off than most at an effective income tax rate well under 10%.
Not that any of that detracts from your story or is meant as any kind of reflection on you, of course. It's just an observation that your zenith year income was very, very good.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Carpal Tunnel syndrome is now widely thought to be a "brain" problem...
You're making the assumption that most cases are actually carpal tunnel syndrome, and not a misdiagnosis.
Simple test:
if you have carpal tunnel pain, wet a hand towel with warm water. Push it into the armpit on the affected arm. Push your arms to your sides, using the pressure to hold the towel in place.
If it's carpal tunnel, this won't affect the pain. In most cases, however, this alleviates pressure and inflammation on the nerve which runs through your armpit (it's not well protected and is very prone to being pinched, especially if you have any soft tissue swellings.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
CTS is caused by at least a dozen different things including RSI, mechanical stress/pressure, vibration, excessive use of non-ergonomic hand positions, genetic predisposition, complications of pregnancy, and tumors/scar tissue formation. CTS has been recorded in medical history long before the invention of computers.
The "Carpal Tunnel" refers to a physical region of the wrist, literally a tunnel, that nerves run through. "CT Syndrome" refers to the situation where those nerves (esp. the so called median nerve) are under excess pressure resulting in pain, burning sensation, and loss of muscle control. The pressure is caused by swelling, excess fluids in the body / improper drainage, an unusally small carpal tunnel (women are more like to have this characteristic), or an obstruction such as a tumor or scar tissue.
"Activation of the wrong nerves" as you describe is likely related to RSI, the side effects of which include CTS, as well as tendonitis, other joint/tissue problems, and neurological problems (e.g., focal distonia in extreme cases). CTS in general is a much larger issue, and RSI is also a more complex issue than nerve control, as it includes quality-of-life/work aspects such as stress, proper training/equipment, proper and early medical treatment, and the recent tendency towards excessivly sendentary lifestyles (IIRC, after approx 20 minutes of remaining in one position, the cells in the body begin to physically reform their structure to adapt permamently to that position, which is why you should take frequent breaks).
Lets break it down into the component parts. You want to work for 20 years at a company doing a job that allows progressively better paying work with greater responsibility.
A) The company - How many software companies have been around for 20 years? Few have. Few will survive that far into the future. And the employers know that. There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO reason for them to care about you or the company beyond 5-7 years.
B) A job - The job you have didn't exist 20 yrs ago. Making COTS software is new. Will it last 20 more years? Not in the form you see it now. And not in America, for sure.
C) Progressively better paying - You are a commodity. I understand you have had a succesful career so far. But unless its doing EXACTLY the same thing that your new employer needs, you are one of the many. Supply and demand drives wages. Expect wages for US programmers to rise in a couple years as the business cycle progresses, then fall as globalization increases the supply of programmers in Eastern Europe and Asia.
D) Greater responsibility - Requires you expand your toolset. HR, accounting, LARGE SCALE (enough to justify paying you to manage it) project management, teaching. Most programmers can do these things, some can't.
Finally - WHY? Why is your chosen career so cut throat? Because it's new. Programming isn't new, but small shop commercial development is. If you wanted stability you should have taken shop class. Change, technology and better-than-average salaries are not part of the deal. They ARE the deal.
I definitely call bullsh*t on this. We're always looking for coders with 20+ years of experience. Some people burn out, but some people are still into coding, or want to get back into it after a management stint. They are awesome. They have made and seen tons of mistakes, so they can help newer guys (informally if not formally). Plus they tend to work as hard or harder than most people. Having a more stable outside work social life also means less drama in the office. You definitely need a good mix of people -- if it's all gnarled verterans, they just sit around telling war stories -- but you'd be crazy to dismiss someone becuase they've got Altair experience on their resume. (In fact, we're interviewing someone w/ Altair experience on their resume next week, and I'm extremely stoked about it.)
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Try moving to a real city (NY, San Fran, Chicago, Boston, etc), have a wife (which means wedding and ring) and kids (oh my), stop living like a teenager, buy a house, 401k and roth, couple cars, some decent vacations, some brokerage fun and bamm! you are spending that kind of cash and then a whole lot more. (emphasis mine).
You know what? Nearly everything you describe is a self-imposed expense. You didn't have to get married, you didn't have to raise larvae, buy a house and sink cash into a couple of cars.
I realize that life can sneak up on you a bit, and that sometimes you can wake up to a lifestyle that you never imagined, but I'm also more than a bit sick of hearing people with the "American Dream" lifestyle (suburban house, cars, 2.5 kids, insurance payments, ulcer) bitch and moan about their expenses (as if someone held a gun to their head and told them to breed!)
The American Dream is a choice, and if it's your choice of lifestyle, well, you're going to have to pony up the cash that comes with it. Sorry.
I believe this is an all too common situation. In fact I'm in pretty much the same boat. I spent the first 15 years of my professional life as predominantly a C programmer (try to find that anymore), and a Solaris admin. My problem is that I didn't move more into the java/xml/html world. My skills as a general admin are very good but I don't have any honed specialty skills, like heavy Veritas, OpenView, Oracle. Don't get me wrong, I've worked in all those arenas but never got really deep into it, didn't have too. I kept the bosses happy, kept things running reliably and securely. But my resume lacks the Zing it needs to really noticed....
Now that the DOT bomb company I worked for is gone, along with my management job, I'm stuck in the middle. I need to improve my Oracle skills and move on.
In Summary, you have to keep up on your skills, you have to keep watching for the next wave of technical advancements and hope they are real and not just a flash in the pan.
Good luck!
Management does not necessarily mean giving up anything technical. Team leaders who have good technical skills and can handle project management are incredibly valuable.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
If you think that working for a bank or a big FI is STABLE and Dependable boy have you got it wrong. They want desperately to downsize staff and if they can they will.
Yeah, and at the end of your days, you can look back and say "I helped people KILL EACH OTHER." But the benefits were great.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That's a big hit. Okay, I got Customer X's network running smoothly, but little B and baby E didn't see me that day - and I didn't see them. As a one-off, that's okay. Day-to-day, I don't see my role of father as "leave home before the kids are up, get back after they're in bed; maybe see them for a while on the weekend." That is not parenthood.
A job I was in recently is a good example - a 2h commute each way, and they said, "12h is seen as normal; 16h isn't at all unexpected." Fsck that. 12h + 4h = 16h (8h sleep and back to the job); 16 + 4h leaves me 4h to sleep!
The question is: "Do I live to work, or do I work to live?"
I work to live - my work is interesting enough - could be better. It brings in cash, and supports my *real* life - my family, my kids; if I don't spend time with my wife and kids, then what is the point?! They could live a grand life, in a huge house, driving around in grand cars, but simply fail to recognise their own father. That is not a life for them, or for me.
I have 100% admiration for single parents, but this way of life just gives the family a single-parent-family lifestyle, with a breadwinner who - technically - exists, but who is never seen. What's the point in that?
I'd rather bring in enough cash to keep the family on track, with enough time to actually spend time with them - teaching the kids, and enjoying them. Spending time with my wife is also a priority, of course - after all, that is why I married her - I love her!
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
with good armrests.
Armrests? I remove those as soon as possible, they are just there to put pressure on your elbows and screw up your nerves.