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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?"
Switch to dvorak!
Being a programmer, you probably want one of the layouts tweaked for programming (that put braces and stuff in easy locations).
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My company writes a specific software app for the banking industry. There isn't a single programmer under 30, few (other than the boss) works more than 45 hours a week, and most have been there 5 years or more.
It's not all that interesting, but it's a decent job. Just don't expect the megabucks.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Go to some small businesses that have maybe less than 50 people or so and get them to be more productive by employing all kinds of tech(lease them a server, get some SMS going to their cell phones, smooth out their email, voicemail, etc). It has worked for me. You have to do a lot of different things besides programming, but that is OK. You get to know some people and if you are any good at all, they will love you. You won't make as much as at some billion dollar company and there is some on-callness to it, but you can live.
Larger companies generally have more process and more overhead, but they also have more people who are in it for the long haul, and thus aren't working overtime every day.
There's always periods where you need to put in time, but in a small company those are the norm; in a big company (I'm talking 10k or more people here) it's more normal to work something close to a regular work day.
Think IBM, government, HP, Kodak..
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http://www.stevex.org/longtail
You might consider looking for a job at a college or University - the smaller ones in the suburbs often offer a very nice family atmosphere and stable job. I think you would be surprised how far your experience would go in a situation like that; they need people who have skills and who can also communicate well with non-techies - i.e., students and the people who deal with the students. If you have database and/or PHP/ASP skills, you could try to join a web-development team for an academic institution; if not, you could learn them or find another software/technology-based position to apply for at one. I highly recommend it, though - if not for the atmosphere and stability, but also for the free courses. Many institutions allow employees to take courses for free, something that's definitely worth looking into if you're interested in learning. Good luck!
http://www.tenjou.net/
I've spent the past 7+ years working for a relatively small not-profit company and have had a great experience, as well as a lot of impact on the direction of technology in the company. This positive experience seems to be a thread through everyone in my department.
I'd definately recomend non-profit, or local government organizations as a good place for programmers to spend many years. You won't become a millionaire overnight, but it's good pay, good promotion, working with people you get to know for YEARS, reasonable hours, and probably much lower stress compared to private development houses.
Not to mention that most big companies will lay you off the moment things go a little sour on the numbers, even while the CEO and others at the top get big fat raises. Gain experience as a corporate slave, but get out and do your own thing as soon as you are able. That is my own goal as I can already see the writing on the corporate wall here, I'm only going to be employable as long as I'm young and naive and willing to work for lower pay. So the sooner I can get into a position where I am my own boss, be it a startup, or consulting when needed, the better.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Typing does not require accurate position of the fingers - so long as you hit the "a" key, it doesn't much matter how you hit it.. Over time the brain doesnt bother to take care over which nerves are activated/sensed, because it appears not to matter. Unfortunately, it does!
The consequence of this careless activation of "roughly the right nerves" is what is called Carpal Tunnel.
The cure is to relearn accurate use of the nerves. One of the best ways of doing this has been found to be to learn hand embroidery! Old fashoned watchmaking (or repairling iPods/mobile phones) would probably work too. Most exercise or sports, which require force but little accuracy, will make matters rapidly worse.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Haven't found anything like that in Silicon Valley. In the 1980's and earlier, computer programming used to be that kind of job. But the dot.com era changed the field and deathmarches are now common rather than a sign of poor project management or cluess PHBs. Most of the jobs I've seen here are developing software that will eventually be a project. I ended up becoming a Sysadmin and eventually leaving IT altogether.
If you're having health problems due to typing, I'd look at changing your lifestyle--either how you work (ergonomics) or what you do. All that typing is a form of exercise and eventually athletes and dancers have to retire and "do something else". That's up to you to decide.
You must read and have the spare machine to play with. You must at least browse Dr. Dobbs.
This is why my resume is upto date after 22 years.
Now that the y2k issues are dea and gone, Cobol programmers now most commonly say, "So that was a Non fat decaf latte....?"
Can't turn into the guy that in 1993 walked out of a presentation I gave on Visual Basic because he did not know what a mouse was. This is a true story.
One thing to consider is to lower your expenses. My wife and I were in quite the cherry position about a year ago. over $130,000 a year in salary combined, both of us younger than 28, buying our first house and then I was laid off.
Our first step? Sell the house. Then start paying off all our debts. We may not "own" a house now (I put that in quotes because we wouldn't have owned it for 30 years), but our expenses are relatively fixed, in the process of moving into an apartment we downsized and simplified our life considerably. And now, if I get the opportunity I can take a job like the above AND take the reduced salary. Because even though we knew money wouldn't buy happiness before, now we're putting this principle to practice and organizing our life such that we don't need that much money to live on. Our debts are getting paid off and we're happy, and that's what matters.
Do we have HDTV? Not anymore. Do we have a house? Not anymore. Do we have more than 1 computer? Not anymore. But our life is simple. We relax much more. We owe much less and our stress has been halved, both on our bodies and on our minds. Something to think about for those stressing about salaries not being commensurate with skills. Money isn't everything.
Rule #1: Don't get into anything you don't enjoy because you think it will make you rich.
As for your b-school suggestions, that's my background: BS in accounting, MS in management. Believe me, Big-4 (is it 4 these days) accounting is a bigger death march than any development job in the valley, with worse pay, more stress, and a phenominal burn out rate. Typically 80% of the new hires will be gone in two years, out of public accounting. They take their CPA certificates and the requisite two years experience and head off to a life of drudgery in some corporate accounting office. Those that skip the big-4 route head directly to that grind.
Personally, I love having the b-school background and experience. I've been a consultant and OO developer the last 8 years and understanding how the suits work makes me all the more valuable. While some doors are closed due to my lack of an engineering background, many others are open thanks to the business experience.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
I believe that most companies think that they can hire any codemonkey out of college to do what you can do (but their's will need massive rework/refactoring) in 10x the time, even though they're only 1/2 to 1/3 the cost. Plus the older you get, the more time you're going to want to spend with your family (you did manange to pick up one of those along the way, didn't you?), and then there's other outside interests, like neighborhood associations and other civic and church (or Cthulhu) functions. Oh yeah, the older you get, the more time you're going to need for medical visits, and there's a health club in your future where you'll injure yourself once or twice a year.
And do you really want to continue working in software? Especially with the hours and working conditions? You have to face it, one cannot easily estimate how long software takes to get done (and I'll address that later), and since developers are some of the most optimistic people in the world, you'll invariably end up staying late about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, especially if a PHB takes everybody's estimates and cuts them by a third, 'cuz he knows you can do it!
Unless you can find yourself one of the few jobs open at a big software shop like IBM where they have people that hopefully do a good job at estimating effort (and I had a buddy there that they didn't, and he had to essentially work 1 year of 60-hour weeks), you'll end up working at a small coding shop where they'll have to make optimistic projections to get the contract, and hence you're working late... again! And if you work at a place where software isn't the main product, you'll have clueless PHBs that are unable to figure out that software indeed *does* take that long to do, and why aren't you coding yet??!?
The folks that I know that are older and are making it in software have made names for themselves, have written one or more books, attend OOPSLA where they're presenters or panelists, or are otherwise looked upon as gurus. The rest of them are scraping along, waiting for the axe to fall... again. The true failures I know are those that don't want to update their skill set, or have truly vertical knowledge and are unable/unwilling to move to where their market is.
Unless a young person I know has true passion for software, and is willing to do the Software Engineering thing, which they used to not emphasize enough in undergrad, I tell them to find something else to do since unless they trip on the pot o' gold (and I know a guy that's been doing MS Access programming from home on a government contract for the past 10+ years that has been pulling in six figures the entire time), they're not going to make it on less-than-passion.
Now, where do you go from here? Hmmm... that's a really good question. As soon as I know, I'll let you in on it.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Well, I didn't say we made $130,000 for many years. Only for one year. That was our zenith. Secondly, you have no idea how much you pay in taxes when you make that much money. If we hadn't have "bought" the house, our taxes would have been in the neighborhood of at least $10,000 (no kids, make too much money to deduct student loans), I believe. Of course, buying the house cost money. Much more than rent. 2 car loans (1 paid off now) and $60,000 in combined student loans and that money disappears pretty quickly.
And, as I alluded to earlier, we spent some money. At one time owning a couple computers, a Zaurus, an HDTV, lots of little toys that add up. That didn't eat up most of the extra money. Student loan payments did that nicely. To the tune of like $1,000 a month.
So this isn't a sob story. The point is that we changed our idea of what we wanted/needed out of life and as a consequence our expenses dropped considerably. Now we're barrelling money into our debt (which is better than putting away a nest egg, IMHO, since we'll have to pay that money back someday) and enjoying the freedom that comes from having a much simpler existence.
" In other words, he should scrap what he knows or find a new intriguing way to convert it in management abilities ?" In a nutshell yes. It may not be fair but people are not interested in hiring 30+ or 40+ programmers. At that age you are expected to be in management of some sort.
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In a Roth IRA the contribution is post-tax but you don't have to pay taxes on capital gains. The problem is that money can't be withdrawn before you are 59 1/2 years of age without incurring penalties (10% of the amount withdrawn, I believe). You wouldn't want to touch that money anyway as the amount that you would make with compound interest would be a nice nest egg for when you retire. Pulling it out destroys the best advantage that money has which is time to compound. This is important because you can only contribute so much per year.
Ideally you would want to have enough in your savings to pay all of your bills for six months time in case you lose your jobs. I just realized that could be what you meant by nest egg. In any case, it's common to spend a large amount of one's savings towards the downpayment on a home. I saved for years and years until I had $60k in my savings. I spent $50k of it on a downpayment for my home and still had to take out a home equity loan to meet the 20% down so that I wouldn't have to pay PMI on my mortgage. It's going to take me a couple of years to save enough to have my emergency fund built up in my savings.
It could be that this couple was in the same boat. With most of their savings spent on their house and not much left in the bank, it was wise to sell the house. You can always get another one. In this case they re-evaluated what they were spending their money on and what they felt they needed. I think they made the right decision.
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Furthermore ... Job Security is a sham. Any reader of /. would've noticed by now the recurring topic of Offshoring and all the "it happened to me too" postings that are usually generated by these postings.
The important thing is to start small / part-time and to learn as much as you can about how to start a business (and all that entails) before going full bore.
The statement that most entrepreneurs fail 2 or 3 times before making it is true - I've been there myself, however if you never try in the first place, that's much more of a waste of potential than anything.
All the reasons you state for NOT starting a business are valid - to a point. However the rewards are often worth it.
1) Starting a business (as a Corporation or LLC) has alot of tax advantages. As the original poster and many replies stated - the higher your revenues as an employee, the more the government tears into you. Running a corporation gives you access to financial tools that reduce your tax burden (deductions, deferments, etc ...). You get to declare expenses.
2) You can then redirect the money you save back into the business or other investments. Usually the only time you have to pay big taxes on that money is at the point where you derive big income from it. Even then - you pay less taxes on Capital Gains than you do on normal salaried income.
YES - it's risky to start a business. But it's worth it when it works out.
If you don't want to take any chances, then there's another road to follow ...
It's called "Voluntary Simplicity". There's a book that everybody should read called "Your money or your life" http://tinyurl.com/4qrlb that to a certain extent has changed my life quite a bit.
Basically - the whole premise of the book is to reduce your expenses as much as possible, get rid of debt and try to live within your means and better yet, reduce your lifestyle so that you can live within smaller means - when you make more money than it costs you to live - that's when things get really interesting.
There's another notion that people should have ingrained in them ... pay yourself first. Always automatically put aside a certain amount of money (preferably some place that will give you good interest on the money). The money you put aside from the getgo isn't money you'll be tempted to spend later on.
In any event ... whatever works for you.
I experienced the same desire to leave the Silicon Valley coupled with wondering how to do it. I sorta started wanting to leave back in '99... the bust hadn't set in, and paychecks were huge, but I was freaked out by the crash I knew was coming. Then I had a kid, and suddenly I was going deeper into debt every month. Couldn't possibly afford to have another kid there, couldn't even really afford the one I had. No chance of buying a house I wanted. We were one missed paycheck away from not knowing what the hell would happen to us, a scary prospect when working in high tech. Considered moving to the east coast near family, but didn't get a single nibble on the resume as the bust was in full bloom.
My chance to leave came in an unexpected way. The small company I worked for was acquired by a huge company, and this huge company had a fairly liberal work-from-home policy. I inquired and was told I could work from anywhere I cared to move. Coincidentally enough, my wife's company was simultaneously acquired by a huge company, also with a superb work-from-home policy. We knew we had to take the opportunity, and burned rubber moving to a cheaper state. One with a reasonable job market, and WAY better housing prices and cost of living prices.
It's been a dream come true. The culture here is much more focused on family. We've had our second kid. We're paying off our debt at a radical clip. We live in a house so nice that we couldn't have even afforded to rent one like it in The Valley. We can now afford to have either one of us lose our jobs for over a year and we'd be fine. And the likelihood is that we'd eventually find worthy replacements for our jobs.
I feel that we got very lucky, but I do think that in our experience lies the potential seed of a way out for someone like yourself: you could seek work at one of these huge companies (IBM, Oracle, HP, etc) with a particular eye open for prospectively working from home, either right away or perhaps after some amount of time on a project. It may take some time, but the good thing about such an approach is that there's no "cliff" of risk - unlike moving somewhere and hoping you pick up a job right away.
Best of luck.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
my wrists started hurting after years of using the computer.
the solutions that helped most were:
1) using a 'spring' keyboard instead of rubber membrane.
2) switch to dvorak (seven years now, and no regrets),
and repogram mouse to avoid double-clicks.
3) practice HANDWRITING, or take up a MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
like piano -- this is the single most important thing that
helped alleviate my wrist pains -- i started playing bass guitar,
and by repetitively and rhythmically using those same muscles
in a definite OTHER way --it helped to strengthen them for when
i went back to using them with a mouse. if you're not into
practicing a musical instrument (which i guarantee will be
a useful skill longer than any programming language you
may happen to learn) -- then try handwriting -- it forces
the muscles involved into definite contortions which counter
the repetitive stress of clicking.
best regards,
john.