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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).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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...
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/
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.
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?
" 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.
Get a free Mac Mini
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.