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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?"
You have now outlasted your usefulness to the state. Please report to your nearest execution chamber.
We've got a runner!
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'll back GreyWolf on that one. I've been programming for a while and had carpal tunnel. I switched and about a month later no longer had any pain :) Takes about 3 days to switch if you use it alot.
Also if you change the keys around while your learning it makes it alot easier.
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.
The good: My company values its employees, deathmarches are rare, there is no danger that my work will be outsourced to India or Russia, salary and benefits are fantastic, and the work can be technically challenging.
The bad: The work isn't always technically challenging, you have to play The Game (but then, where don't you?), and eventually you will reach a point where you must take on some management responsibilities. However, if you work it correctly, you can rise as a technical lead, software architect, or some other position which is mostly technical with only a dash of paper-shuffling required.
I used to be a game developer. The work was incredibly fun, but the hours were backbreaking and the paychecks were irregular, if they came at all. As a mid-30s programmer with a wife, two kids, a mortgage and a car payment to worry about, I am willing to take some less exciting work in exchange for a company that treats me like a human being, pays me every two weeks without fail, and will gladly employ me until retirement if I so choose.
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 just started my own hitman business, and could really use the work! Right now, my equipment is limited to a fairly sharp pencil, but I'm quite good with it!
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.
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.