Slashdot Mirror
Is Computer Programming a Good Job for Retirees?
braindrainbahrain asks: "Ask Slashdot has been rife with career advice lately, so maybe I can get some too. I hit a milestone recently, the big five oh, and the realization of retirement is starting to settle in. The trouble is, I don't want to sit around, play golf, or even travel that much. I work in a technical field, but I have always enjoyed programming. Indeed, I do it as a hobby. I wonder what you readers would think about programming as a post retirement job. It seems well suited for a retiree, one could do contract work for a few months of the year, in some cases work from home even. By way of background, I have worked in hardware engineering for a very long time, and have pursued graduate study almost regularly (two Masters degrees so far). Should I begin preparing for a post-retirement career in computer science?"
I don't know, are you willing to relocate to India?
John
Good luck getting a response to your resume with that background. Companies will see your credentials, assume they'd have to pay too much since you're "overqualified" and instantly send you a flush letter.
Even more competition in the workplace? Oh hell no....
While we're pondering cre-azy ideas, how about we revive that euthanasia debate?
The Political Programmer
I have a rule.
Anything that you enjoy doing instantly becomes much less fun the moment you are doing it because you are required to, for whatever reason.
If you enjoy programming as a hobby, why not just continue to do it as a hobby? There are plenty of open source projects that would benefit tremendously from having an extra hand, especially one that doesn't have many other commitments. There are so many projects I wish I had time to work on, but other obligations get in that way. The time you have is such a luxury.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
If you are retiring at 50 you have serious financial security. So I suggest you treat it as a hobbie instead of job. Do it for yourself, not somebody else. Maybe it will turn into something that makes money for you. But if you do it for some company then they own your work. Give yourself more freedom.
Of course, if you manage to find a company that you mesh with and the projects you work on are the same thing you would do by yourself, then by all means, go for it. The team envrionment can be rewarding.
Just try to get out of the cubicle as much as possible. You'll be dead in ten years if you don't. Or close anyway.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
If you like problem solving, like to learn new things, enjoy working with computers, then definitely go for it.
You didn't mention if you can survive off your current retirement savings, but if you can that I think there's even more reason to do it. You'll have the flexibility to offer your services to groups that usually can't afford to hire expensive programmers (think non-profit national science organizations, smaller mom and pop shops, etc...) or you can contribute to open source projects.
I think the best part of it, though, is that if you try out a certain technology (say web programming) and hate it, then you can jump to something else. There's nothing forcing you to have one speciality and you can figure out the skills required once you have a solid enough foundation (there is so much information available online and it's usually free).
Only you know if this type of thing fits you. But I will say that if anyone tells you that you're too old, or that your brain isn't flexible enough, pay attention to what they say and the prove them wrong.
That being said, if you love code, then delve into open source, find something that you want to fix and fix it. It will feel great. If you really enjoy programming you can just keep going. If you need to find some spare cash, then you can point to your hobby work that is in the current distro of Centos or Ubuntu. And wind up with a survivable paycheck, or you can marry the feilds you know and wind up with a big ole paycheck. It is relativly hard to find a programmer with masters level domain knowlege in two fields. Ok its not that hard, if flash more than $50/hour
Good luck
Storm
I know you mentioned that you have two Masters. Assuming that they are in a technical field, have you considered teaching? Many community colleges hire part time people who have come out of industry and have the proper degrees. It is tough work, but can be rewarding with a good group of students. I wouldn't suggest High School work (the Certification process is lengthy and it isn't part time work), but teaching programming at a local school could be an alternative to a job in programming.
Live Long and Prosper
The enterprise IT world *needs* people with mature attitudes.
I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer so this may come across off-topic, but there is a lesson to be learned with respect to mature vs *cough*immature*cough* people in the world of IT.
Most of the people working in this area at the moment are very young and enthusiastic. Thats not a bad thing in itself; its bad when they start 'playing' with systems on which other peoples livelyhoods depend.
They are often people who think its ok to introduce fascinating new technologies into the enterprise machine room because they *love* to tinker with shiny new stuff "ooooh Linux iscsi on all our servers! Wheeeee!!!".
Its bad when you have IT professionals who so love fixing computer problems that they don't mind being woken up by a pager at 3am; for them its a wonderful opportunity to wrestle with a computer problem.
The mature attitude says that computers should not wake people with a 3am pager call; they should not go wrong in the first place. It says that you should not introduce bleeding-edge technologies into important systems. It says that stability and reliability are very important.
Same sort of thing applies to coding I guess, but not being a coder, take no notice of me.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
It is working for me. I started programming after working in chemical R&D for 25 years partly because I felt it was a less demanding career, and one that has more flexibility when I got to retirement. I started programming in early 2000 as a Perl web developer for a small boutique consultancy, learned Java, PHP and a few other things on the job, and for the past year or so have been working as an architect for a mid-sized company. I am 57 years old now. One thing that has been a big factor in my success is simply being able to communicate in English. There are a lot of good programmers out there who for one reason or another can't translate what they do into a coherent sentence. Another thing that has been helpful is a strong educational background - when you are in the job market it really opens a lot of doors even if you are an older person.
I have a masters in CS, 30+ years programming experience, lots of business knowledge. You name it, I pretty much have it. I was laid off on my 49th birthday. That was 5 years ago. I can not buy a paid programming job. The only serious contact I have had in the last 3 years was with a company in India that was desperate for experienced people. Moving to Bangalore is not an option for me right now. The contract market has dried up.
I work on open source projects. I do some writing. I took the courses and passed the tests so that I can teach in the public schools. I haven't been able to find a job there yet. There are a lot of people like me chasing too few teaching jobs. I do teach part time at the local community college. But, very few people in the US are interested in learning programming right now. I have only had 6 students in the last 3 semesters. I teach and code when I can. I was thinking about going to law school. But I do not have the money and I would have to move which is not an option right now.
So, all I can say is good luck with that.
Stonewolf
The competition from Sudoku-playing denture-suckers should reduce the wages for this essentially clerical job down to a realistic level. Their maturity will ensure that they need less admin than the whippersnappers, so wages for IT managers should drop as well.
Sadly, since they will tend to drop dead during a project, the lost art of commenting code will need to be reintroduced. In order to make sure that this gets done each senior citizen/coder will be assigned an unemployed baby-face, who will make cups of tea, issue pills, and remind them not to dribble on the keyboard. Every hour the baby-face will insist that the old codger comments the previous hour's work, and archives it.
One day the fossil will collapse across the desk, at which point the baby-face will push the body to one side, and take over the programming job. She, in her turn will be assigned a baby-face.
Like me, you sound like you won't be happy at all not working. I really can't think of myself as being out of a job, not even when I am 60+. So I plan on teaching.
You have the required education, and just so much more real world knowledge than 80% of the instructors out there today. PASS IT ON. I have taught part time in the past on and off for 5/6 years. It is a lot of fun, it keeps you sharp and the students love you because, you are for real and not just from a book.
If you code after you retire, it will get to be another full time job and who wants to deal with dead lines, time lines, requirements, and boneheads that don't know what they are talking about etc... Doesn't sound like retirement to me... If you go the teaching route, maybe a few bad ass kids in the bunch here and there, but everything else is set up, its not that hard and can be a blast.
You won't make a lot of money, but pick a good open source project and code for it as a hobby, and go teach to make a little cash and really feel good about helping all the young geeks out there ;)
duke
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.