Slashdot Mirror
Tech Or Management Beyond Age 39?
relliker writes "So here I am at age 39 with two contractual possibilities, for practically the same pay. With one, I continue being a techie for the foreseeable future — always having to keep myself up-to-date on everything tech and re-inventing myself with each Web.x release to stay on top. With the other, I'm being offered a chance to get into management, something I also enjoy doing and am seriously considering for the rest of my working life. The issue here is the age of my grey matter. Will I still be employable in tech at this age and beyond? Or should I relinquish the struggle to keep up with progress and take the comfy 'old man' management route so that I can stay employable even in my twilight years? What would Slashdot veterans advise at this age?"
>First, your personal assets are shielded from
>liability from business problems you might
>encounter, this is a litigious society after all.
Not really. If you do something stupid then piercing the S-Corp layer isn't that hard. At the end of the day you are really a sole proprietor, and having paid a few hundred bucks to file some paperwork isn't going to work any magic in court.
>One of the best tax benefits is that I can legally
>cut my SS and medicare taxation by a huge amount.
This would work if the owner of the S-Corp was someone else. As the sole owner of the S-Corp and the only person who does any work for the S-Corp then you are deemed to be an "active" owner. You owe SS and Medicare on all of the income, including the pass through income. You may not report the income this way, but you should be. I'm guessing you haven't been audited yet.
> [writing off mileage and other stuff]
You can do all of that without being an S-Corp. It goes on Schedule C.
> [health care options]
I have great health care through my spouse, so I've never looked into this.
There may be good reasons to incorporate, but I haven't seen any (for my situation at least). Having an S-Corp does make your tax avoidance strategy appear somewhat legit. Without the S-Corp there would be no way to even pretend that you don't owe the SS and Medicare tax. I'm afraid though that the IRS will force you to stop pretending once you get audited. Good luck.
I would never, ever argue anything technical with Andrew Tenenbaum, for instance.
I would. All I'd do is point to Linux, and the lack of a viable microkernel OS despite decades of work on them, as proof that his ideas are wrong.
I wouldn't argue anything technical with Linus Torvalds, however. After all, he has a real OS used on millions of devices to his credit, unlike Andy's toy OS that's only used for playing around in academia.