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Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg

Posted by Soulskill on from the commiserate-with-middle-age-actresses dept.

An anonymous reader sends this quote from an opinion piece at Bloomberg: "Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35. Employers dismiss them as either lacking in up-to-date technical skills — such as the latest programming-language fad — or 'not suitable for entry level.' In other words, either underqualified or overqualified. That doesn’t leave much, does it? Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. Employers have admitted this in unguarded moments. Craig Barrett, a former chief executive officer of Intel Corp., famously remarked that 'the half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years,' while Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has blurted out that young programmers are superior."

6 of 738 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cool, so where do you go next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Our own bloody fault, should have gone into football instead of engineering. Common good and all that.

  2. Re:Cool, so where do you go next? by EricWright · · Score: 3, Funny

    You ever hear of Logan's Run? It was wrong ... by 19 years. Sad to say, I've only got a few more months to go.

  3. Priced themselves out of the market? by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Funny

    As Wadhwa notes, even if the 45-year-old programmer making $120,000 has the right skills, “companies would rather hire the younger workers.”

    I took over as a developer on a project lead by a "hot young developer" (how the management saw his skill set). He and I graduated around the same time. Guess what? Dude didn't even know what primary or foreign keys were. He also had no defaults, not null or unique constraints. Most of his code was a steaming pile of dog crap expressed crudely in Java. When I got on the project and saw the code, my eyes felt like they were on fire it was that bad.

    But hey, he's got the "latest skills" right?

    Repeat the same story with PHP, Python or Ruby replacing Java and you get a snapshot of where this leads.

  4. Re:Nothing new? by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Software engineers have ridiculously high starting salaries compared to normal people--why do you need it to keep going up?

    Because all the cool toys get more and more expensive.

    And, if you like to keep banging younger chicks....it doesn't hurt to have a bit more disposable income than the next guy....

    Remember, he who dies with the most stuff....wins.

    :)

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  5. Re:Mod parent up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    [[That's what you're paying for when you hire the experienced programmers. The knowledge of what errors people usually make and why they make them.]]

    Younger programmers don't create errors. Just ask them.

  6. Re:Not bloody likely by rastos1 · · Score: 3, Funny

    OK, I'm 62 and still going strong.

    I see. Let me get off your lawn right away, sir.