Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg

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."

Comments

schizophrenic industry

[sl4shd0rk]

First, the jobs move overseas and we get told it's a "good thing":
http://blog.douweosinga.com/2003/10/why-jobs-moving-overseas-isn-so-bad.html

Then, there is complaining that the industry can't find any programmers:
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/05/23/tech-talent-shortage-one-of-this-years-major-storylines-illustrated-in-national-study-by-job-search-site-dice/

Next, the industry tries to figure out where all the programmers went:
http://www.google.com/search?q=shortage+of+programmers

Finally, they realize they've castrated themselves and simply claim it's a dead-end career. Nice.

Bloomberg says?

[andy1307]

Or Norman Matloff, in an op-ed on bloomberg.com, says?

Re:Not bloody likely

[richieb]

Hey, I'm 56.... started coding in the 70s. Still code everyday for a living. Note that the Bloomberg News piece is written by some CS professor for the Opinion section of Bloomberg news.

Re:Not bloody likely

[Anonymous Codger]

OK, I'm 62 and still going strong. I'm up to date on my skills and respected by my (much younger) colleagues.

But I have known people in their 40's with good backgrounds who couldn't find work in the field.

Re:Explains Software Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Save on taxes? You hate taxes so much that you'd take a cut in take-home to screw over the government just that little bit? Or do you jast have issues with understanding how marginal tax rates work?

Re:Zuckerberg == rich idiot

[TiggertheMad]

Facebook uses PHP as their internal language and the majority of CS-wonk new hires have never even used it. This is 100% by-design.

Facebook uses PHP because it is open source, and as a result much cheaper than ASP.NET or some other proprietary tool. They started out as a small company with little capital for expensive software licenses, and when they started growing, there is even less incentive to rewrite everything in some other language.