Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 23, 2012 @07:57AM 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."

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Re:I'll bet it's hours. by Kohath · 2012-04-23 08:28 · Score: 1, Troll

I think what you're really saying here is:
"Bloomberg is correct. After a few years, programmers are too self-impressed and preoccupied to do a good job and be valuable to their employer."
And you're probably both right for a subset of self-impressed, preoccupied programmers who can't make up for their lack of job-focus with extraordinary programming skill. If you're not a genius, you need to try harder. If you're not going to work hard, you better be a genius. If you're neither a hard worker nor a genius, don't expect much success at work.