Tech is the Most Lucrative Career: LinkedIn Study (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: LinkedIn's 2017 U.S. State of Salary report is out, and tech is on top as the most lucrative career. Computer science majors are paid the most, with a median salary of $92,300. Software and IT services is the highest paid industry, with a median total compensation of $104,700.

Comments

At what Experience Level?

[Jfetjunky]

Median of all computer science majors currently working? Or just entry level? 90K entry level is pretty impressive. 90K experienced isn't that impressive considering all STEM.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Anonymous Coward]

It needs to pay a lot entry level, because typically around age 40 you are likely to be let go for the next wave of graduates. Age discrimination is rampant in tech, it is one of the worst kept secrets around.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Age discrimination is rampant in tech, it is one of the worst kept secrets around.

I'm 48-years-old and haven't run into it. Then again, I currently have a government IT job and I'm one of the youngest. Most of the greybeards that I work with are in their 60's and 70's.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm almost 55 and I still have recruitera beating my door down. Sounds like it's a personal problem, mate.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[WrongMonkey]

This is the average for all computer science majors. It is very consistent with just about every other salary survey on the subject, if not a little on the high side. Do not put too much stake in the slashdot bubble comments claiming that every code monkey is making mid-six-figures. These are coming from the same people who all claim to be over 6'4" tall with IQ180.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

This was your comment ONE DAY AGO: https://slashdot.org/comments....

Let's conveniently overlook the fact that I was one out of ~10,000 employees laid off at that time, I had 60 job interviews during the time I was out of work for eight months, I've been in my current government IT job for three years and my contract doesn't expire for another two years.

You're not exactly a hot ticket in the IT industry, creimer

I still get 20+ phone calls and emails from recruiter each day. My manager keeps hinting at a raise and larger Christmas bonus. I may not be the hottest ticket in Silicon Valley but I'm not a wallflower either.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Bigbutt]

Depends on what you do I guess. At 60 I'm still employed in IT/Operations as a Systems Engineer. My girlfriend is a MS-SQL DBA and is older than 40 (nope, I'm not saying :) ). Pay wise we're doing pretty well. Not Silicon valley well but nice house well where we are.

[John]

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Bigbutt]

Not everyone in IT is a code monkey :)

[John]

Re: At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

I've been out of the workforce for 9 years taking care of my highly disabled father.

I've helped an older friend (54-years-old) who took care of his dying mother for eight years get back into the workforce. Although he had a few IT support contracts, he transitioned into retail to sell technology products two years ago.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Yeah, Pajeet and Samir are calling everyone hun.

You mean the three recruiters who are always showing the same identical job description? I haven't heard from them in years. It's very rare that I get even two recruiters with the same job description these days.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[laie_techie]

This is the average for all computer science majors. It is very consistent with just about every other salary survey on the subject, if not a little on the high side. Do not put too much stake in the slashdot bubble comments claiming that every code monkey is making mid-six-figures. These are coming from the same people who all claim to be over 6'4" tall with IQ180.

I have 17 years as a software engineer in Utah and don't make 6 figures.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm almost 55 and I still have recruitera beating my door down"

No, that's the AARP nurse wanting to check your oxygen.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[NicknameUnavailable]

Age discrimination is rampant because new entries mostly get in the door by lowballing the competition thinking "once I'm in the door I'll work toward a raise." On a similar note once someone is 5-15 years into the field they start thinking "I need to push for a raise" and suddenly the net effect is tech is very low paid.

Look at it this way: programming involves taking in business logic at the level of a business manager and codifying that to strict logic a computer can handle, it is not only the complete knowledge of the operations of an aspect of a business, but also the knowledge of how to automate that. When a programmer is able to put 50 people out of work by streamlining the production or inventory process do you really think they're worth 90k? Sure, if every single person they automated got paid no more than 1.8k.

TL;DR: programmers are horribly underpaid and the purpose of articles like this is to keep the influx of new recruits coming in order to replace the guys who have wised up to the ways of the world and want their fair share.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Just based on the comments you made yesterday, we can conclude that in the last 10 years, you've been unemployed at least 33% of the time. Assuming that age discrimination is a factor is the kindest interpretation of facts.

1) It's the economy, stupid.
2) How can there be age discrimination when I often get hired over the phone?

Re:At what Experience Level?

[ma1wrbu5tr]

Keywords "government job". Civil Service jobs are HARD to get fired from. You have to actually TRY to get fired in many cases. As much as I'd like to support your position in this debate(being a 40 something geek myself), I just can't.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Keywords "government job". Civil Service jobs are HARD to get fired from.

I'm a contractor at my government IT job. Contractors can get fired quite easily. One contractor got fired for not disclosing on his background check that he had a murder charge. Several contractors were surprised to learn that they were expected to work and found themselves back on the unemployment line.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[computational super]

90K experienced isn't that impressive considering all STEM

It is compared to almost every other career - even medicine.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[jellomizer]

The question is where.
90K in Upstate New York is a upper middle class living.
90K in New York City is living in poverty.

While the tech companies that get the most media attention are in the big city areas, Paying 90k is more or less ripping off the employees.
However a few hundred miles away we have the tech companies, who are not under the press, or do things not as exciting. However are paying their workers 90K and are able to make a really good living.

I pay under 2k a month for my house, with over an acre of land. A few hundred miles away that 2k wouldn't get me a 1 bedroom apartment.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Bengie]

Experience is nearly worthless. My brother was making $100k/year working 20 hours per week while in college, placing him in the top 0.1% of the local household income. Then he graduated, immediately with a job for $120k/year plus great benefits. In less than a month, he was promoted to the head of his department. He had the job lined up for over a year. They didn't care how long it took my brother to graduate, they were saving him a position.

They are not paying top dollar for my brother's experience, but his ability to solve difficult problems. He was lucky that he got a local job. My professors told me they knew people in high places at some of the biggest companies and were willing to get me a good job, but I turned them down because I would have to leave the state and be away from family.

Experience teaches you how to not make the same mistakes, but it does not teach you how to not make mistakes in the first place. Experience and knowledge are the worst ways of learning problem solving.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[dougdonovan]

today and for the last 20 years ( ish )...without a computer...nobody works. give it a try.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[laie_techie]

I have 17 years as a software engineer in Utah and don't make 6 figures.

"I have"? Sound like you need to do the needful and finally apply for AOS so you can get rid of your H1-B.

H1-B? Nah, I was born in the USA. Many ancestors arrived in the colonies in the 1600s. The most recent newcomers arrived in the 1850s. Admittedly Hawaiian Creole English (colloquially called Pidgin, ISO-638 code HWC) is my native tongue, so I may occasionally make a few grammar mistakes.

I've been a professional software engineer for 17 years. I have 17 years (of experience) as a software engineer.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[Aighearach]

You should really upgrade your English comprehension. As a published author, creimer could probably help you if you asked nicely enough.

Basically, hyphens have no banned usage. That is merely a matter of style. Where they are required, they are required only to maintain internal consistency. To actually be incorrect, it would have to change the meaning in a way that would conflict with the rest of the statement; pretty much impossible here where the phrase is parenthesized.

So, while your complaint is horseshit from the start simply by its form, (attempting to correct something that is a matter of style) it is also wrong in that normally pedants would report the best usage as being the way he already wrote it; your correction is still not an error, it is just in poor style. And taste, but that is another matter and is probably hopeless. Here, he used the age as a noun that retells "older friend." When using the age as a noun, as in "a 54-year-old," then you should hyphenate. Had he worked the age into a smoother sentence the non-hyphenated version might have been preferred; but who spends that much time word-smithing a slashdot comment?

His actual technical error was simply that "years" should have been singular.

Keep trying, you'll be fluent soon, and who knows, maybe you'll even advance enough to fulfill your childhood dream of being a real credentialed blog editor!

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Aighearach]

I still get 20+ phone calls and emails from recruiter each day.

That seems really inefficient, my advice is to change your number and not post it on "networking" websites. A person who claims to have survived 60 job interviews in less than a year should already know that being on that sort of recruiter list is a waste. When you're out of work, buy a burner phone and email your preferred recruiters with the number; when you get a new job, turn off the service.

That's a huge amount of time listening to messages and deleting them.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

That's a huge amount of time listening to messages and deleting them.

Phone messages on the iPhone are transcribed to text. If it reads like gibberish, then it's a recruiter in a busy office. It only takes me a few minutes to go through 20+ messages and emails, especially since I'm not actively looking for a job. If I was doing an active search, I would get 40 to 60 messages and emails per day.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[mikael]

It really depends on where you work and whether there are more graduates coming from the local universities/colleges than there are jobs available. Whether the company is privately owned, bought out by a foreign investor, or owned by a parent company is another factor. Wall Street values public traded companies based on how low the average age of employees is vs. annual growth. That puts pressure on companies to have annual targets for promotions, hirings and decimation of the workforce.

It also depends on whether graduates can gain skills in your field from working with bits of hardware at home (desktop PC's, Android, smartphones, tablets etc...). That's offset by being able to build up a portfolio of work in that field. As an artist/animator you are competing against high-school students who work with Blender, Unity and Unreal all the time.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

[...] the fact that your "miracle work" hasn't gotten you fired yet (at least, not that you've shared) [...]

The only time I ever got fired was when I worked in construction with my father and punched the boss's grandson in the mouth after trying to assault me with a rebar.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[goose-incarnated]

Basically, hyphens have no banned usage. That is merely a matter of style.

I beg to differ :-)

Where they are required, they are required only to maintain internal consistency. To actually be incorrect, it would have to change the meaning in a way that would conflict with the rest of the statement

For example: That's a sweet-ass ride vs That's a sweet ass-ride

Huh - looks like I didn't differ after all)

Re: At what Experience Level?

[micahraleigh]

I hear a lot about 50+ people getting attention from recruiters ... not very many stories of people over 50 getting hired anywhere.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[bev_tech_rob]

This is the average for all computer science majors. It is very consistent with just about every other salary survey on the subject, if not a little on the high side. Do not put too much stake in the slashdot bubble comments claiming that every code monkey is making mid-six-figures. These are coming from the same people who all claim to be over 6'4" tall with IQ180.

I'm a 22-year old Slavic Studies major who last year took a 5-day bootcamp in web development.

Now I make over $400K as a principal architect for Microsoft!

And you are trolling...

Re:At what Experience Level?

[micahraleigh]

I disagree with that explanation. Very few professions outside tech are paid anywhere near what we are paid.

Pharmacists, truckers. That's about it.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[ls671]

The only time I ever got fired was when I worked in construction with my father and punched the boss's grandson in the mouth after trying to assault me with a rebar.

So, you punched the boss's grandson in the mouth after you tried to assault yourself with a rebar?

Re:At what Experience Level?

[ls671]

My god, you are so amazing! I just can't figure out how you can handle so many emails a day. I have problems handling more than 3 or 4 a day so I have to work overtime and weekends when I get more than that.

You are really a miracle worker!

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Sheesh, that sounds like fun. Did you *actively* try to get yourself on spam lists?

I got 800+ connections (mostly recruiters) in LinkedIn. The daily volume isn't bad. Getting birthday wishes for a month after my birthday is very annoying.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[ls671]

Keywords "government job". Civil Service jobs are HARD to get fired from.

I'm a contractor at my government IT job. Contractors can get fired quite easily. One contractor got fired for not disclosing on his background check that he had a murder charge. Several contractors were surprised to learn that they were expected to work and found themselves back on the unemployment line.

If those contractors were expected to work, it means someone else expected them to work. How could they be, as you say, "back on the unemployment line" then if someone is expecting them to work?

Re: At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Paying to have his fecalities "published" in some poor sod's anthology is no great achievement.

I've never paid to have a short story appear in anthology, but I've been compensated with payment and/or book copies for having a short story appear in an anthology.

Go ahead Shakespeare, and-tell-me what-you-think-about-it.

You mean the Shakespeare who whom the university-educated playwrights looked down upon because of his lack of formal education? The same Shakespeare who was frequently accused of pandering to the groundlings, stealing ideas from other writers, and not even being the author of his own works? The same Shakespeare who became rich not from acting and writing, but from owning the company that he performed in?

Re: At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Yes, the Shakespeare who knew when to use hyphens.

That's doubtful. The standardization of the English language wouldn't happen for another two centuries or so.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[Aighearach]

If you went and said something other than what you meant, don't go and blame it on grammar.

And in the UK, a sweet-ass ride and sweet ass-ride are indeed often the same thing. But that is also all merely a matter of style.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[pnutjam]

I think I used to work with you.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[pnutjam]

I mean, I believe a principal architect at MS might have that level of experience, but he's probably not on Slashdot.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[NicknameUnavailable]

Very few professions outside of tech require doing a job in addition to knowing the job of everyone else. CEO is the only comparable profession.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Bengie]

In my blood family, my generation is the first to go to college and nearly everyone one of my cousins were valedictorian or dean's list. Several of my cousins are now millionaires, and we all come from poor families. Most of my aunts and uncles are making about $20k/year, but their children are now $100k-$1mil in very low income areas. We like to stay close to home. And I have about 50 cousins. Pretty much everyone of my cousins are business owners, specialized medical doctors, or some form of Computer Science. Many of whom get personally invited for talks in their specialties around the nation. They don't submit papers to see if they get accepted, they get personally asked to host a talk.

My mom only has a GDE, and is a 55 year old secretary. She only recently got a computer and uses it maybe a few times a month. I can talk to her about optimizing distributed computing better than the CS graduates that I have to work with. Even my brother was a sophomore in college when he was leading 6 different graduate research teams at the same time. They had to take him off the teams and place him on his own because he was doing all of the work. The graduate students could not keep up. During his junior year in college, he had research Universities that dealt in a range of specializations from Super Computing to AI research, vying for him for a paid internship. In the end he took the super computing internship. Got paid $10k for the summer with room and board for free. Plus exclusive use of the entire super computer, normally reserved for PHDs. during his senior year, he did a one man $3mil datacenter project, also got to work with the FBI in enhancing their security, and taught several classes at the Uni.

Pretty much everyone in my family can talk to each other as peers, even if we're in different specialties. We have difficulty working as peers with most people, but we rarely need to seeing we have few peers. No one has called me an "arrogant asshole" because I enjoy being around happy people and see no reason to piss people off. My entire life while in school I was considered stupid until they found out I was gifted and just think differently. I did not like being judged, so I don't like judging others.

Don't go thinking everybody's life experience is the same as yours. If *you* hit the jackpot and got a great job straight out of college with no experience, don't assume experience is therefore worthless for anyone and everyone.

That wasn't what I was going for. By definition, Abstract Reasoning is the ability to solve problems without experience or knowledge. If the discussion is about domains like Computer Science or general programming where strong Abstract Reason is considered an absolute must, then experience and knowledge are by definition moot. Part of the definition of Abstract Reasoning is the ability to synthesize knowledge. If you need knowledge, make it, don't learn it. Of course this only applies to the technical aspects.

If *you* hit the jackpot

Then nearly everyone in my blood family hit the jackpot, on their own, with no help from their parents or the rest of the family.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[Bengie]

I should add my family is a fun-loving group of witty people who love a good practical joke and a nice relaxing beer or two while hanging out with friends. When it comes to work, keep up or get out of the way. We do go well out of our way to help people and we enjoy being part of a team when the opportunity arises. We hate jerks and we loath drama.

We do have our black sheep. I was told my one uncle used to be normal, but then got into drugs for a decade. No one really knew where he was most of the time because he was coked out of his skull. Even after he got done with his drug spree because he was messed up in the head, he tested so well, he got offered several free rides through a few Ivy League Universities. My grandma had to turn them down because she had to take care of him. He may have lost most of his grip on reality, but he was still freaking smart, which was a scary mix when he started talking about the devil taking over the world. He kept family reunions lively.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[BarbaraHudson]

A minor arrested for suspicion of murder is not charged with a felony, but a delinquency. It's only after a hearing before a juvenile court judge that the case can be referred to an adult court if warranted. In this case. Even if it had been transferred to the adult system and charged with a felony, he was never arrested for a felony. We do know he was never convicted, and possibly it never even went to a formal trial. And the poster never says if he was even actually formally charged with a delinquency as a minor.

Now since there is no link to the actual story, who the hell knows what the actual situation is? It may all be total bullshit.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[BarbaraHudson]

The knowledge he had of our process and systems built up over that period had a considerable value in itself (a value that he wouldn't have in another company)

Au contraire, your competitors may see him as being worth far more.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[BarbaraHudson]

Politicians. Doctors. Tenured professors. And when you take into account total career earnings, and the big dip after you reach "that age", even English majors.

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.

More than a decade ago, Congress commissioned a National Research Council study of the age issue in the profession. The council found that it took 23.4 percent longer for the over-40 workers to find work after losing their jobs, and that they had to take an average pay cut of 13.7 percent on the new job.

Finally, those high programmer salaries are actually low, because the same talents (analytical and problem-solving ability, attention to detail) command much more money in other fields, such as law and finance. A large technology company might typically pay new law-school graduates and MBAs salaries and compensation approaching double what they give new master’s degree grads in computer science.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Now since there is no link to the actual story, who the hell knows what the actual situation is? It may all be total bullshit.

The person supposedly confessed to the crime. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence. A murder weapon and a confession, but no body was ever found to tie the two together. The case was too weak to continue, especially since the murder happened two decades earlier.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[BarbaraHudson]

A confession is often simply wrong. Just look at all the death row inmates who confessed and later were found innocent by DNA. Even with a body, a confession, and a weapon, sometimes it's not clear-cut. Examples would be mental illness, lack of responsibility due to lack of maturity or developmental problems, intoxication (alcohol or drugs), etc.

Someone tries to kill you, and you kill them, subsequently you may not remember that they tried to kill you, as impossible as it sounds. Extreme situations cause the mind to resort to dysfunctional coping methods, and an immediate threat to your life is pretty extreme, enough so that your mind, being unable to cope with it, simply erases it from memory.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

Seriously, there's no fucking murder case, you're just making up what you consider a wild story about a guy you didn't like at work, and trying to sell it way too hard.

The blog is probably correct since I was double checking my sources when I wrote.

Seriously, there's no fucking murder case, you're just making up what you consider a wild story about a guy you didn't like at work, and trying to sell it way too hard.

Why would I make up stuff to impress my trolls on Slashdot? You're not going to believe me anyway.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

You get caught in your lies and posting as AC pretending to be one of your "troll" to promote yourself in a strange way over and over again.

You forgot the part where I supposedly use 10+ sock puppet accounts to manipulate the firehose so that every published article on Slashdot is favorable for pushing the affiliate links for the same four books that I've ever read in my life.

Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahaha!

Re:At what Experience Level?

[__aaclcg7560]

You are Slashdot's Walter Mitty.

Nope. Try again.

Re:At what Experience Level?

[WilliamRileyUK]

Thanks for sharing your opinion. Abc

Sure it is

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

At least until you turn 50.

Re:Sure it is

[Anonymous Coward]

50? At 35 people already look at you askance, especially if you're not covered in tattoos and ball bearings.

Re:Sure it is

[0100010001010011]

We haven't shoved all our 50+ year old engineers out.

Well not the ones that have kept up with technology and learning. The 50+ year olds that still only know what they knew how to do when they were 25 are pretty useless.

Re:Sure it is

[sinij]

At least until you turn 50.

The best paid developers with most job security are ones maintaining critical legacy systems written in Cobol and Fortran.

Re:Sure it is

[__aaclcg7560]

At 35 people already look at you askance, especially if you're not covered in tattoos and ball bearings.

I was 35-years-old when I switched from being a video game tester to IT support. As a lead tester, I got all the old testers because the youngling lead testers didn't know how to respect their elders. Now that I'm 48, I'm youngest among the greybeards that I work with in government IT.

Re:Sure it is

[swillden]

At least until you turn 50.

I'm 48, so I guess I'd better be worried?

Nah. I see this complaint all the time, but in all my 30 years in the industry I've never actually seen it, at least for software engineers. If you can solve hard problems and write good code, you can work, and get paid well for it.

Re:Sure it is

[micahraleigh]

But can you get hired for it?

Re:Sure it is

[swillden]

But can you get hired for it?

I know lots of people who were hired in their 50s and 60s. I was 42 when Google hired me, and 45 when my current team within Google "hired" me. A good friend of mine who is 55 just got hired, twice. He got fed up with his job, so he got another one. Didn't like it either, so he jumped ship after six months there to another place. He likes the new one, so I imagine he'll stay there for a few years.

Re:Sure it is

[micahraleigh]

Awesome! Very encouraging

Thank you!

This is Bull Shit

[Jason1729]

Right through my high school and university days, I heard the exact same story. It's actually why I switched from my goal of science leading either to research or medicine and went for a career in tech.

I graduated from a top tier school in May 2000 with a computer science major and electrical engineering minor. In my last year, I was actively recruited, I got flown across the US for interviews with companies everyone here has heard of. I went to one company's 1999 Christmas party including a private concert by an A-list music group everyone here has heard of; they invited a number of seniors in my class as part of their recruitment effort.

I chose a job that started me just over $60,000 plus stock options which was at the upper end of average for 2000 and had huge potential to take me into 6 figures within a few years. Factoring in my minor, I was writing the firmware for a set top internet appliance (hey it was 2000). A few months after I started the job, the original dotcom bubble burst and I actually only had the job 18 months...not even long enough to cover the cost of my degree.

This was 2001 it was almost impossible to find tech jobs at the time, after about 3 years of unemployment I gave up and took a job at much lower pay where most of my coworkers don't have any degree at all. So, 4 years working my ass off for a degree which cost me over $100k while the arts students working in the coffee shop were out partying and making fun of us for working so hard. All to work 18 months in the industry. Most of my friends from school had been laid off by 2002 and never worked in tech again. The last one lost his job 2 years ago and has been out of work since. So 40 years old, no job, no prospects to ever work in his field again.

Now before you say I'm just an unfortunate case...how many 20-something IT workers do you see? Now how many 50-somethings? Where do you think the rest of us are? You hear stories about companies begging mainframe workers to come out of retirement, again bull shit, that friend who's been out of work has been doing mainframe work for the past 15 years, there is no work in the field.

tl;dr - A tech career is a curse I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Getting a computer science degree from a top tier school is the worst mistake I made in my life.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[H3lldr0p]

The only place I've found fifty and over IT workers are in family run companies or the like. Places that value consistency over being on the bleeding edge. I'm such a place now because I'm closer to my 50s than I am to my 20s and went looking for it on purpose. Long term planning, folks. Don't leave home without it.

In any case, places like /. have the problem of users enjoying the bleeding edge of tech and pie-in-the-sky thinking of how the world could be transformed with it. Rarely does the audience here give the time to think about how the tech will be supported or implemented in detail. Or even if that same tech is a good long term investment that'll remain usable a year from now, let alone 5 or 10 years down the road. Which is the backside edge of using the latest and greatest. Most companies don't have a need to change their overall tech packages more all that often. That it often costs more to keep up with it than it does pay back in benefits. Hell, in many cases it can take a good decade for the non-tech people to get up to speed and used to the tech the last time a new package/paradigm/whatever got deployed.

Which the third side of this particular issue. It's not us, the IT worker, that has to deal with the implications of what is put together. It's the rest of the company. And as much as we enjoy telling everyone "The world is all IT now" that doesn't make it easier for everyone else to live in it.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[Quirkz]

As an anecdote, yours is a rough one. But you almost make it sound like the tech industry hasn't existed for the last 16 years, which definitely isn't true.

My experience started out similar-ish. I had a physics degree instead of CS, but I had several programming classes in college and enjoyed the technical side more. I got a job in '98 building web sites, and was frankly pretty lazy about career development. I knew HTML and some JavaScript, but nothing else. When the bubble popped in '01 I was laid off.

I was unemployed for a year after that, mostly due to lack of trying, as my health, social life, and financial life imploded for half a dozen different reasons. I still did a little freelance work, and also a little carpentry just to keep food on the table, and eventually got a dollar store job just for something steady. But I also realized I needed to learn more, and picked up some PHP programming and MySQL database understanding, and then got a job at a small shop where I was under-employed, but it was still better than the dollar store.

From there I transitioned to tech support, which I didn't want to do, but was much more reliable than the previous job. I angled my way from full-time support to half support and half web work at the same company, and put up with that for three years until I had a good enough resume to get a much better second-tier support job, and after two years of that moved up to server admin, which is relatively cushy.

I'd still prefer to be doing programming or database work, and occasionally I get snippets of that at the office and more at home, but I've also done an admittedly poor job of pursuing those options, instead chasing other hobbies, playing games instead of writing them, and raising a couple of kids. At 42 I'm on the fence as to whether I should get off my butt and get into programming while there's a big enough chunk of time for it to be worthwhile, or whether I should just sit back and ride out the server side of things. (Either way I'm learning things to stay relevant, it's just whether I want to put in a few years of serious off-the-clock work to transition, or take the gentler if slightly less rewarding path.)

Either way, I don't find the argument believable that the field of tech somehow ceased to exist in 2001, or that it wasn't possible to stay in the field since then, or that it's necessarily a terrible career path.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe it's just the US, there is a boom in tech jobs in Europe at the moment.

In any case, I think a lot of the reason why tech is well paid in the US is that it tends to be based in areas where the cost of living, particularly rent, is insane.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the opposite experience. Dropped out of school, ended up with an engineering job. Pay is good. Job security is very good.

Maybe its partly because I try to be helpful and solve problems for others. Have you tried that?

I'm also good at my job (and good at lots of other stuff adjacent to my job), and I keep trying to learn the next new, valuable skill. I'm sure that helps.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[Bigbutt]

For another data point, I'm in a fairly large corporation, multiple data centers around the world and in Ops/Eng working on implementing DevOps and CI/CD, moving my stuff from rcs to git, learning CD for our Ops gear, Ansible, Kubernetes/Cloud Foundry, etc. I think there's a requirement to continue to learn and explore in order to maintain employment. If you're not moving forward, you'll be passed and passed over. With the kids long gone, I have lots of time to continue learning and with my income, I can have a multi-server, VMWare environment here at home with a decent testing environment to help with learning all this new stuff :) I've duplicated the work environment in order to explore. Jenkins and Gitlab, Kubernetes with pfSense for Load Balance testing, Red Hat registrations are free because I'm on VMWare so I get continued updates, Ansible and Ansible Tower. All similar to work so I can play and of course learn.

And I'm 60.

[John]

Re:This is Bull Shit

[110010001000]

Right. No one can get jobs in tech since the year 2000. I hate these whiny "anecdotes". There are literally millions of tech jobs. What "top tier" university did you graduate from?

Re:This is Bull Shit

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How is defense not a part of "tech"? Don't you use mechanics, metallurgy, thermodynamics, explosive chemistry, electronics and stuff? Or do you just collect rocks for soldiers to throw back at their enemies?

Re:This is Bull Shit

[swillden]

The only place I've found fifty and over IT workers are in family run companies or the like.

Most of my career has been at IBM and now Google, and there were/are plenty of over-50s software engineers in both. They're a smaller percentage at Google, but that's mostly because the bulk of new hires are straight out of school, and because the company just hasn't been around that long. But there are older guys -- I work with one engineer who's in his 70s -- and I fully expect to stay at Google until I retire at 60 or so. Unless I decide to quit and start a company which is a distinct possibility now that my kids are moving out and I can afford to take a little more risk.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[Junta]

Actually as a long term tech site, there's a lot of both conservative skepticism around technology and enthusiasm around technologies at /.

So while there are plenty of comments talking about new thing X or thing that is old but somehow new again Y enthusiastically, there are plenty of folks with the skepticism and mocking.

Of course you are one of those young whipper snappers with an ID over 40,000, not some veteran user like I am ;)

Re:This is Bull Shit

[Jason1729]

Really? So no degree and you expect saving half your money for 7-10 years should let you retire comfortably to wealth? Wow. I'm familiar with rich dad, poor dad, it's a way to make money from suckers.

Let's say you amazingly make $80k somehow without a degree. You clear $50k and save $25k and keep it up for 10 years. At 10% return, you'll have $400,000. At 20% return it would be $650,000. Now remember you can't invest 50% of your pay tax free, so when you pay taxes every year, you'll actually have:
$345,000 at 10% or
$483,000 at 20%

As insane as it is, let's look the 20%. Now after 10 years, you've got about 1/2 million in the bank. You're about 30 years old at this point, so you can't just spend all your investment income; you have to factor in for a good 60 years of inflation. Let's grow your investment 3% per year to compensate for inflation. Your gross income is $100,000, you clear $70,000 after tax. From this you have to put back 3% of $500,000 or $15,000 meaning you've got $55,000 to spend every year. And that amount will grow through your life with cost of living. But you need to account for private health insurance since you're not going to be working

So you've lived though your 20's with an austere existence saving half your money while most people that age are out enjoying their lives, already a huge sacrifice. And your income is far to look to really do much with, do you plan to sit at home your whole life in a rented apartment, only ever buy used cars, never travel, never visit a nice restaurant. What a horrible waste of a life.

And add to that...how in the world are you going to *safely* make 20% interest. Because of the risky investments, all you need is a nice 20% market correction in the next 60 years and you'll lose a big chunk of your income for the rest of your life.

If you could make 10% safely instead of 20 (which is still pretty amazing), you;d have the $345k after 10 years, giving you $34k pretax income. At that income range you'd barely pay tax, but you'd still have to put back 3% of your next egg every year to account for inflation, which will cost you about $10k. So...you're going to have $25,000/year for the rest of your life, corrected for inflation. Out of that you still need to pay for health insurance.

How is a net income of $25k "enjoying a wealthy retirement"? And you'll still be ruined by the first market correction in the next 60 years.

Plus, don't forget this is all based on you having had a job with a $80k starting salary to walk away from after 10 years.

tl;dr. That;'s a horrible idea put forth by people who want to make money selling books and seminars and only fallen for by suckers who are bad at math.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[micahraleigh]

Thanks! Great suggestions.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[tsqr]

How is defense not a part of "tech"?

I came here to ask the same question. I've been in defense and aerospace for 34 years, and it's been a challenging and rewarding career path, working with some of the brightest people I've ever run into, and unusual, cutting-edge projects. Some people apparently think that "tech" means "writing mobile Apps! to provide distraction for 20-somethings".

Re:This is Bull Shit

[antdude]

Ditto. :(

Re:This is Bull Shit

[konaforever]

Graduated in 98. Started off entry level at 3com and then moved to a start up(post IPO) with a nice pay bump. Got laid of as well in 2002, and couldn't find a job for a year, and had to adjust to a lower salary as well. Changed jobs every few years since then with a medium bump in salary. Just started a new job at a large company with another increase in pay and compensation. Salaries these days are quite good if you have the skills and aptitude to learn new ones. Tech was the best decision of my life. Just wasn't as smooth as I wanted it to be.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

If you bothered to look at the report, you will noticed a graph near the bottom that shows those who have an associate degree make $57K per year. I've made $55K last year. I might make more this year since my manager keeps hinting at a pay raise and larger Christmas bonus (an extra month of pay). Not bad for cleaning out IT closets.

You need to be a company

[Techkt]

For an individual covering all topics of this lightning fast growing tech market is impossible.

Nor should we be surprised [Re: gender balance...

[XXongo]

Article quoted below. Clearly a woman wrote this. An angry disgruntled woman.

Men are greatly overrepresented in the highest-paying industries. Software and hardware tech industries pay the most and have over twice as many males than females. ...

Well, obsession with computers is stereotypically an attractor for people who are autistic (or at least Asperger's)*, antisocial, or obsessive-compulsive (or all of the above). Since autism is overwhelmingly a syndrome affecting males*, this is not surprising.

(and, while being antisocial is something I suppose could be either male or female, in females our society strongly disapproves of it, while in males being antisocial is considered "rugged individualism.")

*Citation: https://autism-help.org/interv... "OBSESSIVE USE OF COMPUTERS BY AUTISTIC CHILDREN... for Autism or Asperger's syndrome, a child can become obsessed with computers..."
https://forums.psychcentral.com/attention-deficit-disorder-add-adhd/275768-computer-rules-hidden-danger-children-adhd-autism.html "As you may have noticed, children with a disorder that falls on the autism spectrum seem to have an intense love of computers."

**citation: http://www.autism.org.uk/about...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4164392/

Huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost my programming job when the .com bubble popped.

I found another programming job within a month. This was in Denver, CO. The pay was not nearly what the pay was like before the bubble popped, but it was acceptable and it was full time programming.
Since then I have switched jobs a couple of times, all full time programming, and am doing quite well financially.

So, perhaps you just didn't look in the right places, or were unwilling to adapt your salary to one that suited a non-bubble economy? I might imagine this would be common among those who switched their majors away from something else just because of promises of a high salary.

Re:Huh.

[Jason1729]

Not sure if you're throwing the word "programming job" around loosely or really mean the distinction, but there's a huge difference between the work I was doing and "programming".

I had a single job interview question for at a major OS developer you're heard of in their kernel group that involved spending most of a day at a white board in front of a panel of project managers, not just creating a good, elegant and workable design, but also walking them through my thought process and design decisions. The whole interview lasted 4 days. On an internship before I graduated, I was writing graphics card drivers. At that job doing the set top box, I had to teach the hardware engineers how MPEG video worked because they had to build a hardware decoder into the silicon.

I was not remotely interested in a low paying "programming job" especially when as others have mentioned in this thread cost of living in these areas is very high.

Re: Huh.

[cyber-vandal]

So you preferred being out of work for 3 years and ending up outside the industry to taking a lowly programming job? Have I missed something?

Re: Huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore him. He has issues the main one of which is he has narrowly defined "tech industry" to mean the field he wanted to go into. With his degrees, he has a huge selection of fields but those are all beneath him.

I went to a Christmas part where an A-list band was that we have all heard of...

I worked for a company that we have all heard of...

The guy is a bit off his rocker, throwing out meaningless drivel to drive his ego and blame others for the fact he can't get a job in the field he wanted. He got a tech degree, went into a field that was a limited narrow focus and when that field dried up, rather then look to another field that his degrees applied to, he instead proceeded to say life sucks, I can't get a job and he left.

I can think of about 5 fields, including the one I am working in, where he would be able to get a job in a heart beat. It would have been starting over and working up the ladder, but he could have been up to his 6 figure salary in a few years in a stable market where there is a shortage.

Re:Huh.

[thinkwaitfast]

Intel gave millions to my EE department. Those spectrum analyzers were sweet and oh so high tech.

Re: Huh.

[Jason1729]

For one thing, taking a "programming" job makes it a lot harder to move back into a "computer science" job. It just doesn't look goo on your resume.

For another, the job I did end up taking pays more than a "programming" job though not nearly as lucrative as what I was promised during the last tech bubble, I just really, really hate it. As I would really, really hate a programming job.

And today, we're in a similar sort of tech bubble with idiotic articles like the one here leading a whole new generation into the same mistake. If you're smart enough to do CS at a *good school*, do engineering or science instead.

Re:Huh.

[Jason1729]

But for jobs in Kernel/hardware level development, coding webpages for a dotcom startup was career suicide anyway. I would have had the same 3 years of hell like you and when the market recovered the prestige jobs were going to the new batch of grads, not someone 5 years out. Which is kind of my point about the field being horrible; 5 years out of school, 1 hiccup in the industry, and I was screwed out of any job that would use what I went to school for.

One friend of mine from school actually washed out because she couldn't handle multivariable calculus which was a CS degree requirement at the time. She switched to a BA and BEd joint program, which she cruised through on autopilot, got a teaching job easily with math and computers as teachables and is currently vice principal at a private school. She's doing a lot better career-wise and financially than anyone in our group who finished our original degree.

Re: Huh.

[OhPlz]

What do you mean, "what you were promised"? The only thing a college degree promises you is that you have to pay for the schooling to get it. You sound like an entitled twat that doesn't want to code because it's for the lesser people and you have disdain for any job that isn't exactly your dream vision of what your job should be. That probably explains why you can't find an agreeable position, if that attitude comes out in interviews or phone screens. Many companies don't want or need a high level guy that's too good to get into code.

Re:Huh.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Which is kind of my point about the field being horrible; 5 years out of school, 1 hiccup in the industry, and I was screwed out of any job that would use what I went to school for.

As Alan Kay repeatedly stated, it's a pop culture, not a field.

Re: Huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what looks even worse on your resume? A three year gap after only 18 months of employment. You really are an amazing asshole. A smart person who isn't an asshole will work their way up to 200K doing the kind of work that they find interesting after about 10 years through a series of job changes by building application domain knowledge and a network of professional contacts, while an asshole who is smart will expect that right out of school and blame everyone but themselves for failing to get it for 18 years. By the way, programming a set top box is a shit programming job and if those places you interned at didn't think you were an asshole after they got to know you and you actually were capable of doing the work you would have been able to find jobs at those places.

Re:Huh.

[Jason1729]

Well said. That actually puts it nicely.

Yet we continue to encourage young people to major in it.

Re:Huh.

[Junta]

I too had a huge hiccup at the .com bust. My situation forced me to took a really crappy low paying IT job, in fact I could have made more at a fast food place, but it was at least vaguely relevant to my career aspirations and I needed *some* way to pay for rent and expenses.

However, *having* that job enabled me to actually *get* a better job within 6 months.

Then that company tripped up, and again I took a not as crappy, but still crappy IT job. Again within 6 months, I was back to a decent job, which within 3 or 4 years became a six figure job doing solid work.

Those low paying "programming job"s are a necessary thing to get to success in the practical world, at least until you have some *significant* work experience to bolster your resume. And no, your dot-com experience wouldn't count because *everyone* had something impressive looking from those days and it was all but impossible to know if it meant anything or not.

Re:Huh.

[Altus]

I had to jump through hoops to go from being a Mac developer using XCode and objective-C to being an iOS developer using XCode and objective-c.

Re: Huh.

[Junta]

Unemployed looks worse than a 'programmer'. Realistically speaking, folks don't know what a candidate may mean when they cal themselves a 'software engineer' versus 'architect' versus 'programmer', because people self identify in various ways and are given various titles for similar work, so being in the general ballpark is going to get you in the door unless there's just an overwhelming number of candidates. Once in the door, then a more nuanced contemplation of your knowledge and experience happens.

But even then, generally people who are not known get hired for entry level positions, because even then it's risky to base a high paid position on someone based on assessment over the course of an interview. Certainly a lack of relevant work experience will lead to being saddled with jobs that are beneath you. Besides, in general people will get asked to do something that might be 'beneath them' and a candidate who seems too good to ever put up with that is a candidate who just isn't worth it, and refusing an entry level job in spite of lack of experience is certainly a way to prove that you might be frustrating.

Re: Huh.

[cyber-vandal]

Coding is most definitely more skilled than doing an oil change. Maybe if you removed your head from your rectum occasionally you might be able to see that.

Re: Huh.

[Kohath]

People start out at bad or mediocre jobs and then show others they have talent and then go on to better and better jobs.

We should get a poll going:

How many hard-working guys with valuable skills and a good attitude do you know who can't find any good work?

I'm guessing the numbers would be low these days.

Re:Huh.

[mikael]

There's the [junior|senior] software engineer, team leader, tech lead, project manager, director. A "[senior] software developer" seems to be more management than a software engineer. Engineering is more about collaboration and gettings bits of software to work together. Collaboration is the big thing now.

In the other direction, there is applications programmer/scientific programmer/visualization programmer. Programming is figuring out how to get a computer system to do a particular tasks eg. simulation program for supercomputers.

Re:Huh.

[Aighearach]

You seem really obsessed with name recognition and authoritative titles.

Programming is just programming, it is a loose word and so should be used loosely. Your snobbery around it just tells me that you're probably impossible to work with; you're willing to be technically incorrect where the only thing you even get out of it is standing on the side of the pedanticism you declared superior!

See also: http://programming-motherfucke...

Re: Huh.

[Aighearach]

coding ... tech support.. oil changes on cars all day.

One of these three things is not like the other two. You're not sure which, but I'll bet most slashdot readers can spot the one that is different from the other two.

Re: Huh.

[Aighearach]

No, "computer science" means you work for a University.
"Programming" means you work for some sort of company that does work.

That is the full entire extent of the difference between the words. Everything else about them is exactly the same. And if you disagree, you're either an idiot or a linguist, and linguists are in a different field and so should pipe down and wait their turn.

Re: Huh.

[micahraleigh]

The number of CS jobs are painfully small. I've only seen a handful of companies in my techy area that are looking for that. Also my programming consulting job pays tons and tons more than my CS ever did.

Re:Huh.

[LtNacho]

Dude. The article is about tech jobs. Programming jobs are tech jobs. Lots of computer science majors take programming jobs. *Especially* undergraduate CS majors! If you had taken a programming job or maybe gone back to get a post graduate degree you might have had a chance at getting a job doing what you wanted once the industry recovered from the crash.

Re:Huh.

[micahraleigh]

They don't talk about "plenty of folks in the queue". They talk about a shortage of IT workers.

I switched from C# to ASP.NET MVC with highly stretched experience and a portfolio from my personal time.

Age seems to be a big factor, though, I agree.

Re:Huh.

[Aighearach]

I too had a huge hiccup at the .com bust.

I went the, "I'll just freelance for low wages and scrape by until it gets better" route, and it wasn't long before I was bidding below minimum wage and losing out because my prices were too high. Then I switched to a job as a tree trimmer, which didn't pay much but at least I got to spend time outside. And I learned a lot about tools, which has really come in handy in my tech work and opened a lot of new horizons for me.

The most important thing about those "off" years isn't what you did, it is what your attitude is. If you can see the positive things in it, if you can talk about how you learned new skills and gained a broader perspective, and found value in that other work you did, then an employer looks at it as a positive.

If instead (like some other guy somewhere above) you have a sob story about how you were "forced" to take on grunt work that nobody of your obviously superior status should have to do, then that is going to be a major red flag that you're horrible to work with and have a poor work ethic. I mean, the whole basis of "having a job," of being an employee, is that you're doing a task your employer needs done. It has nothing to do with the worker being superior in any way. So if the worker is too full of himself, surely he was a poor work ethic and it will show in lots of other ways.

Almost nothing that a programmer is asked to do will be anything new, that remains true if you're working a product that is different than anything made in the past! Just like, a carpenter isn't doing anything new, even if building a new style of building. If somebody actually does something new, for better or worse, it is going to be the stakeholder that controls the money that is the cause of the new thing happening. And if you have a software engineering degree, that just means that you're a programmer who is expected to calculate efficiency in advance, it doesn't change what your role is in the process of deciding that a thing will be built, and then building it.

If you're too important to be a programmer, you better be a business owner and just forget about being an employee. And if you want to be an employee, the best way to succeed is to understand why jobs exist, and that having a good attitude + meeting the minimum technical requirements is way way better for an employee than having a minimally defensible attitude + exceeding the technical requirements.

And for the neckbeards who consider acceptable workplace language to be stifling and somehow "political," (as in the phrase PC) they should probably just accept that getting fired every 7 years is cycle of Nature.

Re:Huh.

[Aighearach]

Protip: if your degree took more than 2 years to achieve, it was not job training and you were not going to school for a specific job.

Also, if a 2 year degree has the word "associate" in it, it did not train you for any job.

Re:Huh.

[computational super]

the only way to get employed for a new skill set is to have done it on the job

Or lie creatively about having done it on the job (after having spent enough time learning it independently that you do actually know it). Not that I would ever do such a thing.

Half of the story

[Nidi62]

While it might be highest in terms of raw numbers, if you take into effect the cost of living in places where tech jobs tend to be located, the actual standard of living afforded by that wage might be lower than for someone working in a career that pay less but is located in a cheaper area.

Re:Half of the story

[Altus]

Actually I suspect that you would find that the reason this is as low as it is is because there are actually a lot of tech jobs outside of the valley, NYC, Boston, Seattle ect. Places were making 90K, or even less, leaves you with considerable disposable income. The averages in the higher price areas are probably higher than the national average (though in some cases, maybe not enough above). Admittedly there aren's salary surveys that I know of that adjust all salaries to some geographically neutral baseline but that would be pretty interesting.

Re:Half of the story

[avandesande]

Salary differentials aren't that different with cheaper parts of the country. Posting from NM :)

Re:Half of the story

[swillden]

While it might be highest in terms of raw numbers, if you take into effect the cost of living in places where tech jobs tend to be located, the actual standard of living afforded by that wage might be lower than for someone working in a career that pay less but is located in a cheaper area.

Valid point, unless you can swing a telecommuting job, and can work well that way. Then you can live cheap while making good money.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

If you bothered to learn to write, you will notice you can't write.

Don't worry. I just ordered "Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction" by Dinty W. Moore with the coffee money that I earn from monetizing my Slashdot comments. I'll be writing better creative non-fiction comments in no time. :P

I'm not buying this

[rsilvergun]

Maybe a few rock stars are skewing the average, but I know lots of programmers and they're lucky to crack six figures if they get into team Management.

And yet...

[ZiggieTheGreat]

I've been working in IT for 20 years. I would love the median salary mentioned.
It all comes down to location (MidWest), skills (plenty o' them), and adaptability (plenty).

I've also, for 20 years, been the youngest member of my team everywhere I go. I'm now nearly 40 and I'm still the young'un.

Get off the coasts, the rest of the country has plenty of work for people.

Re:And yet...

[garcia]

There's plenty of great paying jobs in Minneapolis (Midwest). My team's median is 90K.

Re:And yet...

[link-error]

  Our company's starting salary for programmers is over $60 (straight out of college). I'm pretty sure everybody I work with is well over 6 figures. We have offices in Chicago and Dallas. In fact, as of a few years ago the minimum salary for a lead developer was $95k.

Yeah says linkedin

[coolmoe2]

Other stories could be

"Study says petroleum jobs most lucrative" --BP
"Study says telco jobs most lucrative" --AT&T

I could go on like that forever but I think you get the point.

Self-Selection Bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like LinkedIn is going to suffer from a huge self-selection bias.

How many welders, electricians, and plumbers are using LinkedIn?

Those are all really good paying jobs, and I doubt those are fields which tend to use LinkedIn.

I have doubts about the value of this survey.

Yeah me too

[Weaselmancer]

I got hit when the .com bubble popped too. Lost a job that I really liked a lot.

It took me about 4 months in Ohio to find another tech job, and it was a shitty one. I had to dial back my expectations a bit. Ok, a lot really. That's what finally fixed things. It wasn't the right time to look for the .com office with the ping pong tables and espresso machines. That was gone. Instead it was take a pay cut and work at a miserable garage in one of the worst parts of Cleveland near the airport with a 1 1/2 hour commute one way. It was terrible. I woke up in the darkness, worked in the garage in darkness staring at a painted cinder block wall, then drove home in darkness. Worst 3 years of my career, easy.

But the bubble eventually recovered and the good jobs came back. I hid under the airport, rode out the bubble, then jumped back in when the economy signaled all-clear. All's well now. But yeah those were tough times. I can see why Jason1729 would be disheartened. It was a thoroughly lousy time.

Re: Hardware is a great entry into tech

[__aaclcg7560]

But I worry that taking a help desk or barista job in bad times causes one to become pigeon holed, kind of like how the actors on the sopranos aren't on much else bc they were so type cast.

I was out of work for two years (2009-10) because recruiters saw that I had help desk experience for the last three positions, assumed that I want to continue working help desk, and told me that no help desk jobs were available. Never mind that I wasn't applying for a help desk job. When the economy turned around in 2011, recruiters were eager to overlook my help desk experience since they needed bodies to fill out their positions in a hurry.

What The Fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most lucrative?

Oh, you mean after medicine, management, finance...

This entire article is LinkeIn clickbait pandering to their target market.

Re: Gender balance bullshit never ends...

[thinkwaitfast]

You have a myopic view of construction. Probably thinking of Bechtel and their TBMs, but I've worked in construction and almost all of it was physically demanding. Even my wife is a truck driver and she constantly complains about the physical demands. Truck drivers are responsible for a lot more than driving. They are constantly monitoring and shifting their loads as well as monitoring various systems, covering loads - and they even help the police with traffic flow.

The main thing though is crawling over loads with chains and ropes to secure them. She has to get help with that sometimes.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

Like your ebooks, your living space, your financial situation, and your life, you are subpar and well below the average.

I've never had a conventional much less an average life.

But that's not what your job description claims you're responsible for.

Nope. But my trolls get very excited and start humping my legs like a pack of Chihuahuas in heat whenever I mention "IT closest" in a comment. On that note, you can stop humping my leg.

Bubbles of Troubles [Re:This is Bull Shit]

[Tablizer]

This was 2001 it was almost impossible to find tech jobs at the time, after about 3 years of unemployment I gave up and took a job at much lower

Amen! I remember those miserable days also. I lived in CA at the time, ground zero of the dot-com crash. I got out-of-state contracts to survive, often leveraging legacy skills that dot-com newbies didn't have. The travel was rough on the family, and often the contract middle-men didn't pay up, creating court hassles. I was looking to bail IT for another career.

There was also a mini-IT bust in the early 1990's that many forgot about. "Glasnost" caused aerospace to cut back, and CA had lot of aerospace companies. This dumped a lot of techies on the market. That slump didn't personally affect my job at the time (other than perhaps reducing my options at other co's), but I have lived through two IT slumps.

There may be another bubble brewing now, one cannot tell. If it smells like a bubble, quacks like a bubble, and pays like a bubble, it's probably a bubble.

The front-end stacks are too fat and I suspect some new technology and/or standard will come along to simplify front-end programming, throwing lots of programmers on the street. It's roughly comparable to what VB did to C++ GUI programming, although GUI programming was expanding rapidly then such that all boats floated higher, even C++ boats. But that may not be the case with web front-end. I just sense a bloat fall-out someday.

Re:Bubbles of Troubles [Re:This is Bull Shit]

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If it smells like a bubble, quacks like a bubble, and pays like a bubble, it's probably a bubble

So Smalltalk programmers should be worried? :)

Re:Bubbles of Troubles [Re:This is Bull Shit]

[mikael]

GUI has evolved for at least 30+ years. People were doing objected orientated assembly language back in the 1980's and mid 1990's on 8-bit/16-bit systems. The alternatives were for workstations were X-windows/Motif or Windows (win32). Sun brought out Java, and Microsoft brought out MFC then C#.

Trolltech provided Qt for desktops, but then moved into mobile. Now they are competing against Unity and Unreal for the API for desktop VR/AR/visualization applications and brought out QSG (Q-SceneGraph and QML).

Touchscreens have really made GUI way more complex because events are no longer simply key press/release, mouse move/click down/click up, but gestures like swipe left/right/up/down, pinch to zoom in/zoom out, and all the 3D stuff like virtual joysticks and rotate/jump/move.

Re:Bubbles of Troubles [Re:This is Bull Shit]

[Tablizer]

GUI has evolved for at least 30+ years.

No, it de-volved. We now do 10x the coding with layers of libraries to get something clunky, error-prone, non-future-proof, and that wastes screen real-estate. Some apps don't have to cater to many device sizes and input methods, and one shouldn't have to pay a multi-size/device complexity tax for them. Internal or specialized applications can potentially sacrifice such flexibility to be quick and simple to develop.

Maybe the industry will fracture into different GUI frameworks for different needs rather than the one-size-fits-all approach now often used.

Re:Bubbles of Troubles [Re:This is Bull Shit]

[Aighearach]

No, but they might want to learn Ruby just in case.

Re:Bubbles of Troubles [Re:This is Bull Shit]

[mikael]

Unfortunately, the greatest pressure is that application developers want to be able to write an application once and have it run on multiple platforms. When someone is assigned that task to get the whizzy graph rendered with touchscreen navigation they want it done once for all platforms (Windows, Android, iOS, Linux) and to work with tablets, mice, keyboards and jog wheels.

So a single API like Unity, Unreal or Qt wins over Win32

$92k?

[MMC Monster]

Pretty sure my plumber is making that much.

Ditto my physician.

Perhaps this study is biased?

Re:$92k?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your physician? Almost certainly. But for your plumber, probably not unless he's in the 90th percentile. Just posting these for interest. I think you have a great point.

How do you guys earn 80-110K a year?

[MindPrison]

Median income? What?

I live in Sweden and don't earn more than 40K a year as an 50+ IT supporter, and that's for a LARGE company.

Who earns these dream figures? And teachers that earn 80K? I've never even encountered one that earns that much.

Re:How do you guys earn 80-110K a year?

[apoc.famine]

The tech jobs in the US (especially those that end up getting surveyed like this) are concentrated in a few big cities on the coasts, where the costs of living are 2x-3x the rest of the country. Thus the salaries are 2x-3x the rest of the country. Also keep in mind that with minimal social programs, we need to pay for a lot more things, many of them provided by for-profit companies which charge a lot more. And those for-profit companies hire people and pay them lots of money.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[WrongMonkey]

But my trolls

Have you ever stopped to consider why you are the only commenter on slashdot who has their own trolls? Out of the millions of registered slashdot accounts, nobody else gets flamed and trolled the way you do. Its sign that you personally have a unique problem interacting with the community and its disruptive to actual discussion of topics.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

No, it's true. You've had a well below average life. You make below average money. Your health is below average. Your writing talent is below average. Your ability to grasp simple concepts is below average. You're terrified of sex. The only thing above average about you is the number of calories you eat daily, and your burgeoning weight.

For 48 years of my life, I've been told by people what I can't do. Good thing I don't listen to these negative people. Otherwise, my life would be truly miserable.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

Have you ever stopped to consider why you are the only commenter on slashdot who has their own trolls?

Check out Hello, Slashdot!, The Original Slashdot F.A.Q. (Circa 2006), and the blog posts that I've written about my nasty little trolls.

Re: and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

Why, what have you done?

Breath.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[WrongMonkey]

I think you just partially answered the question. There is no reason to use bit.ly links on slashdot unless you're trying to hide something.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

There is no reason to use bit.ly links on slashdot unless you're trying to hide something.

Bit.ly tracks the number of clicks and geographic breakdown for each link. For the three links I've posted: 643 (25% USA), 484 (77% USA) and 140 (75% USA).

Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Maxo-Texas]

I was in tech- and as early as 1985 saw older 45 year old programmers dumped and pushed out of the field.

I saved hard and retired at 51 - when hundreds of co-workers were dumped out on the street (and out of the career).

IT is a nice 20 year career. After that, you are increasingly likely to be age discriminated out of a job regardless of how current you keep your skills.

Save hard and be ready when the end reaches you. Be happy if you are one of the lucky few who makes it into their 60s in IT.

Re:Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Tablizer]

After that, you are increasingly likely to be age discriminated out of a job regardless of how current you keep your skills.

Part of it is that when one is experienced, it's hard to be exuberant about stupid IT fads that PHB's or bullshit artists push on the organization. "Oh boy! Another stupid fad to drain time and money! Weeeee!" Newbies don't know any better: ignorance is bliss, and it's hard to fake bliss in such a workplace. How does one stay enthusiastic about wasteful fads? Take happy-pills after 45?

Re:Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Quirkz]

I remain convinced these claims are either exaggerated, or occur in certain pockets/niches, because some people swear they see it a lot, but plenty of other people say they don't. (I definitely never have, but I've also never lived in a major tech center.)

If you (the general you) are worried about it, maybe a good choice is to arrange to find yourself by age 40, 45, or 50 at a company or industry that seems to value and support older employees. I'm 42, and I'd say I'm almost exactly at the median age of my company's IT department. We may have a few folks in their 20's, but they're all helpdesk, and the other half of tech support is closer to 30-40. Most admins and developers are between 35 and 55. Management (all of them formerly technical) are in the 50-60 range. We had three people leave the group last year because they retired (one aged 57, and the other two I'm not sure but 60-ish?). I have every confidence it's safe to grow older here.

I know it's not always easy, but if you're 40-ish and concerned about the issue, take your time, but start looking for a place that looks like it's not going to panic when you turn 50. Or bury your head in the sand at a place that's obviously youth-centric, and see how well that treats you, I guess.

Re:Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Maxo-Texas]

42. Still 3 years away from the start of the problem.

If someone has more experience and they give you some advice, it's worth listening to and not dismiss them out of hubris and ignorance. They might be wrong. But they might be talking about something they already saw happening multiple times. Which is true in my case.

The average age for programmers is 13 years younger than that for doctors and lawyers. The field is now over 50 years old. Ask yourself, why is the average age so much lower for programmers if they are working to 60?

Re:Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Quirkz]

Eh, I hope you didn't read my comment as dismissive. Most of what I was saying was intended to work with your suggestion, and plan for how to avoid obsolescence by getting out of a bad spot if you're in one. It may help that I'm a server admin and not a programmer, and it may help that I'm in a small-town environment where tech is just an accessory to other industries, and not the primary focus. But I *know* my company doesn't have an issue with 50-year-old staffers because that represents a third of my current team, so my turning 45 in 3 years doesn't worry me if I'm planning on staying put, which I am. If I was currently old man on campus at some startup, I might be more seriously looking at moving over to a place like the current office.

As for statistics, programming may be 50 years old, but that's only two generations. When boomers were born, it wasn't an option, and plenty of folks like me in Gen X only got into it because we liked our toys. I may have been particularly oblivious, but starting college as late as 1993, I didn't really understand that computer science had an actual career path behind it, rather than being one of those things you took for impractical fun, not too unlike art history. While programming existed in 1967, it was a tiny niche field, and it has ballooned tremendously, in multiple waves, during the home computing, internet, and smartphone revolutions. It would be an almost statistical impossibility for the field to not be younger on average than ancient careers like doctors and lawyers. (I'd wager the average age of ultimate frisbee players is lower than the average age of soccer players, for the exact same reason.) It probably needs another 30-50 years to completely even out, but I'd bet it will. That doesn't mean there's no bias, but for me it's not convincing proof of bias.

Re:Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Maxo-Texas]

I've been a programmer in everything from 6502 assembly language to Java with struts and Ajax. I spent 3 years cleaning almost non-functional programming delivered by young, ignorant IBM college grads into something elegant before I became a project manager and then team lead over 15 developers. And I saved my ass off the entire time. Because I knew my time would come.

And it did- in a company that had never had layoffs before after it tried (against a lot of senior programmers advice) to convert to all six SAP packages at the same time and failed catastrophically (because a lot of young people said it could be done if we just ran at it fast enough and "believed!" it would work. I know so many people who had nice houses, kids in college, and good skill sets who never got programmer jobs again.

I'd seen it before after Y2K as well. Mass layoffs. 40 and under got jobs easily- 55 and over left the field. Even tho they had more knowledge than us younger folks.

Age discrimination among programmers is rife and regularly reported in the industry. It's rife in other fields too. But IT is the worst. 80% of people leave the field by age 40. It is not really a career you can count on.

Anyway...Good luck. I'll leave you these to digest.

Time for bed, I'm retired and I'm helping a young whippersnapper programmer friend of a friend who hasn't got a clue how to remove wet sheetrock and insulation from his flooded house. (It's dead simple- you can find it easily without even requiring google fu- he's just young and lacks confidence and much worse physical condition than I am- but I ski 3-4 weeks a year and exercise regularly). After that, I'll be helping a couple other folks with their flooded houses. Then maybe I'll do something longer term thru a formal group like RC (I don't trust their legal document tho) or Barkley (a united way group with a much friendlier legal document.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

He told us, "Sooner or later, your corporation will get rid of you, not because youâ(TM)re old, but because they are concerned what kind of face they put in front of their clients," he said.

"They want to be thought of as youthful, to look progressive, and they won't put a guy out there who is 60 years old. I know it's stupid, but you would be surprised how many people think like that."

"Whatâ(TM)s happening in the tech sector is a general trend toward youth," Dermody tells us.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce have young work forces. Google's median age based on data from 2014 is the ripe old age of 30. (See chart on median employee age from salary analyst PayScale, below).

"At some Silicon Valley companies, the top executives are explicit in their preference for workers under 35," she says.

https://www.javaworld.com/arti...
A late-1990s study by the National Science Foundation and Census Bureau found that only 19 percent of computer science graduates are still working in programming once they're in their early 40s. This suggests serious attrition among what should be the dominant labor pool in IT.

http://www.scpr.org/programs/a...
But in tech, people tell a different story. Programmers in their 40s leave their graduation years off resumes so as not to tip the employer off to their age. Engineers with 15 years of experience canâ(TM)t get a response from potential employers. Hiring managers at companies in Silicon Valley have spoken openly about preferring younger candidates because they will work longer hours for less money and usually don't have certain family or home obligations that older employees with families might have.

Part of the problem could be that the indus

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[Aighearach]

StupidMonkey, the reason he has his own trolls is that he is actually their troll; he pokes them with a stick just often enough to get them to keep wasting their lives humping his leg.

Everybody else that had trolls that determined either left or put in the legwork to get them banned, get their ISP accounts shut off, etc., until they lacked means or desire to continue. He's the first one to successfully monetize them and turn them into part of his schtick.

I've been observing this for awhile and I still can't decide if I should be impressed or disgusted.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[i286NiNJA]

cremier is so poor he has to resort to amazon linkbux.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[__aaclcg7560]

cremier is so poor he has to resort to amazon linkbux.

Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them.

Re:Gender balance bullshit never ends...

[computational super]

Yeah, noticed the same thing - about 20% of the article was about how horrible men are.

So suck my balls

[MrKaos]

Don't lie, you're all thinking it.

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[pnutjam]

Why not both?

Re:and we have our mighty creimer

[Aighearach]

Because I prefer a higher level of internal consistency than that.