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Ask Slashdot: Where Do Old Programmers Go?
New submitter oort99 writes: Barreling towards my late 40s, I've enjoyed 25+ years of coding for a living, working in telecoms, government, and education. In recent years, it's been typical enterprise Java stuff. Looking around, I'm pretty much always the oldest in the room. So where are the other old guys? I can't imagine they've all moved up the chain into management. There just aren't enough of those positions to absorb the masses of aging coders. Clearly there *are* older workers in software, but they are a minority. What sectors have the others gone into? Retired early? Low-wage service sector? Genuinely interested to hear your story about having left the field, willfully or otherwise.
Like everyone else. At least here in the middle of flyover country Iâ(TM)ve worked with lots of good people of all ages.
Laid off for being too old and too expensive to compete.
So that no-one can see the shame of our white hair. Or we wind up in management. Or we retire early.
But honestly I know quite a few old programmers, so you may be experiencng anecdata.
Old programmers become ascended masters like St. Germain and live forever in the shadows, controlling the world. Or, they become greeters at Wal-Mart. Sometimes both.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Most of the programmers I know have moved on to management positions in organizations or shifted careers. Being 41 myself, I've found that I really enjoy hybrid jobs where I manage servers/databases as well as coding.
They've been renewed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wjXpTDuHiE
I am 60+ and have been gainfully employed as a hardware and software dev since the 80's. Due to a recent merger in my company I am now "redundant". I am just starting to look for a new position but it is scary. I have lots of experience in many languages and OSs and am a perpetual learner. I am current doing node.js and react work. But I'm afraid once a prospective employer gets a look at my gray beard they will reject me out of hand. I don't want to be a PHB, I just love to code and do it everyday for pay or not.
They just get commented out.
I went to Mars.
Not even 40 and you think you're old? Listen kid, wait till you're in your sixties.
... different address.
-eom-
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Anywhere I can. Usually five times a day.
I mean literally, old programmers buy the farm as in I know a very large number of ex- IT / programmer / engineer people who have bought farms and live the 'simpler life' now. It is amazingly common. Common enough to become a stereotype. I'm one. I transitioned from a successful career in high tech to a successful, and happier, life farming.
I switched careers to something completely unrelated at 30-ish. After about 8 years, I felt like I was just fixing the same problems over and over again, and I wanted a bigger challenge.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'm 54 and split my time between coding, managing a team of developers, and providing mentorship to younger devs regarding technical and non-technical (soft skills) situations. Lots of mentorship -- just because someone can code doesn't mean they know how to navigate a company and work relationships.
Leadership positions don't have to be management.There's also technical leadership (thought leader), architecture, etc.
Old programmers become ascended masters like St. Germain and live forever in the shadows, controlling the world. Or, they become greeters at Wal-Mart. Sometimes both.
Old programmers never die... they just smell that way.
And yes, we still have a few of those systems around.
taken out back....
And the address is 0.
After advanced degrees in Physics and a 30 career in software development and applied mathematics, I went to trade school and became a machinist. Having more fun now than ever before. Especially when some young bright spark on an engineer gives us a design that has an error in the math.
Seriously. What are you concerned about?
I'm 52. I've witnessed endless stories about software being an ageist profession.
I recently attended a funeral of a software engineering friend. He died young, age 52. All the folks there, similar age to me (give or take 10 years). All still in software.
There is a worldwide shortage of skilled engineers, as opposed to engineers. If you have skills, you can, if you wish, be employed until you decide to retire.
At 45+ years old, you'll know a shed load more than the 20 year old hotshot who knows this weeks cool JavaScript framework.
Don't let the coolness of the latest hot fad distract you. Your value is in your skill and knowledge, not in your ability to program in Just-on-Wires, which lets face it was released 30 seconds ago, when I invented it's name as a parody of Rust and Ruby on Rails.
I have managed to keep programming though I'm a member of a sales group for a complex piece of software but our company allows for "technical" positions even under the sales umbrella.
I basically got no responses when I was looking for a programming job several years ago - can't hide the fact that I graduated college in 1981.
Programming is what I like to do and I think I'm pretty good at it after more than 40 years of practice but I also want to get paid, so no one wants to look at me, especially since all organizations I've seen are clueless about measuring ability, and are typically unaware that there is a tremendous range of abilities among people who can churn out a piece of working code.
I was originally hired into a QA area, so I've seen a lot of really bad code that is in production and working with some of the people writing code makes me wonder how they got hired in the first place.
The way things work currently, valuing youth over experience, leaves me unsurprised whenever I learn of gross problems with code, like the time Microsoft's Zune failed to account for the leap year in 2008: https://www.computerworld.com/... .
Not that I'm bitter or anything.
There were WAY fewer programmers back in the 80's than now. I'm willing to bet the number of software developers have grown exponentially over the years, which means that there simply aren't that many older programmers (compared to the number of younger ones). I honestly think that's a big part of it.
Also, I definitely know some older developers, usually they're some sort of senior architects or other, with incredible expertise within one or two products. They definitely exist, there just aren't that many.
How about old engineers? I've had coworkers leave and :
Take up day trading x2 (read as retired and managing assets)
Own a construction business of some sort x2
Own another kind of business
Buy a few houses and become a landlord
So, the time in the trenches is getting the seed money to run a business yourself.
and as far as I know, I'm the only one still working in tech. Seattle Hundreds and lack of vacation time burn-out people quickly. I've almost quit and moved to something else several times. I'm sick of working seven days a week and 80+ hours. Only had one real vacation in that time too since at nowhere I've worked did I have backup.
Programming is a toxic job. There isn't enough developers so the few that there are get worked to death.
One of those app hipster types needs to start up an old programmers Odesk except for local startups. There's tons of practical knowledge from the old folks that doesn't exist in the bro culture. Mainly because the bros have a lack of life experience but also lack the tempered arrogance that comes along with age.
Does this exist already?
Speaking as an "old" programmer -- nearing the five-oh -- we aren't going anywhere. At least not the ones who know what they're doing. Some of us might take on more managerial roles, but we (and I can say this because I ain't the only graybeard around here, for sure) are kicking ass in senior roles, leading the bet-the-company-on type projects. Oh, we also browse stack overflow.com and enjoying the non-stop cluebie parade, as free entertainment.
I am 71 years old and still programming. Python, Pylons, SQLAlchemy mostly running on AWS.
If you can hide your age through the application process until you're hired and filling out forms like the US IRS I-9, I know from personal experience that can work.
I've heard that many embedded software vendors respect gray hairs, and I know from some friends and acquaintances that if you can get a serious government clearance, age doesn't matter much after that.
Bryan Lunduke, Eli the Computer guy and countless other left to make money else where when the hours got to long.
Oh wait, sorry, that's where all the calculators go.
You know that guy who's always in back the hospital cafiteria, the older balding one, with a long ratty beard, the one he's combing with his fork, while staring, but not really, at the younger people that still have ambition, and some sense of hygine?!
sigh... that's our lot my friend... that's our lot...
The problem for you is that you are in "Enterprise Java". That's pretty much a field where any tool (cheap programmer) can do the job.
I'm in a room full of grey beards, we do have a young guy on the team who is in his mid 30s but the rest are past their mid 40s, 50s, and into their 60s. The team does low level scientific algorithms in C++ (with C# GUI interfaces), that need to work in real time systems. This is hard stuff where you really need a group of people who are precise and know what they are doing. Most of the team are irreplaceable, which is a problem because people keep on dieing of heart attacks.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
The old programmers graveyard.
A lot of the guys who were senior devs when I was just starting out had a side hustle of some sort that they basically turned into their full time job. I've seen people go off and do everything from consulting, photography, to professional gambling and a catering business.
Soylent Green is Old Programmers!
Let's see....
One guy I used to work with who was a programmer is now in real estate. He said he figured out at some point that owning and renting out properties was a smarter way to earn a living than constantly chasing the moving target of new programming languages and companies who might outsource your job at any time.
Another who used to be self-employed coding for people on a consulting basis told me he got into woodworking, eventually. His reasoning? As you get older, you start asking yourself questions like, "What have I created that will be used and enjoyed by others even after I'm gone?" It's easy to sink years of your life into a software application, only to find that in a decade or two, nobody is using it anymore. It's become "old and obsolete". If you build good quality, hand-crafted furniture pieces? They're quite likely to be used for 100 years or more. Build a dresser for one of your kids and they may even be handing it down to THEIR kids.
I'm not really sure what happened to several of the other guys I used to hang out with who were software developers? I know one kind of transitioned over to web development -- but I see that as more of a lateral move, with so many things becoming web and cloud-based.
There are lots of companies out there that are full of old farts like you. Look for a place that seeks people with lots of experience. Documented experince is one of the strongest and most requested assets in the business. As long as you stay updated in your field, age shouldn’t be a problem. And remember that people with more experince than your are even more rare than you because the business was really small +30 years ago compared to now.
As you get older and establish your resume, chances are you've specialized in a few areas that are high in demand.
If you're smart, you start playing the field and maximize your net worth by doing a young man's job: taking on gigs for months at a time, when companies are desperate for your expertise and availability.
Seriously, if you are a halfway decent coder you can easily learn to grow some amazing weed.
The ROI is pretty incredible also.
At least here on the east coast, development doesn't always pay as well as the west coast. A lot of friends who started the same time I did (~20 yrs ago) either went into mgt or consulting. I chose the later and it's substantialy easier and pays better than development does, at least in the mid atlantic - specialties like computer vision and AI not withstanding.
.. where they are decommissioned by Eru ilúvatar and replaced by the cheaper Orc replacement.
I'm 66, retired after many years in the trenches. Started with the first wave of micros in the late-70s. Coding still provides about a third of the family income, it's like having an extra Social Security every month. Which is good!
Most of what I do is c++, but I'm trying to learn kotlin, swift and c# like the young kids.
Where do old programmers go? HP. As a 56 year old consultant, I am seldom the oldest person in the room.
Many of us haven't gone anywhere. I guess it depends on your industry but I see plenty of older developers around my office. There is such a shortage of quality developers that I think the jobs will be there for the older generation (fingers crossed).
I am going to try to stay with it for now at 45, since I prefer to actually build things rather than just talk about it in meetings!
Age is just an mindset/attitude anyway.
If you love to learn and stay current, then you'll be fine.
My boy, my boy!
Most of the people who were in the programming field moved to either management, sales, and other completely different fields. The reason is because a lot of these "old" developers started to work in the 80/90's, when programming was the new gold rush ; after a few years, some of them simply didn't fit, others don't want to keep doing geeky things for ever, and many were promoted.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
at least for me, I'm mid 40's and sick of the same old shit and disfunction.
I spent 25 years coding professionally as my main source of income.. the first 15 years at big name companies as a contractor.
The following years were at a single small company. I then ended up buying that company a few years ago.
Around that same time I started a non-IT company that is now mid-sized.
In addition to my CEO/owner role, I do all the coding for our internal business intelligence / inventory management system.
So, perhaps one of the answers to "Where do old programmers go ?" is: Some of them start their own businesses outside of the IT world. We are still coding, we just aren't that visible to other developers.
I've gone from Assembly, to PL/I and PL/AS, to C, C++, a smattering of Visual Basic, to Java, JavaScript (Angular, React). Also expanded my skills to include AWS and containerization. Just don't stop learning. And share your knowledge with others.
The smart ones work for companies that value competence and quality over price. I work with a bunch of them, not one under 30 and some in their late 60s who have more fun at work than retiring and watching TV all day. It is a joy to work with software engineers who actually know WTF they are doing. We often don't get the initial bid on the software portion of the job, but better than half the time we end up doing it when the idiots who under bid us fail spectacularly. Then our software guys come in, often starting from scratch because the cheap code is total garbage and have functional code up and running smoothly in half the time it took the cheap code mill from India (or wherever) to fail catastrophically.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I think our branch has grown tremendously, pretty much diluting the older programmers into invisibility. Obviously, many have ascended into management and the more years pass, the more opportunities there are to go do something else entirely (you might too). Also, many if not most older programmers started out in another profession and are therefore more likely to switch again.
0x or or snor perron?!
I left the country, so that my employer in the US can outsource my services.
In 1980, there were about 10k CS graduates, compare that to 60k in 2005. Add in those that switched careers, the older generation gets diluted. Though i admit I have plenty of 40+ people where I am, one is 67, and I had a software tester that was well into her 70s at my last job.
Oxdeadbeef
Either project management or Walmart greeter, in one you meet nicer people in the other you get paid better, both will eat your soul, choose wisely.
This! ^^^^^
Simple maths here people. The oldies are outnumbered by young newbies because of the growth in IT. That's all there is to it.
We're still here and doing the latest stuff, just like always. And we frequently get to say "This is the same shit with a different spin, so get off my lawn!"
Just turned 60, still coding. Reconciled to learning a new language/environment every 6-10 years. However, more inclined to do the big idea stuff and farm it to the younger ones. I get new guys to get me up to speed with new tech but for some things you cant beat experience and I find that especially in debugging. Instinct can save a lot of time so often called to look at problems by the youngsters. Sadly, still a fair bit of Fortran out there that is being slowly redone and I can still read it and figure out how to tests going so it can be safely replaced.
Sucks, but programmers have the lifespan (career) of an NFL quaterback.
I quit working for a company 15 years ago and became a self-employed contractor doing embedded software.
Mainly work with new products as I also have a hardware background (we all did back in the day).
Now 51 and earning more than I ever have, and my hourly rate has steadily increased and surpassed the stagnated wages.
Tried building a team of programmers. Didn't work out. Clients prefer me to to do their work.
Because of my experience (age?), I am much faster to complete tasks, know how to estimate and meet time and cost budgets, and can talk to people at any level in their language. And most of all, listen.
So over time my 'business model' evolved into "get the cash now rather than take options and invest it myself".
Options sound exciting, but don't forget the power of having cash now.
Oh, and I work from home. Have walked my kids to school or bus almost every day (now at last year of school). Go out for coffee and breakfast with my wife every Friday. To me, this is worth far more than I could ever earn in a company.
I learnt I do not have business or entrepreneurial skills. I just do what I think I am best at.
There is no greater transition that a tech guy can make to transform his career than moving into a SE role. The Sales side of the house - from comp plans to basic management, training, etc. - puts the tech side of any company to shame. Forget management - been there, done that. While it can be rewarding, you are basically in a position - if you give a bubbly fart about your employees - where you are spending tremendous amounts of time and energy protecting them from upper management. If you care about your career, compensation and lifestyle, move into Sales Engineering.
The number of people in the software industry has increased tenfold in the last 20 years so it is an illusion that all the older devs have vanished.
I work for a massive HR software company. At least half of our developers are 40+. Some have been with the company for 25+ years.
...found something else to do that they enjoy more, after one tech job or another eventually petered out, and they found themselves unemployed and not in particularly high demand due to outdated skill sets.
Most found interesting things to do, however...I don't mean to paint a bleak picture.
They turn us into green crackers that have remaining flavor hints of pizza, coffee, and Pepto Bizmol.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm still here. Been doing embedded systems for 25 or so years. We can't seem to find anyone else at my level to hire. Maybe they're all going into management?
... from Systems Analyst at Mobil Oil (now deceased) to Technology Administrator for two law firms.
I was WAY overqualified and management was impressed with my skill level.
I automated everything I could, working with Novell 3.1 at first, then Windows NT out to Windows Server 2013.
I had more than enough time to play. I was upfront with the managing partner that we both knew I was skilled and ethical. I worked on his stuff at his house, so we were good.
The pay wasn't near what I'd made at Mobil, but I was so glad to take off that fucking suit, stop the insane traveling to attend useless meetings, and I was particularly relieved that I didn't have a goddam pointy-haired boss and working in the Dilbert corporate world.
I retired from the Firm 3 years ago, after an 18-year career, and now I play on my computing devices and post to /.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm 73 and still coding - that's 51 years in the business. Friends have suggested I might want to retire (I can certainly afford to) but then what would I do? Travel the world - been there, done that. Go on cruises - omg, no! Potter around the house making my wife go mad? Learn a new language? Shrivel up and die is more likely.
So long as I'm enjoying my job and I'm still able to do it well, why not work? So long as I keep my skills up, having interesting stuff to do, and don't have a heart attack, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. And I'm able to save my salary - the mortgage is paid and social security plus investment income is more than enough to live on.
Yes, I'm the oldest in the office (the nearest to me is 49 years old) but attitude and work contributions are the most important reasons I'm still employed.
There's a heck of a lot more people in software today than there was back then. On top of that, most people who would have gray hair today got weeded out by the dotcom crash.
So you're already in a spot where the younglings will vastly outnumber the older software engineers purely from the funnel.
Next, yes, a lot of them end up in management. A good half of the people I went to college with (who did not give up during the dotcom crash) are CTOs, directors, VPs. Often of tiny startups mind you, but still. Note that this isn't many people!
Then you have people who just give up: while a lot of people these days would have you think EVERYONE should become a software engineers, its hard work. Easy jobs are left to cheap interns or new bootcamp grads. The rest is tough and a lot of people just give up.
Finally, it's a field where you have to continually renew yourself. That means the longer you're in the field, the worse off you are compared to a new grad if you stopped learning. You might have been a SOAP/WSDL expert back when you were 22 because it was all the rage, but that knowledge has limited usefulness today. If you don't keep learning, you're out.
When you add up all of these things, there really aren't that many older engineers. With the funnel increasing drastically over the last few years, expect gray hair to get more commons though. The massive amounts of twenty somethings software engineers will grow older. And while the other attrition criterias will weed some out, there will still be a LOT more of them than there currently are of us.
Unless there's a second dotcom crash, of course.
Oblivion isn't really as bad as its reputation. I have tons of free time. So, I ride my bike, read alot (online and mostly non-fiction books), attend concerts, and don't think much about punched cards, Assembler, and decades of well-meaning (if ineffectual) managers. Now, with the help of years of peace since being downsized once too many times, I realize that my best works mean nothing at all, and the joys of my career were entirely spent/earned with the exceptionally good people I was lucky to work with. As the rise of neural nets encroaches upon more and more domains of effort previously reserved for humans, you can be sure that some many of those still programming may be able to continue their fun in the absence of employment. As i say, as long as you have the financial ability to survive in the world as happily as you want (an increasingly BIG "if"), oblivion isn't all that bad. Actually really nice here. See you at the beach ...
At happy hackers home for overage coding codgers they have two dormitories; the Joy and Stallman wings. Each day they meet in the middle and shout at each other "modal", "modeless"....
Funny bit: slashdot launched 20 years ago this month. So if you were reading it back then most netizens would probably consider you an old fogey.
Anyhow, I'm still doing engineering which involves lots of design, coding, and tech lead. Adamantly refused to get into line management and that hasn't been a problem since there is a real shortage of skilled engineers. My depth and breadth of experience means lots of mentoring since I haven't turned into a cranky old bastard yet.
You have to learn new things, but I like that. Another key to keeping things fresh is switching jobs about every 5-7 years or so (which I've done my entire career) - about 5 years I start getting extremely bored and itchy feet.
Not sure what the hell I'd do if I got tired of it (go die on a farm?), but it's pretty much my choice when to retire.
As systems become more complex, they require less generalist and more specialization. Older programmers are more generalist.
65. Programming daily. I currently work remotely because of some health issues last year but still get to and present at meetups and conferences. And I might take an office job again if the work is interesting enough. I stay current like all the cool kids. I just don't look as hip a my younger peers.
My brain is overly lubricated
That'd be great..
An old SNL skit for you young whippersnappers.
And torment me by stubbornly refusing to follow software design standards.
I decided to retire early, but had to obtain one last position to get me to 55. My last position was as a data warehousing developer for my state's Department of Corrections. I have to admit though, than when, at the interview, I was asked, "Where will you be in five years?", I did not provide the honest answer: "On the beach in Mexico sipping from a drink with an umbrella in it."
and hope to be for another 10+ years. I'm lucky enough to be at a small company with an older upper management
that's fine with older employees. I did a lot of java getting the management system squared away to the point that
it can be handled by other people (and folks, that's what Java is for). It's a little more embedded C, and trying to
transition everyone to C++ (look, if the first argument to each function is some sort of a context structure you're
basically doing C++ by hand, why not make it automatic). Then I get the hard stuff dumped on me. Right now
it's v4l drivers for custom hardware. Interesting, but kind of a pain. I've got maintenance on a couple of existing
systems that I've inherited, a couple of issues a year. Then I manage the engineering network and the linux
engineering servers. Once in a while I decide we need to ratchet things up, so I add stuff like an internal wiki
or (the latest one) a jenkins CI server. I really like Jenkins, especially for the Java projects were we've got
3-4 people working on the codebase. Nothing like knowing a nastygram is going to go out to all your co-workers
if you break something to keep people careful.
Anyhow, it's still fun, both the work, and helping people turn into pretty good developers. I
I think the answer is that the folks 50+ who are still at it have searched out places where they're comfortable.
The ones that haven't have moved on to other pursuits. So if you're not at one of those places, you might not
see them.
You don't see us in these cubicle farms working 80+ hours per week for peanuts. We have enough assets (and debts paid off) that we can work in a much less stressful environment. We can say goodbye to the 8 to 5 jobs doing grunt work too. If the project isn't interesting, we do consulting or some other side gig. If we want to take 6 months off, we can because we are not living paycheck to paycheck. Or we start our own software business (me) and don't stress out if it hasn't gone ballistic in the first year.
Age 52, doing amazing full stack Node, Mongo, Microservice work. As for the millennials, holy s###, looking to replace these youngins with gray hairs that are easier to retain, loyal, and do better quality work. And gray hairs are sometimes cheaper :)
Java programmers go to 0xcafebabe
I've been at it for 43 years but ageism is a definite factor, especially in startup culture. I started early (Fortran and Algol on a UNIVAC 1100) and have been learning ever since. Presently I do a lot of CI/CD and use Python, Ruby and Modern Javascript to build at cloud scale. I sometimes think getting back into Cobol might an avenue if I need to find another job. Cobol programmers never seem to die. But keeping my skill set up to date and working for mature supervisors seem to have worked for me thus far.
Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
And ask for significantly less money to do the job remotely.
Some people like software (like me). I got hooked when I programmed Univac ! in assembler language (there were no compilers) in 1959, 58 years ago. I still enjoy the challenge of taking somebody's ill-defined problem and giving them a system that meets their needs.
Have gnu, will travel.
As a longtime C++ developer, hearing "C++" and "flight systems" together in the same sentence scares me.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Why would any young person be crazy enough to get into debt for a CS degree only to have the ROI cut short by an ageist churn em and burn em attitude?
As far as I can see the issue is there is a massive disconnect with organizations confusing energy output with efficiency. Deep thinking and focus is hard work that most people can't do, so if you can programming is a massive investment that you vest over time as you keep evolving.
What these people with dubious morals do is manipulate coders sincere enough to make the sacrifices required to be good at it over time. Subsequently they whine about a lack of skills, cry that they need immigrant labor when, in reality, it is a lot more difficult to manipulate people with life skills and that is where all this comes from.
This prevailing attitude about 'old programmers' is a transparent way to get all programmers to be competing against their future selves. It's so incredibly short sighted to attempt to replace enthusiasm with insecurity and joy with regret in the people who can help bring your dreams to life.
It's the 21st century, the world is run on code, I can't see demand decreasing.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What did you accomplish yesterday? What will you accomplish today? What are your impediments?
You can do this well into your 60s and 70s!
I retired at age 42. Have to thank my Mom for teaching me about the stock market and how to double my money every 5 yrs (which isn't really hard).
Stopped programming professionally around age 34. Had a team of 20 devs that I tried to protect from arbitrary sales and marketing deadlines. I took the blame for everything wrong and passed on the credit for everything good. That was my job.
Did application architecture, technical architecture and enterprise architecture before the company decided to change our agreement of work. I didn't like the new terms, so I left. They didn't expect that and regrouped with a different offer 3 days before my last day. I'd already made plans for the next 6 months (traveling around Asia).
That was 10 yrs ago. I've never gone back to work. Spend about 2 hrs a week managing our portfolio ... from anywhere in the world.
I didn't inherit millions. Got $40K when Mom died.
I didn't work at any internet superstar company. Got $15K from stock options for 1 company that went public.
Old programmers design their life around their goals, desires, and skills. That's where smart programmers go.
I'm in my 60s, still programming for a living. This is my fourth job, with a small instrument manufacturing company. I previously worked for a national lab, an engineering firm, and a large credit union. I've programmed in a variety of languages, OSes, databases, ... over the years, and just keep learning new things.
The guys I work with now are 29, 34, 36, 38 and 41 years old. It's all good though, and we get along great. I'm actually the new guy here (3 yrs), but had no problems settling in.
We actually have one remote, part-time programmer (about 10 hrs a week) who is about 75. My long term goal is to be like him. :-)
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
Stopped programming, began researching applications of industrial materials. Going into startup phase of new business after successful exit from software company.
Finding raising capital is relatively simple compared to selling software.
None of the young busks wants to take the time to learn FPGA development around here. So it is being dropped on my plate.
I must admit, it is quite challenging. Not really software development at all.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I got kicked out at 56 under some pretext. Took the retraining money and qualified to teach high school math.
Good luck. You'll need it.
Been doing rom fw for SoCs for years. I am 56. There is a near 100% chance you have used some of my code indirectly as these SoCs are ubiquitous. Young coders show no interest in this type of work, also, the c/asm code must be near bug free since respins cost $100'sk and schedule loss.
Like you, I looked around and saw the writing on the wall. I went into teaching. I teach computer apps and robotics at a middle school.
A friend from college is about the only other Tech sector person that I have really stayed in touch with. Frankly, he was always better than I was. The problem is that he knew he was good and bought into it. He really felt that working had and being good was enough. Now he is delivering pizzas.
Old programmers don't die, they just fade away.....
(Paraphrasing Douglas MacArthur)
They take them out back and shoot them.
When I was in my 30s I started to wonder about the best way to progress my programming career. I went into management, became a CEO, then COO (when a new CEO came in with money conditional on him being the CEO —bad decision), then after a few years, decided to go back to being a freelance developer. I enjoyed that much more than being a c-suite type, but by then was in my late 40s. Good news was I'd made a firm decision to stick to coding, ignore the management siren call, and focus on what I enjoy. I phased out of Java (too much boring work) and Ruby (not enough innovation) and decided to focus on Javascript (es6, Redux, React and beyond) and blockchain stuff (Solidity).
By chance I was introduced to a firm in Sydney that convinced me to give up freelancing and come work for them. Best decision I ever made. Now in my 50s I am easily one of the oldest developers there, but I get to collaborate with a great mix of younger devs whose energy and insights impress me, even if they lack the tonne of real-world experience that I have. I enjoy mentoring younger devs, solving problems, being the firm-handed coding standards nerd, and working on client issues at a senior level. And by working with younger devs I get to fast-track my learning of new stuff. It's a real win-win. I've made it clear I have no intention of ever being promoted into management, although I am now the Javascript Practice Lead I have no management responsibilities. The firm has seen fit to promote me twice, with excellent pay rises and bonuses, and understands I am best left to continue being a developer and not a manager. I work 100% remotely and service clients out of both the Sydney and Hong Kong offices. There are a few other devs at work of my generation, and we mostly all work remotely. Working remotely deemphasises the age gap between developers.
I feel that what I do for the firm makes a real difference. I love my job, my employer likes me, I have a good relationship with the senior management team and the respect of the more junior devs. I have a rep as a problem solver, clear communicator, and as someone with rich life experience. I like to believe the work I do will be useful for at least another 20 years. I can't see myself ever retiring as such. I client yesterday was asking me if I'd still be working if I'd not lost a shit-tonne of Bitcoin when MtGox collapsed (they'd have been worth about $800k now —sigh) and I said of course. I do this job because it's an activity I enjoy, working with people I like, for clients with real problems to solve.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
I'm another one of those 60+ developers, and I have had no trouble remaining gainfully employed as a contractor.
Some years ago I was a middle manager in a huge multinational. I hated management, in part because it's exhausting to do it well but mostly because I was far more interested in technical work. It was clear from where I sat, however, that the vast majority of companies are biased toward young (often right out of school) developers; they're cheap, typically have no family commitments, will work 24/7 without complaint, and often don't know enough to challenge their managers (not a dig at young folks, but at the managers who are afraid of their direct reports). I was getting beyond the optimum age for new hires, had a family, demanded at least one good night of sleep a week, and expected to be paid well; what to do?
One constant that I saw across the board, from startups to multinationals, was that management went looking for older, more experienced talent when it became clear that a project was in trouble. And there are *lots* of projects in trouble! Hiring developers with specific domain knowledge and a proven track record is approved, and age is one of the first barriers to drop. So, if you have (or constantly train yourself in) domain knowledge that is in demand, you can make quite a go of it as a contractor. Once you've worked a couple of jobs and met a few other contractors, you'll find word of mouth will keep you up to your neck in prospects.
You are the product that you're selling; keep the product shiny. Anyway, that's what's worked for me. That and a bottle of hair dye.
51 Here. I translated to industrial machine logic (ladder logic) and I'm kind of young in the field. Programming in Ladder Logic is kind of like doing math using one of those old HP "Reverse Polish" calculators, confusing at first, but once you figure it out, you can do anything with it.
I'm almost 70. I started programming on IBM 1401 computers doing cryptography for the US Army in 1965. I used an assembly language called AUTOCODER. I had an old cup-type modem that I'd transmit Hollerith cards' data over the AUTODIN network. (pre-Arpanet; like a military WATS line) I think it is funny that after 52 years, I'm still doing what the Army vocational tests said I was suited for; Communications and Computers. I have been involved in projects that built the foundations for a LOT of the stuff that is being developed today. Today's programmers pick off-the-shelf components built on algorithms me and my contemporaries developed in the '60's and '70's.
Today's programming environment is not built for someone of my personality type. Today when I program I only do short projects, and almost never team projects. I escaped the "electronic sweatshop" in 1994, so I no longer have to sweat over whether I will have a place in the project every three months, and I don't have to work in the day and then get up at night to teach some twerp in India how to program his application. I could spend the rest of my life taking on projects like I see on Hackaday. I only do what's interesting to me. I experiment in Robotics and AI, and I LOVE doing Math applications in spreadsheets. I don't take any projects that don't pay me what I think I'm worth (billing rate = $1200 per day) and I try to keep my projects down to 5 days per month or less so I have time for my own stuff. I also get to reject projects that require me to conform to requirements that don't make sense to me. I would rather create a small, WORKABLE app in LiveCode than do something complicated in Java or Perl. I prefer assembly-language programming, but I have skills in C/C++ (Java, etc..), LISP (Scheme, Racket, Haskell), and I like playing with other languages (I like Python a lot, Ruby not as much, and I'm doing a lot of exporting some of my C programs to Rust.) But today, a person can't just be a "programmer". I have bounced back and forth from Software to Administration to Sales and done this many times. You become an "IT Professional" rather than "Programmer".
Of course, I don't live at the same high level I did when I was in the "electronic sweatshop". Sometimes I wish I had more money. Occasionally I see something I'd like to do for others that would actually pay me a salary, and it sounds like I would get some security. The latest was to do tech support for programmers writing in Perl. ("Software reliability" is an oxymoron; programmers need a support team that understands complex Math and Logic.) Luckily, because of my age, I get turned down for most of these things before I get sucked in.
So, while many of my friends my age have invested thousands of dollars in their garage shops and build birdhouses, I have a whole world of workshop on my computers that I can use to make cool things. Go for the creativity! Make those projects you always wanted to make! Pick up a job at a bookstore if you need money, but set aside plenty of time to make something with a long shelf life.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Just left a job in the government sector (contractor) where I (upper 40's) was the young man on the totem pole on my team. In my new role (large insurance provider) I'm in the middle of the pack.
The spots are there, especially updating large legacy works to modern architectures.
Good luck!
This is my 30th year, being a self employed contract programmer. Most everything is done remote from my home office or my office which is 2 miles from my house. I may stop by a local client once a week, other than that I am pretty much a recluse. My wife laughs at me because there have been weeks I have not gone anywhere ;)
;) after all! may as well get paid for fishing ;)
Being 62, I intend to be fishing everyday I can
I'm 53, semi-retired at 39 and spent the last 13 years getting well paid to just carry a phone and answer it if it rings, as rarely needed emergency support of an ERP system my team heavily modified, and is being used by what is now a billion dollar multinational distributor. I also have a handful of other small customers for whom I do miscellaneous Windows, Mac, Linux, domain and LAN consulting.
After you spend nearly 50 years doing nearly every job in IT as you kept up with change and looked for new things to learn, you will find that work is getting in the way of all the things YOU want to to, and you retire.
When I retired I kept my Sub-S, so I could operate it as a residential IT service business. In this high-end retirement area, my customers are people who had great jobs (executives, factory managers, a Secret Service agent, a world correspondent for Life magazine, owners of every imaginable kind of business) but always had staff to handle their IT. As retirees their needs are simpler now, but because of their upbringing they were never digital natives. That's where I come in.
It's where everything goes eventually.
Java & .net/Mono/C# is scripting for virtual machines.. thats some very old script kiddies!
if using inline assembly is low level C, is low level C++ then just plain old C code?
Got tired of idiots telling me what to do, so I became that guy.
I'm over 50 and using my many years as a programmer to code as architect. Wherever you want, keep learning
Only 'flamers' flame!
Retired at 47 and living off my investments. (It took a couple years longer than I planned on) True story.
Just turned 60. Still coding. Tried the management route. It's not for me.
I've learned two things that every large organization needs, identity management and IT asset management. Currently I am supporting an identity and access management solution. I'm using SSIS, PowerShell, Python, and C# to customize and add functionality. It isn't challenging and I hope to retire soon.
I had a friend, a scrum master and software manager, tell me that "you know, when you get older, you really have to rely on your friends to find work." I laughed and laughed. I've watched dozens of friends tire of programming and go into management or some soft discipline, but I constantly keep my technical skills sharp and evolve with the platforms, in C++, C#, and whatever else I need. I do it because I love it and don't find any other work quite so enjoyable as creating something out of nothing but pure thought.
I never have trouble finding paying jobs. My code runs on literally billions of computers (I built some small parts of Windows that survive even unto this day).
It's so much fun. I'm sort of young-looking, and people are amazed I'm 61. If you really love what you do, you'll keep doing it. Why not? It's fun!
Bare metal and systems level programmer here...
The small company I worked for got bought out. Years later (2007 or so) the financial crunch was passed down from the big company management in a dictum that I would be required to work more hours than I was paid for in addition to other draconian changes. At the time I was 50 and #1 seniority (with about 20 years or so), even over all of management.
It was a difficult decision with a lot of stress, but I told them they could have the job. Being unmarried I had that option. They had only wanted to get more work for less money, but wound up getting less work for less money.
Looking back it was a really good decision. My investments have me comfortably retired and living with my SO. I program doing what I like (open source "drone" flight controllers mainly).
I'm a kid at heart and still enjoy my toys (computers, model aircraft, etc.) so I have plenty to do. There are some people who would die if they retired because their job is who they are. Understand yourself before you jump.
Do the work when you are still in school; don't goof off. Live beneath your means while you are young, especially in those gravy train years. If you can't 401k you should Roth in many solid companies or index funds IMO. Protect your brain, eyes, ears, skin, teeth, etc. so they last your whole life.
https://vid.me/theouterlinux
Still programming in RPG, but it "isn't your daddy's RPG"
There are still lots of companies that use it in IBM midrange shops. One company I was at until 2007 had their computer crash only once since 1992 - the reason was that the UPS batteries were dead and they shut down power for a company renovation. The IBM i (once called the AS/400) has been a reliable workhorse since its inception. Many companies that have it won't give it up because of that.
I can communicate with any other system and do it with a smaller programming staff than most shops. I have mostly been an employee, as I am now, but spent almost 7 years as a consultant around Columbus Ohio also.
I have decades of tech experience on my belt
I am not going to waste them on online app, I let younger people deal with it
I now devote my time on what I do best, and what the world needs --- by combining AI, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, with Robotics
Industry 4.0 is coming
Era of Dark Factory is coming
Intelligent robots are the future
The demand for robotic design is great - and people with decades of tech experience, like me, can offer the insights young people just don't possess
Money is great - I am now making 8 times the income I used to get
Job is very rewarding - not only financially rewarding, satisfactions also play a very great part
As others have said, embedded is full of old programmers. My previous job was embedded where i worked for 10+ years and at least half the engineers were 40+. I felt the writing was on the wall for that company so I recently jumped ship to a completely different area (CDN backend software for a very well established company) to broaden my skillset. However with this new job the company values senior level+ engineers, very rarely is there a new E1 hire, the majority are all senior level and beyond and that's also the majority of the hires, so most people who do engineering there are at least 30 as a baseline age
They are doing it from the beach on Bali Ha'i
To /dev/null
And spend our days learning, coding and building.
At least that's what I'm doing and I still haven't figured out how I ever had time for work.
I burned out in my 50s and followed an old dream to become a math teacher, which was the hardest thing I've ever done professionally (much harder than software) and didn't go so well because I was only good at the teaching part of teaching. So I became a math and computer science tutor. I don't earn what I used to but I'm doing pretty well and I've never had so much fun earning a living. It helps that I also have a math degree; I get very little demand for computer science tutoring. And since I do miss writing software and wanted to learn Ruby, I rolled my own accounting system, about 5% of which is in Google Script (to export my tutoring calendar to a spreadsheet) and the rest in Ruby. That was fun!
Fred got tired so we sent him to a nice farm upstate where he can play with all the other old programmers all day long!
Thus spake management.
Rather disappointed that no one had bothered with the ancient joke yet. (Or maybe it was ACed to invisibility?)
Speaking more seriously, I had no desire to retire yet. I had already moved up from programming, though my last 15 years still benefited from my technical experience and I worked pretty hard to remain relevant so I could understand what the young developers and even the researchers were working on, the better to help them succeed. Doesn't matter in these days of corporate cancerism. In the end it comes down to reducing head count to boost profits. Don't forget:
"There is no gawd but profit, and IBM is gawd's true prophet!"
The last part is the big joke. According to Forbes, profit's chief prophets for 2016 are Apple, Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some gamblers. By gamblers I mean giant financial organizations that gamble with other people's money.
(Actually, you can't really call it gambling, because at that level of the game, they are so close to the gawd of profit that they have special dispensation and are sainted as "too big to fail". If they phuck up hugely enough, they'll be bailed out with public money, but don't you DARE call it socialism. (By the way, this is how you know #PresidentTweety is no saint, because he had to be bailed out with dirty rubles and didn't qualify for socialism.))
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
25 years ago it programmers were pretty rare. Nowadays everyone works in IT...
the crowd is just spread out
maybe, but they get there very slowly. a c++ programmer can crash anywhere instantly.
Old is expensive. Higher cost for salaries, medical care (typically, not always), retirement plans are vetted as are stock options.
Fire the old guys/gals was how I perceived Intel's last big layoff was (cost several friends their jobs). New CEO, cuts projects, closed sites and fired people in the late fifties to early sixties. Often with a caveat that they A: never talk about being canned and B: no matter what they will never be hired back under any condition.
That happens throughout modern businesses. College grads are cheap, they think the money is good but if they leave in five years their retirement vetting is a pittance and their stock is just starting to vet. They found a better job! Which will pay a little more, then they will start on the next round of retirement benefits and stock vetting.
Yeah, old is out. Good luck.
"So where are the other old guys?"
In a retirement home, fixing dBASE III+ programs for the staff.
A diet of pizza and coke and lots of late nights and stress from the higher ups isn't great for your health
But seriously most of my developer colleagues are either still coding or in a management role.
When the crystal in their hand starts blinking red, it's time for those old programers to renew and become young programmers again.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Enterprise architecture or solution architecture. (That's real architecture, not the programmer/analyst kind).
It's not as interesting as programming but it's better than working. I still get my programming fix by doing Project Euler problems.
I know a lot of 48 Year Old Plus Programmers that Were replaced by lower cost labor. and than can not get back into the Labor Force. After trying for 3-4 years they Move on to other lower Paying Lobs...
You could claim that I've gone into management since I'm the CTO of Open iT, a multinational sw development corporation, but as long as I still get to do as much interesting programming as I want to, I will consider myself a programmer.
Besides my daytime work I'm involved with Network Time Protocol and I'm also part of Mill Computing which is a team of mostly very mature people trying to develop a _really_ interesting cpu architecture, please take a look. That team is lead by our own real-life wizard and Gandalf lookalike, Ivan Godard (do an image search...). As part of my Mill work I am also active in the ieee754 2018 revision, i.e. the update to the international floating point standard.
In my spare time I'm the leader of the Mapping Commission of the Norwegian Orienteering Federation, a job I got mostly due to my interest in developing sw to create much better base maps based on LiDAR point clouds.
Previously in my career I've worked on video and audio coding/optimization, including DVD, BluRay and Ogg Vorbis, as well as helping optimize the Quake assembly code. I've also worked on one of the AES candidates and at one point I doubled the speed of a research Computational Fluid Chemistry code. My Warhol moment might have been when I by accident made the first public disclosure of the FDIV bug (on usenet:comp.sys.intel) and then wrote most of the (compiler) SW workaround for that.
I have no intention to retire until I'm much closer to 70! (If I did that my wife who's a mechanical engineer and responsible for making the trains in Norway run on time, would expect me to make dinner for her every day, as well as doing all the cleaning and laundry. :-) )
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
I retired at 49. Programming was not fun anymore; I spent my days just connecting API and learning things what will be obsolete in one or two years more. I left the big city, moved to the beach, learned to surf and ride MTB. I'm still working with Arduino in personal projects,
Nearing 60 years old, coder, etc.
Pain in the neck from sitting in front of screen for 20+ years, wearing progressive lens.
Neck, shoulder pain is constant.
Young'uns, get an ergo desk, pay attention to your posture, take breaks, exercise, do yoga.
I didn't want to be a mega minority: Older female lesbian coder. I work in health now, it's way nicer and ppl actually treat you with respect rather than suspicion / contempt.
Thereâ(TM)s actually a secret underground society of old engineers that keep the world running. Theyâ(TM)re unfathomably wealthy and all day theyâ(TM)re served tea and biscuits by bikini models whilst they work on fixing things lest the internet shuts down and satellites start to fall from the sky.
Got a ride home from the airport from Lyft driver in his late 50s who was a programmer for a defense contractor until he was let go at a project change a few years back. He put on a brave face but driving was not his choice.
My FIL has been putting around the house since getting laid off at 59 a few years ago.
You could argue in both cases that they didnâ(TM)t keep up, they lost their value as employees. In my late 30â(TM)s Iâ(TM)m already getting bombarded with buzz words and acronyms for frameworks and languages given a smirk or puzzled face when I say I havenâ(TM)t had occasion to use them professionally yet.
I suppose Iâ(TM)m rapidly headed to the same grinder those are two are.
Weâ(TM)re in Boston btw, so I think the issue could be worse in tech heavy areas, not better.
So where are the other old guys? I can't imagine they've all moved up the chain into management.
I am close to my 50's, and I don't see myself changing. I have a couple of examples I am hell bent to imitate.
Two years ago I met with ex-coworkers at Hooters to say goodbye to one of our colleagues who was finally retiring. Good old low-level embedded development guy finally retiring in his 70's, making 6-figures since who knows. A few months ago, one of my colleagues finally retired in his 80s (yeah, fucking 80s). He's been an Oracle expert whose experience (and personality obviously) is sorely missed.
You go where you will. You define your own fate. I've seen people going up to management, then to establish their own development firms, then go to architecture jobs, then back to development in specialized domains, then back to management of software development, and so on.
People with an itch go with the flow. They adapt and change roles. They learn and accrue significant expertise. They specialize in something, then they move to something else.
No one stays just doing "coding".
I mean, who does? You don't even have to reach your 50's. Who does just "coding" after 10-15 years. The world of software is immense, even if one stays within a single niche (say, JEE or embedded work or what have you.) Technologies change the carpet under you and you change or you sink.
Rinse and repeat for years, decades, and all of the sudden, you have a fruitful and fulfilling life as a "software guys" well into your 70's.
It's a matter of mental versatility, agency and will. Do what you like, be good at it and fight for the salary and job balances that you want.
More seriously ... a lot of my work is signal processing/algorithm design. The programming part is just implementation.
uh huh....and 33 is still considered young in the pack of 20 somethings....come back here when you over 40 and you can't hide the grey hairs kid.
I became an Head solution architect which pays about 400k a year but really is still a glorified programmer.
But no they'll give you another title to justify paying you more.... the work isn't exactly different... you just have extra responsibilities to make sure you influence the more junior staff keep up the standard and get to choose to program only the more interesting engine and framework stuff and leave the CRUD stuff to others.
Here in Sweden, working for a large multinational at least we have a career path that moves from being a programmer to a development architect (having worked as a developer since 1992. As an architect I define the coding standards for our offshore programming team, I define design guidelines, I review requirements, technical designs, I get involved in daily scrums, I perform quality audits on code that is to be delivered to production, I look into better ways to automate our testing, I constantly educate our programming team, reminding them of the importance of the fundamentals of software engineering, I recommend best practices. I see plenty of work in my role, and its increasing the more we are outsourcing.
No one hires old programmers. Once they burn thru their 401k they become homeless.
Q: Where do old programmers go
A: They de-compile.
(never said it was funny)
Honestly, I've been a network and systems engineer for 30 years now, a "router monkey". And I'm here to tell you that the world still needs guys like us to do the things the kids today have no clue about. "Install a LAMP stack? Install an SSL cert? Secure the box(es) it's running on?" "Naw, man, I'm just gonna spin up an instance on AWS without having a clue as to how it does it. Plus Docker solves everything for me. I don't care what a security model is."
Twenty years ago, at the tender age of 30, I was still the oldest guy in the room. And now, like back then, I still understand a broader range of the technology than any of my working peers. I've got kids writing blockchain code who don't have a clue about SSL certs or OS dependencies, let alone Linux versus BSD for various tasks. Or how to secure their code. They know zero about sh, csh, bash, zsh, ksh, sshd, AT&T T-Carrier, Ethernet signalling, VLANs, or even things they should know about like password hashes and salts.
Stay in the game, man. We all still need you. I'll still be coding and bitching at ignorant users well into my 70s. And the epitaph on my tombstone shall read, "Shut Up and Reboot!"
At 57 I keep reinventing myself after working as a software developer for 30-odd years. I keep my resume trimmed down to the last 20 years, and if that's too long screw 'em. I've been in embedded Linux for the last 10+ years which has a fair number of greybeards. When it's time to look for work I try to be energetic and knowledgeable. There are not many people around nowadays who have actually coded programming languages, debuggers, and maintained millions of lines in assembler. None of those are viable career paths nowadays but the insights and experience in computer science are invaluable. Being an old curmudgeon gives me a bit less patience when people get all religious about one-size-fits-all solutions. The best asset a software engineer has is flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing challenges with the right strategy for the job.
... younger programmers. And do a little hardcore special work on the side, for 200$ an hour or so.
They have consultant written on their business card and wear suits and shirts and ties and stuff and look really important. Especially with grey hair and wrinkles added. ... I call it the "grey hair bonus". Salary is up 15000 to 20000 per year, roughly, vis-a-vis younger proggers. They also stay cool when some manager makes patently absurd demands.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
But don't eat the cafeteria daily special.
http://cobolcowboys.com/
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
I'm 46 and have been doing Java EE/JSF type stuff for around a decade.
I've been falling around somewhat the last 5 years or so. There are a lot of contracting houses (body shops) that seem to flourish in this country since all the banks, cell phone networks, etc. have jumped onto the outsourcing bandwagon. Which not only results in a lot of work, but also in nightmarish code with hardly any long-term view - which results in even more work, since that stuff needs to be maintained.
Which also results in a lot of unnecessary stress, which I feel I don't handle that well any more. But apart from that, they usually tend to take whatever devs they can get of a sufficient proficiency.
Due to the stress I took an opening at a company developing their own products, that I worked for a couple of years ago. Getting away from the contractor space... Got my second paycheck today. Clients of this employer are all overseas and pay a lot, but have a lot of special requirements for their customizations. So there is still a lot of time pressure.
Also, they have been trying to hire more devs, to not much avail. Half of my colleagues are not even South African. And most of them are more "mature". I recently got a mail from a recruiter for positions here - she didn't know I have moved here already. The salaries hinted at in the mail blew my mind, as they now offer much more than what I got and thought was quite good for the local market...
All in all, it seems there is a real scarcity for Java skills around here and discrimination is a luxury they don't allow themselves - apart from skills. Then again, devs worth their salt mostly aspire to emigrate...
The enterprise typical way of moving up the ladder is through management. Few of my friends stay in the technical field: they shift towards management.
Look around at the start ups in your area. Many are crying out for skilled workers but can't afford them. You will not initially get the pay you might think you deserve but that is the nature of start up life. Potentially there is a huge reward if the company is successful. Your CV will remain current (bleeding edge) and (likely) interesting. And frankly, working with the very much younger crowd of devs typical of a small start up is inspiring, they're full of ideas, energy, and thirst for knowledge. It rubs off on you. PLUS networking: when they move on, they remember you meaning they can recommend/hire you.
Been there, doing that, loving it.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Because most of my programming was communications related I took additional college courses and became a telecommunications engineer. The engineer job led to a management job.
I got laid off at the age of 49 as a Senior Software Engineer with 25+ years of experience. I got offered a job at the parent company. I had already decided I was going to start taking security classes so that I could get into "ethical hacking", or something related to security. I took my first class while at the parent company. I interviewed with the instructor for a job as a "cyber security specialist" on the third night of class. I was hired three weeks later, with only a small pay cut. I now have OSCP, LPT (Master), CISSP, ECSA, and a bunch of other certs. I do hacking, teaching, malware analysis, forensics, and a bunch of other stuff related to security. I've learned some awesome hacking skills, and I'm really, really enjoying this job over working 90 hour weeks to hit artificially created deadlines. I wish I had made this jump ten years ago!
I incorporated and now farm my old contacts for contract work. TBH, I don't think it's any less stable a way to go than working for capricious corporations with their annual cullings.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
I enjoyed software development and did so full time for six years coming out of my comp. sci. degree, but then tried a couple of web businesses and a consulting gig, all of which didn't pay the bills. Then I got a MBA and did corporate partnerships in the high tech sector for a little while; working with lawyers all day sucked my soul, so I did a PhD. Did a lot of teaching in business schools during my PhD, but I always came back to integrating software development into my teaching and research. Now I'm a tenure track professor in a business and technology management undergraduate program, teaching software development and database management (and other classes) to business/technology students. My research integrates computer vision (OpenCV) and artificial neural networks (Keras) in Python, looking at crowdfunding platform and campaigns. It would be hard to do what I do without my programming background.
The question is not, where did we go, the question is why didn't you?
I just shed the moniker of "programmer" after being a "Senior Programmer" for the last 5 years, I'm not even close to 40 and I'm now moving into executive management. Most of my peers have done the same and a few of them even made it to the C-level around 40yo.
If you're passionate about programming, there are plenty of projects I contribute to as a hobby, but as a job, grunt programming is a bit too stressful to handle when you have a real life, kids etc.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Obviously not everyone can pull off the hiding trick, e.g. I'm the eldest of 4, and all of my siblings turned prematurely grey, whereas without any use of dye you have to look closely to see that's just starting with me, and with appropriate dress and wearing a backpack nearing 57 I'm still initially mistaken for someone quite a bit younger. As for work history, cut off it off at some point going, say, only 10 years back (the difficultly around age 35), and don't give any other clues like dates for your education.
Getting a clearance was covered by another reply, but to expand, you get someone who wants you enough to keep you on a bench or otherwise not doing the job you were hired to do while the government works through the clearance process. And this strategy is for higher ones, e.g. above DoD Secret, you want something that requires at least a Single Scope Background Investigation, which is required for DoD Top Secret, DoE Q, or access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). Look at a copy of the Standard Form 86 and see if there are any serious warning signs, and as of a bit more than a decade ago there was a guy who for a modest sum would give you a good reading on whether you'd likely pass the process.
Anywhere I can. Usually five times a day.
You should see a doctor for that.
63 and still amazed at the Daft Morons that come out of college. 42 years of working at one company (with 5 different names). The new hires are woefully trained at embedded programming. They are all trained for web work. Which is the way I was straight out of college, except I was trained to be a "professor", not real work. Corporate types want managers (supervisors) to be HR people, not lead engineers. Therefore the decisions are political and not engineering.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
It's amazing how well suited graybeards are to test and test automation. We've made the same mistakes (but with memory leaks), and while most companies are not devoted to testing, the larger ones are (especially if regulated) and they find graybeards a good fit.
The two most common things in the Universe are dark matter and stupidity.
Two years ago in my 60's, I decided to leave the software world and my position working on computer simulations in C++ on Linux and doing rocket science at one of the national labs (which I really loved) to live full time in our Airstream Trailer and explore. My wife and I sold our home and got rid of most of the stuff we had accumulated over the years. Getting rid of the accumulated stuff that filled our large house was an incredibly liberating experience! Airstreaming has been one of the best experiences of my life and I don't miss the software world even a little. I do stay connected to the internet and I have my MacBook and sometimes write little programs. Occasionally, I help friends with websites. I now have time to pursue other interests and have taken up digital photography as a hobby.
They just do crazy new OS's :)
https://github.com/vygr/Chrysa...
The programmer graveyard of course!
On welfare?
I noticed the same thing as I was approaching my late 30's so got my teaching certification. Now I teach middle school computer applications, including programming and robotics. I'm doing far more good for the world now than I ever was working in IT (but making less money, though now that I've been teaching for a bit, I'm making that difference up). I love my job!
some of us (mid 60s) retired on our beautiful traditional pensions and live on the coast.
I started my own small software tools company ("do what you know") when I was in my late 30's and am still at it 20 years later and expect to continue until I retire. For those that run into ageist hiring practices but still love programming, this is a great way to go. I still design and write code, which I enjoy, and I also like having to interact with customers, run the business, decide on product development priorities, etc. It's more interesting, varied, and fun, although perhaps also more challenging, than being a cog in some company with onerous software design standards and long meetings. You do need a decent viable idea that will work at the scale of one or a few programmers working on it, but in the end hard work and persistence over many years is what matters, not the original brilliance of the idea; no matter what you do it'll evolve considerably over time. The rewards once you build momentum include flexible work schedule, ability to focus on real work, blissful lack of office politics and meetings, and ability to live anywhere and travel the world as you work.
If you're willing to continue to learn new technologies, you'll stay employed. My company hires programmers in their 50s all the time. They're people who not only have valuable experience but know how to use the languages/technologies/etc that the kids in their 20s know. They can be very valuable to a company and I'm not worried at all when I hit my 50s in 10 years. What's equally as important though is if you can work with a bunch of people in their 20s and 30s. Your attitude and how much people want to work with you as at least as important to what you know. If you go in with an attitude like "pfft, why you are using when you can just use ", you won't last long.
It's not like older people can't read a book and learn new stuff. Both presidential candidates in 2016 were around 70... Ok, maybe not the best example, but if you are not too old to be a POTUS, you are not too old to master machine learning. Sure, there is agism in Sillicon Valley, but there are gazillions of well paid consulting positions around the country, where you are likely to earn more than starting in a brand new field with no experience. A lot of government/medical/manufacturing systems use older technologies like MFC with few qualified experts and therefore high pay and good job security. Remember that nukes still run on floppies and Cobol jobs are still around. Unless that is you are bored and feel like doing something new and unrelated to CS, then you probably have some idea of what it might be. I know a lot of ex-coders in real estate. Suprisingly many are in outdoor adventure business because they are tired of sitting in the office and want sun on their faces. I would personally love to get into large scale infrastructure business like solar farms or power grid because I have always been curious as to how they work.
I am in my early 60's and have been in software development since 1981. I dipped my toe into management but found that first line managers get laid off before the engineers so I decided to stay in the technical area. Currently, I'm working as a software architect where I can use both my technical acumen as well as some soft skills. Coding is still my first love although I don't get to do it anymore. Over the past decades, I have earned a master's in software engineering and also co-founded a mobile app company (nights and weekends) both of which helped me to keep sharpening my skills which helped me stay relevant. It's also fortunate that I don't look my age so I can blend in.
I have been working for a major medical device company for the last few years, and there are plenty of 40+ developers here. I think this is because critical/regulated industries have very high standards for code quality, testing, documentation, process, etc. There's no room for thrown-together web apps that are pushed to production with little testing every week.
When lives are at stake, companies need the best, seasoned developers that have a lot a experience and would never consider releasing something that is "good enough", or to release code with known bugs with a plan to fix them later, or try the latest-and-greatest unproven technologies, etc.
On the surface this isn't exciting, glamorous work, but can be very satisfying and challenging in its own way.
IMHO, we went into business for ourselves. At least I did, around 2001, after a 9 year stint as a corp programmer. It's been 16 years of doing my own thing. Recently, I tried a couple year stint at a web-shop and found a complete inability to give a sh1t about someone else's company or objectives. So, I quit and went back to doing my own thing. It was really nice doubling up on the salary, but honestly, I value my freedom and ability to work on whatever I want.
I am in my 70s working for a utility. I am still coding, mostly in perl but some python and vbs, and loving it. I am coding in Linux and windoze. Some of my old programs are still being used on almost an hourly basis 40 years later. I still enjoy the work and had my first computer coding experience in 1963.
Some of the programs are very technical like emf forces, but I see an increasing need for apps which manipulate and analyze data in ways canned software can't or monitor and send email alerts.
I suggest looking into non-software companies needing computer work, then learning as much as you can about the user's needs and how to support them. You have to keep up with what is available and the best tools you can select from. B204 Datatron or CDC machine language won't do it anymore and you have to learn to do things simply and communicate.
In retrospec, I believe it is better to stay focus within one field of technology (system level, managemnt system, sys-admin, etc).
I think one of the problem of seasoned programmer that keeps learning new technology on many computer fields is that our skills become too broad and not very specific...
Just turn 40, smarter and gaining more wisdom over the years in terms of work/life balance.
Start to see myself on young kids where I used to be abused by anti-family companies that only hires young people, working 60-80 hrs a week on my 20's, switch jobs every 3-4 years
due to instability, seeking new technologies and learning new skills.
In the same position as you, a soldier on the front line. Start out working on mom-and-pop kernel/os/drivers shop and start moving up to networking,
cloud services, C, move on to C++, java, python and now management-system with java script/python or whatever language as long as it pays well.
While it is good to keep learning and know about this and that on the surface level but over the years, I've learned that the skills become too broad.
Seeing how people have beeen working for 10-20 years with the same company, have a lot of regrets for swapping jobs.
at an online paperclip manufacturing facility
Databases - Accounting
Networking - Help Desk (Sometimes a lead position, but rarely)
Acronym Work (Any job where you have 4 or more acronyms that describe the position) - Operations Management
Hardware - Turn your hobby into a side business and retire early running that until your old enough to actually retire
Programming - Set up your own shop doing side coding or do some freelance work otherwise I hope you like sitting at the Help Desk
Side note - I did Freelance work for a while ( www.freelancer.com ). I made some money, but the hassle and amount of work was not what I enjoyed. YMMV, but freelancing is an option.
There are pockets where old developers still hang on.
I'm early 60s. I'm still fully employed, still programming. I have resisted all offers of management positions, and they stopped coming around 55. I'm thinking of retiring in 3 years. The guy in the office next to me is 70. He might retire next year. The guy in the office on my other side is late 50s. He might retire in about 5 years. I've been in the same company for 20 years. Kind of telco. The work is still interesting, mostly Python and Java. I am training my replacement, but the best way of easing a replacement in is rewriting all the old C stuff into Python and modernising it. Once I am done with that, it will be time for me to go.
Some became a combination of software trainers and customer support experts. Enterprise software doesn't have an intuitively usable UI, and thus requires regular training or specialized expertise to effectively use.
Some did complete career changes. A couple went to law school, and became lawyers who actually could understand the technology they litigated. One guy I know went back to school and now works on national energy policy, and he uses his software skills to create simulations to support research
And of course some did successfully move into management of one sort or another: software team management, program management, client relations.
"Evolved" into Infrastructure service management. Although I don't miss coding anymore, I realize I should have changed to another field such as mechanical engineering which is something I really like. Too late., middle forties and no savings. We don't have 401k here neither I received the right advice for saving when I should.
At least my hobbies (electronics, CNC, drums, metal working, wood working) separate me from the insane.
Been programming for 40+ years. Always learning the latest and getting things done. Now managing, but I find I'm less tolerant of the same issues, choices, decisions and errors that re-occurs. If the project is thought out or the direction planned, then life is good, but if not, it's just not fun any more. I have more enjoyable things I can be doing and have decided to start doing them. I will not miss the code as life is much richer than cube / office life.
Only 6 months left to go...
The best advice is to max out your 401K and save. There are 60+ year old engineers, but we are the ones that last, most do not.
I wanted to make video games as a kid. It seemed that most programming jobs were mostly about filling/reading databases or reports. I eventually realized I didn't want to do that, and have been in education since then. Either English(in Taiwan as a foreign language) or math.
Botox and hair dye can hid a lot. You just think you are the oldest programmer in the room. Just announce that software running on 40 year old hardware needs to be replaced or the company goes under and we'll appear.
They go to the Cobol Support Forums
Laid off and replaced with incompetent but cheap visa workers.
God, reading the responses to this question reminds me why I got out of tech.
What the submitter asked was, of all of you old folks who bailed on the tech industry, where did you go? What are you doing now?
Yet, what are the majority of the responses? “Well, I’m a super rock star, so I’m still rocking it at age 52.” Or, “only losers can’t handle it.”
Fuck. It’s like the industry only attracts Donald Trump types now. It went from being populated by socially challenged, but decent, nerds to sociopathic, hipster narcissists in the space of just a decade.
Interesting new suggestion to me: train yourself in domain knowledge?
How would one go about doing that in a practical way? Or getting recognized for it on a resume?
I've seen a LOT of programmers decide to become lawyers. They'll work for about a decade in the field and then decide to go become a lawyer one day.
My first programming job was in 1969.
Since then, I've only programmed for tax-exempt, scientific organizations -- doing original R&D.
It works for me very well.
I'm 61. Started working full time in the field in 1976 when I was 19. It has always been my and my spousal unit's goal to retire at 60. She officially retired just days after her 60th birthday. For me, it's more complicated. I've been self-employed since 2006, owning the S-corp through which I do contracting work. At the end of 2016, I wrapped up the team project I'd been working on for almost a couple of years for one of my biggest clients (an in-flight entertainment system and cabin router for business aircraft) and happily walked away. But a couple of weeks ago they approached me about a new project. I was weak and said yes. So shortly I will return to full-time work. Don't have to work. But like working.
When I'm not working, I routinely work on side projects. All my code is on GitHub and is licensed under one open source license or another. I write about my projects in a blog. Three times so far I've been invited to give talks about my work; they're on YouTube. So even when I'm not working, I kinda like to keep busy and get my hands dirty.
My field is embedded software development. I like to say that I'm not a hardware person, but to do my job I have to have a hardware person on speed dial. Seeing people in this line of work in their 50s and 60s is very very common in my experience. Virtually none of the younger folks seem interested in the low-level close-to-bare-metal, device driver or micro controller software and firmware development, mostly in C. This worries me.
I am an example of an old programmer. My career has had its ups and downs. I saw my first computer in 1963, and on my way up I worked as a System Programmer for a university and a military contractor, then as a Software Engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation. On my way down I was a System Programmer for a local government, a help desk jockey for a small company, a technical support part-time temp who was lucky to get an hour of work a week, and a security guard at a shopping mall.
As I started back up I did technical support for a hospital and now, at age 72, for a big multinational corporation.
Some old programmers have died, some have retired, some are in senior positions in the industry and some are working in obscure roles. The next time you see a greybeard working security in a shopping mall, or an old coot operating the microphone mixer at your local community theatre production, realize that you might be looking at someone who wrote the first FORTRAN compiler, or designed the Ethernet protocol, or built the first pipelined IEEE 754 math chip.
Trying to find work, smaller companies, temp gigs, selling your house in Silicon Valley (or NYC) and moving to lower wage and price places, where the company doesn't care about being hip, and putting the extra 750K in the bank
I learned on mainframes and punch cards in the late 70's, and now doing full stack and python development at a health care startup (my 3rd startup job). Everything I've done in the past contributes to what I can do next. I take pride in my continuous personal development, with machine learning and IoT being my current emphasis. My last boss was 25, extremely competent and appreciative of the breadth of my skills. Hired for iOS development, I easily pivoted to full stack, with some C++ and even a little hardware driver coding. In addition I provide welcome advise on management, process, legal and industry issues. But, getting hired at this age is a significant challenge. You'll be filtered out from the very start and questioned on your skills, stamina and even ability to learn. Getting the first interview seems impossible without a direct personal connection. Although startups can be hard to get in to as an enterprise, thats where our wisdom and experience can really shine.
I know a lot of older programmers.
No one will hire them.
Much cheaper to hire a guy on a visa and tell him he will be sent back to his country if he does not work 90 hours a week.
Two programmers I know are pulling out of their 401Ks to pay for food, medical insurance, etc.
One is a real estate agent, but only making a tiny income from that.
One is now an Uber/Lyft driver.
One moved back in with his mother at age 49.
One met me for lunch, but asked if we can eat at a place with a dollar menu.
Ten years ago at age 42 I landed in the insurance industry somewhat by accident and here I have remained. It may sound boring but there is a continual stream of work to do because of changing government regulations, etc. I have learned that I prefer working in an environment where the feature list is generally cut and dried, unlike my commercial software development experience where we would often chase features based on a whim of the marketing department, features that ultimately nobody wanted.
Never a manager; rarely a team lead.
Just a grunt programmer/developer for over 41 years, and still working.
Sane stable businesses that demand high quality work at normal work hours. Typically business that does not revolve around VC money and the latest IT buzzwords.
Being buried 9-edge down!!
(If you never used punched cards to write software you'll have no fuckin' idea what I'm talking about...)
It's hard to see myself tiring of making new things when I'm still in my 30s.
I do a lot of things.
I make digital and traditional art. I model in 3D. I play around in Unity. I make tiny apps to organize my life. I've written fiction. (No manuals yet.)
I don't ever see that stopping entirely.
I still find it hard to see an end to that.
I suspect it creeps in slowly. Each new technology might begin to sound tiring. They all promise to solve one problem or another and not many of them ever solve the human problems that are usually the biggest failings in any kind of human-readable computer language. So maybe you skip out on learning the new things. Just keep hacking away at the old stuff. Sooner or later your skills are mostly in dead languages.
But I still find it hard to imagine myself doing that. Even if I give it a few years before hopping on to a new programming language, having such a depth and breadth of knowledge in languages already it's super easy to grok new ones. If some prospective employer wants me to code in "latestHotness.js" or something, I'll just read up on it.
Those of us who are in our 40s now are part of Generation X. The other name for Generation X was "Baby Busters", meaning there was a sizable drop in the birth rate starting in 1965 (the first year of Generation X). So you probably aren't seeing very many of your age peers around simply because there are literally fewer of us. Plus, the Baby Boomers (mostly those who are 50+) are starting to retire, which would obviously explain why you don't see very many "grey hairs" around.
Plus, I'm fairly certain there's a good amount of ageism in the industry. I had absolutely no problem finding tech jobs when I was in my 20s, even though I didn't have a degree (only some college). But after I turned 30 (which happened to coincide with the dot-com bust), I couldn't find a job to save my life. Even years after the dot-com bust and things started to recover, I couldn't find work.
Now I freelance. I do what I like and I don't have to deal with people's personality defects on a daily basis. I don't make nearly as much as I did when I was in my 20s, but I'm still doing what I love and I get to hang on to my sanity. I just started a new contract with a tech start-up, and it's entirely possible I'm the oldest person doing work for that company. Most everyone else are 20-somethings.
fall to bits
I just started looking at getting in to farming (real farming) with the eventual departure from software engineering... holy crap.
After 15 years of coding websites, intranets and extranets in Perl our whole department got outsourced/replaced by indians (the asian type, not native americans). Luckily we got 1 month of salary for every year we worked at the company (I did 23 years), but unluckily i was to young/energetic to retire at that age (50), and the money was not sufficient anyway to bridge the years until 67.
I gave my whole transition allowance (7500 euro) to a small company so they could teach me Drupal/PHP. PHP is a breeze after 15 years of Perl. After 1,5 years I switched to a bigger company also doing Drupal and PHP. After 1,5 year and 3 contracts there they let me go to avoid giving me a permanent contract. I then did a 4 month contract in CodeIgniter (didn't like it, but I did improve their regular expressions from 48% effective to 95%) and 8 months of unemployment. 1 nov i will start a new Drupal PHP job, now 54,7 years old. I ran the stairs with my 30 year old boss-to-be to the 4th floor during the interview and won. It's a startup of 6 directors and I will be employee #1, twice the age of each of the others.
They were going to give me a MacBookPro, but I refused and convinced them I just needed a Core i3 NUC (with 16GB memory) with a 43" 4K screen and PhpStorm. I wil put Linux Mint on it, just like I have at home. I think they agreed because MacBookPros are so expensive nowadays.
I still have not touched my golden handshake money which I invested in 50% ETFs, 40% cash and 10% crowdfunding. If this job works out fine it will be my last job before I retire at 60, 7 years before the official retirement age of 67 in the Netherlands. I requested 30 days holiday annually so i could get used to more free time already. I even found mesome hobbies already for when I retire. Making my own Limoncello liquer and building cyclekarts.
I retired at 59 after almost 40 years of software development, culminating in 10 years being part of a great team of people developing an algorithmic high speed trading system on wall st. I max-ed out my 401k every year and retired fairly early with enough money to live frugally (relative to previous lifestyle).
I now live in a quiet waterfront home surrounded by farmland.
I go crabbing and have caught 1502 crabs so far this season.
I roast coffee as a loss-making hobby/business. I wrote some custom software for my coffee business that tracks everything and even is hooked via a thermocouple on my roaster to record roasting profiles.
I traded a horrible commute for the following stress-free early morning ritual. On warm mornings, I drink coffee on my dock and watch the wildlife. On cold mornings, I drink coffee in my outdoor hot tub and watch the wildlife.
I tell my kids about the tortoise and the hare: the hare (almost) never wins. Slow and steady rocks.
So this is what can happen when a programmer gets old. Persevere and good fortune will happen. Good luck to you all.
You're coming up on the age where if you're fired or leave, you're done. Sure, you *MIGHT* be able to be employed again, however you're likely expensive and not up on the latest stuff. They'll pass you over. Under-qualified or the dreaded - "overqualified." It can get real ugly. I'm over 50 myself and it's a real concern.
Go into other areas. Open up a store, real estate, management, etc. You don't really want to code anymore, do you? I have a lot of holdings. I could go into many areas. You need to find something, soon. If you want to stay, you must keep up on the latest stuff and be a real asset. Otherwise, the door is always there to show you when the time comes.
I have been in the industry for 32 years coding for 20 of those years. I now work as a PM managing delivery. I like to think that my experience and insight means that I understand enough to keep my projects out of the shit and my team happy. I am the second oldest in my company after the chairman but it doesn't stop people 20 years younger seeking advice. It still raises a smile on the 20-somethings' faces when the old man engages in discussions of frameworks, patterns and automation. I satisfy my inner geek by hacking code at the weekend when I get a chance. Don't give up. Create a plan of action and make something happen. Grey != useless.
At 51 I'm still in the game but thats only because I've already changed careers once in my early 30s to I.T. I understand some of the comments here where people feel that they are just fixing the same problems with different technology. I ended up in management in a former career which is why I left it and went in software and have resisted the move to management ever since. Definitely getting harder to keep up with the new technology because a) I'm not as adaptable as I used to be and b) I'm not as driven but seriously frustrated with the younger guys desire to label everything old as useless and irrelevant and then I watch them make the same mistakes I did 20 years ago. There seems to be that dire philosophy of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' but that was probably the same 20 years ago when us Java guys were labeling the COBOL guys as useless. I'll probably retire as a coder because it's still lucrative but I tell you what... that farm is looking mighty attractive!!!
I worked as Programmer/QA for many Years. Now I am running a YouTube channel. I feel comfortable in running the youtube channel.
33 years in the business...not my age, you idiot. I'm 55.
My creds to talk. 74 now. I was first told I was old in my 40's, looked old by 50's, felt young enough at 60 to join a startup. Bad move. On the street when funding got pulled (cudos to the capitalists. The technical case for the product fell apart a few years later so they would never have made money) But on the street the gray hair didn't help me find work. Point one: *max out your 401k*. I could have packed it in at 60 financially but I had a health condition. So point two: after 5 months I found a job on the accidental coincidence that the web product I built for the startup company was similar to a utility that you'll now see on a government site. On that basis, I got a contract for the last few years of my career until Medicare kicked in. So my hint: know what you have done already cold and be ready to talk about it. So when you sniff out some related project on the table for a potential employer you can pitch yourself. Then it is just a matter of finding a hiring authority who isn't prejudiced against age. Don't feel bad. You could be handicapped by a female identity.
Hi. Have u heard about McFly? I accidentally found it
Blockchain-powered software platform for eVTOLs - flying vehicles with electric engines and vertical take-off/landing (like drones, but larger and able to carry people). (from its site: https://goo.gl/7m29tE)
What do u think?
58 years old now, started in IT in 1977.
Why stop?
One way to avoid the "nobody will hire old guys" problem -- be the boss.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Now at Amazon at 59. Enjoying it most days. There are plenty of older developers here bu..t not many as old as me. I'm hoping to work another few years, maybe join a 30-hour-a-week team after a while.