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Salaries For Workers in Technology Roles, Including Software Engineers and Product Managers, Peak Around Age 45 (hired.com)
A report released on Thursday by the job marketplace Hired reveals that salaries for workers in technology roles, including software engineers, product managers, and data analysts, peak around age 45. After that, earnings level off or drop until retirement. According to the report, the average salary of US technology workers is about $135,000, with the highest pay in the San Francisco area.
While it quite possible to have your salary bump 10% per year on average in your late 20's / early 30's, it's not like that could continue forever. Once you reach a Senior Architect / Manager / Director / VP role by your 40's there isn't much room to grow for most people. Sure a select few will become executives or successful entrepreneurs, but that is not possible for everyone.
Having your salary peak at around $150k and then only keep up with inflation isn't that bad of a thing. Plenty of professions are worse off (actually nearly all professions).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Rising health care costs and a desire on corporations to avoid training workers (it costs money and corporations fear they'll leave) drive many IT workers from the field at about age 50.
It spiked up after the supreme court gutted age discrimination protection in 2009.
Likewise, younger workers have open said on slashdot that older workers "don't fit their culture".
Which would be amazingly blunt if they said, "black workers don't fit our culture" or "female workers don't fit our culture".
Google actually approached the same 41 year old female engineer 4 times because their automated software was selecting her was a highly qualified candidate and younger human managers repeatedly rejected her. I'm not sure how her lawsuit turned out. So 41 is too old for some managers at Google.
Thing is .. everyone gets older every day. And I've known 64 year old java programmers who programmed the pants off younger workers with a few years experience.
The best thing you can do is to save hard and take any training opportunities you can get. Then also self train in what little spare time you have after the historically longer than average IT work weeks. Eventually, unless you are lucky, all the training in the world won't help because some young managers won't care about your skill set and simply say you are "too old". That's when you retire early on your savings.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
When it comes to the difference between the trades and college paths I am reminded of the story of three friends, of which I am one. We met in a community college trade program. All three of us were recently out of the military and drew together.
We had a similar starting point; but ended in different places. One of us went directly into a trade, repairing office equipment. Another bounced around a bit between various county and state technical jobs until he started his own HVAC business.
The friend who started his business was able to do it because his mother poured, quite literally, everything she had into his business to get him started. I remember delivering some of her personal jewelry to be sold in order to raise money for his business. He is now doing ok. We are all now in our 50s and he is pretty much completely broken down from the physical demand of his job. However, financially he is now stable (and has a lot of great guns, I love going out to his place just to see what he has added to his collection).
The other friend tried to stay in Office equipment too long. As he got older his numbers declined and he was let go right about 50. For reasons not understood by me, he decided to take that “opportunity” to get his college degree in a field that doesn’t hire people over 35 unless they are entering with a tremendous amount of experience. He is now delivering pizzas and struggling to hold onto his house.
Me, I saw the writing on the wall. Right around the time the company I was working for canceled the defined benefits pension program I looked around and realized that I saw no old guys. I went back to college and got my BA and eventually my MBA. I am not tall or good looking, I lack family connections and there was no way I could afford an expensive internship. I came from one of Americas poverty areas and, without question, it is part of who I am.
I was able to get a job teaching and took the accreditation over a period of a couple of years of evening courses. I now work as a teacher in rural district that, due to the number of immigrants, has many very urban problems.
What does this short biography have to do with the trades? Of the three of us one made it in the trades, mostly because his family had the resources to prop him up as long as it took to become stable. One just plain left, bounced around and left the trades. The other tried to stay until he was pushed out.
Those promoting trades, look around. Do you see many old guys in that trade? How many 60 year olds? How many 70 year olds? As we push up the national retirement age who is going to hire that 70 year old?
I do not think trades are wrong, what I think is wrong is how our society treats tradesmen. As long as people are nothing but disposable cogs to be discarded once they are worn I am concerned about the pure trades’ path. It can, and I think should, be part of a person’s life