I think there are some caveats to this though. I have been programming for 7 years now. By year 5 I had senior software engineer on my business cards because most of the other programmers I worked with had less experience than that. I have chosen to stay technical but I think a lot of people start to choose to go into management by the time they are my age (30). I do not know if in 10 years from now there will be many older programmers than there are now just because as you get older and more experienced opportunities come. I happen to be the only programmer where I'm at now and I'm client site so I can stay technical but when I worked in the programming shop they expected the more senior developers to write the SAD's, SDD's, SRD's and much of the high level deliverables. They were also expected to help younger developers to learn as well as to help out managers with proposals and work with other divisions as SME's. By the time you were done with everything you were lucky if you found a couple hours a day to work on development.
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I think there are some caveats to this though. I have been programming for 7 years now. By year 5 I had senior software engineer on my business cards because most of the other programmers I worked with had less experience than that. I have chosen to stay technical but I think a lot of people start to choose to go into management by the time they are my age (30). I do not know if in 10 years from now there will be many older programmers than there are now just because as you get older and more experienced opportunities come. I happen to be the only programmer where I'm at now and I'm client site so I can stay technical but when I worked in the programming shop they expected the more senior developers to write the SAD's, SDD's, SRD's and much of the high level deliverables. They were also expected to help younger developers to learn as well as to help out managers with proposals and work with other divisions as SME's. By the time you were done with everything you were lucky if you found a couple hours a day to work on development.