They take up farming, of course. Having explored the most 'modern' parts of society they're ready for a new challenge. Also, having dealt with virtuality for so long it is time for a dose of reality.<p>Me, I bought a farm in Sweden. Harvest is in, manure has been spread, looking to grow my first 'beer crop' (barley and hops) within a few years. The forest needs some attention but that is what winter is for.<p>What comes around, goes around. Programmers (and developers and architects and others of similar ilk) turn to the land while farmers are surrounding themselves with technology. GPS-controlled tractors, milk robots, ID-based cow feeders, etc. Horticulture is being robotised. Forestry will go that route soon enough, with clear-cut harvest being replaced by individual tree harvesting.
To work is where I go (59). You won't meet a lot of people like me because when I started (1981) there were way fewer programmers than today plus some became obsolete, some became managers, and some got burned out. So the chances of meeting someone like me if you started in the past decade is not high. This of course makes it hard to decide how much age discrimination there is as it's hard to quantify, unlike gender for example. For me I got this job based on a manager from a previous job needing here what he already knew I could do.
They find companies that value their experience and don't just hire those who already know how to use all the shiny things. They do independent consulting after spending years building their reputation as someone who delivered for past co-workers and managers. They go to mature mid-market or large companies where those in management and hiring are perhaps a few years older as well. Sometimes they need to retool<p>Anyone thrust into the job market for the first time in several years (say 10+) might find it somewhat unrecognizable. Job search has changed significantly in the ~20 years I've been in recruiting.<p>I've developed a bit of a niche business in helping older programmers (I'm 44) "rehabilitate" themselves and prepare to enter a job search (writing/reviewing resumes, consult on job search strategy, etc.). It's mostly people who don't want to go into management and still want to stay in the code.<p>I can only think of a few people that left the industry entirely, out of thousands (I also ran a Java Users Group for 15 years, which has a large contingent of older programmers).
I'm 55 this year, still programming. And I still love it ... well, I love trying new things.<p>One of my friends that I started my first job with is now at the CTO level, while I keep turning down opportunities to "advance" into management. Another friend of mine quit after the Senior Director level because he started hating his life, and went back to programming/embedded engineering for the fun of it.<p>Age does make you wonder if you were turned down for an offer because of subconscious ageism, but I am not aware of rampant problems with it.<p>You do have to be careful to give everybody's proposals a chance, instead of just pattern-matching to something awful in your past.<p>Keeping an open mind is a discipline.<p>Having kids helps you rediscover what you once loved, helps you recover from jaded oldsterism.
I'm 66, started programming 40 years ago, and I'm not going anywhere!<p>Seriously, I love what I do and will continue programming as long as possible. I'm addicted to learning and the satisfaction of good, clean, simple code that gets the job done.
A related phenomenon is that programmers have no collective identity to rely on (or uphold). The struggle of the classes and the topic of the bigger social good is relatively meaningless to them. They can't put a finger on these issues, they belong to other classes. Programmers are by nature but also by nurture very much individuals, and as individuals, without nurturing collectivity, they are easily manipulated and put against each other.<p>So programmers don't work on socially relevant or desirable problems, but on some relatively obscure scalability issue that exists only inside a few internet behemoths. They need soldiers, not wisdom.<p>With these employers dominating the marketplace, socially relevant innovations take a back seat. Society doesn't help either, as open source sadly isn't tax funded (because tax-fundedness is a pivotal privilige of the disfunctional political class).<p>So being a programmer often is (cor)related to the strength of youth, and youth ends at 40.<p>However, no craftsman worth his salt loses his abilities, instead he has experience about what works and what doesn't, and becomes more effective at what he does. He doesn't run trying to catch his own tail.<p>For example this guy here, at <a href="https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/" rel="nofollow">https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/</a>. What he and his team have done is a work of beauty and is the fruit of experience and intuition.<p>The young and the old work together.
At about 40, it <i>does</i> start to get more difficult to get hired. And by 50, it is all but hopeless.<p>And the salary offered begins to go down at 40 too. Sharply after 44 or so.<p>Where I am now, at 51, I have had to learn to get by on what I was making as a SysAdmin 20 mumble years ago. But at least I have a job. Before getting my current job I was having to learn to get by without a place to live too.
There aren't that many older programmers because they are diluted by the large numbers of younger programmers in a growing field.<p>Even if everyone who was employed in a software dev role in 1975 or even 1985 were still employed in a software dev role today, they would be so outnumbered by younger people as to be a statistical blip. (Whoa, age discrimination!)<p>Also, older people will tend not to suddenly switch to software development. The major entry path is through young people becoming developers. Most people over 50 in development are people who were 20-something in development, possibly younger. So how many 50-somethings there are in dev has mostly to do with how many 20-somethings were in dev thirty years ago. It could be different if large numbers of non-dev 50-somethings suddenly retrained as devs, but they don't.
At 49 I am still coding and still learning. I architected and implemented node.js services this year and have done lots of interesting modern web development. I am well respected within my organization and in fact have been poached from one team for another.<p>Ageist hiring practices are a reality, but not all companies are so biased. And you could not pay me enough to go into management. I want to make things. Perhaps that is why I am still viable.
They become architects / development managers / product managers / pre-sales engineers / professional services consultants / founders of startups / project managers / security advisors / dev ops managers / tech recruiters / biz dev managers / even sales...
These articles are getting old. Pardon the pun.<p>The main reason older programmers are so under-represented is that the field has grown exponentially over the past 2 decades. With ever larger influxes of college grads the previous smaller cohorts get more and more diluted across the industry.<p>> "Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35," Matloff writes. ... "Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40," Matloff continues ... (Matloff declines to mention which statistics he's reading.)<p>So basically he's spouting BS to match his talking point.<p>IMO, older programmers who have done good work in the past are at a major advantage: we have a network of former co-workers who can speak to our abilities better than any whiteboard interview can and who can alert their managers/recruiters that we are someone worth going after.<p>I realize my experience is anecdotal, however having made two job changes in my 40s, my experience could not be more different from what Matloff implies:<p>- When chatting with former co-workers, if I even remotely hint at considering a switch, I have their recruiters kicking down my door the next day.<p>- I have employers skip phone screens to get me into a loop faster in the hopes of getting a jump on other potential employers.<p>- I've had some offers without interviewing both times I was looking for my next gig. Other offers' interviews felt like formalities because they had to have a loop in the big company HR system.<p>- I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate age from my profile.<p>- etc., etc.<p>It doesn't feel like "employability starts to decline at about age 35" from where I'm sitting. And lest I be labelled some special outlier, I have a good number of friends & former co-workers in the mid-40s age bracket who are having similar experiences.<p>The fact that a handful of SV startup bros only want to hire their long-lost twins doesn't make the bulk of the industry old-programmer-averse.
Many of us still work. I am in my 60s and I still work about 20 hours a week. I love designing and writing code, and I also do software maintenance and devops, and I write about one computer science book a year (working on two right now: one on Haskell and one on Cognitive Science).<p>I don't earn the very high salary that I used to earn, but that is OK because I am doing what I want to do.
Mid 40s here. architecting/engineering Java monstrosities by day (although it's not too bad lately - fat jars/docker etc), hacking on some personal pet projects with newer tech (been getting into Elm and some Haskell lately) by night.
Michigan!!<p>Worked in the SE of England as a programmer for 20 years, moved to being a tester ( had 20 years experience of how things could go wrong) then moved away from the rat race commute of London to low-cost of living Michigan and couldn't be happier.<p>Currently learning how to program mobile apps so that I can test them better
GTFO of "the valley" and you can have a very productive career past your 40's. Seriously, I know this is HN, but the world doesn't revolve around SJ and SF.
I have a question for all the veteran devs out there.<p>How do you keep from getting burned out on the mismanagement that plagues our industry?<p>Is it personal perseverance?
Are you just super selective with what jobs you take?
Is the love of building something stronger than any feelings of frustration with poor management?
The part of the article that really rings true for me is the part about specialization. Certainly a lot move into management of one sort of another (line, product, project). Some move into "architect" roles or CTO offices where they apply their wisdom (and biases) to affecting technical direction other than by actually coding. However, many still remain in coding roles, but the coding tends to be more specialized:<p>* Outside of tech companies, in other orgs with their own specific tech needs (e.g. financial or scientific).<p>* More infrastructure, less user-facing.<p>* More "old school" like embedded/OS work.<p>I'm 51, and I specialize in storage. Consistent with this pattern, I've had many colleagues and collaborators in their 40s and 50s (after that it really does get pretty thin). We might be less visible than people doing the mobile/VR/ML kinds of stuff that are en vogue in the Silicon Valley VC/YC ecosystem, but many of us are still in high demand. There are even headhunters who specialize in facilitating such hires. They don't focus explicitly on age, but their focus on specific domains often results in a greyer-than-average contact list. You just have to know where to look.
An article that contains a bunch of anedotes to refute another article that contains a bunch of anecdotes. Hmm...<p>I want to see the data of where they go and determine from that.
I work in a place where I'm in the low end of the age spectrum at 30. The company is in the Financial industry and was founded in the 70s. It has a long history of using technology so many engineers started 10-20+ years ago. The company offers great benefits and salary are above average which is what I think many of the engineers here optimized for when coming to work here. That's also what I felt led a lot of the engineers I worked with in my previous job for one of the big tech companies to leave after 5 years or so. Most of them ended up taking jobs with companies which seemed to offer better work life balance and benefits.<p>A lot of them also ended up in management. Some because it was the only path available for advancement. Many orgs just don't have (or make) space for distinguished engineers and the career path for SE ends at the senior level to which most can attend in less then 5-10 years. After that there is nowhere to go for them but management. Another issue is the demand for distinguished engineers is lower since you need less of them then junior and senior devs so it's a limited pool of jobs.
To me, it has become easier to find work when I approached 40. I'm 42 now, and I've had plenty of co-workers who were older than that. Any company that refuses more experienced programmers is foolish.<p>My dad retired as a professional programmer a few years ago. He started in the 1970s, and had been doing a lot of Java before his retirement. He's occasionally doing some work on an open source project now.
I have yet to meet a recruiter that wasn't desperate for demonstrated talent. Every corporate shop i've seen has older programmers doing the real work and younger programmers paying the tech debt and building UI.<p>I think most of these articles are focused on startup culture and marque companies. (ie. 1% of the market)
Does anyone have hard numbers on what the cohorted attrition is for programmers? Ie, of the individuals employed as programmers 10 years ago, what percent are still employed in programming? 20 years ago? 30 years ago?<p>I've tried to search for this, but I think my google-fu's not up to snuff.
54 yr old here, 32 of experience in programming. Working on a startup, learning something new every day. Never short of offers, grateful for that and for having a rewarding profession.
They take up farming, coffee brewing, bagle cooking, photography, anything that doesn't involve a computer screen directly streaming nightmares into your brain 18 hours a day.
I'm 40, and I'm just getting <i>started</i> as a software developer after years doing other sorts of IT things (networking, tech support, sysadmin, etc).
Just how many new programmers were produced between the years 1975 to 1985? Not a whole lot. That's why you don't see too many old programmers around, because they were pioneers in a new field. They are still around but they get lost in the crowd of new younger and less-experienced programmers.
> you'll probably check the box next to "project manager" instead of "software developer"<p>Actually that's a demotion as far as I can tell.