Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

The article&#x27;s way of using &quot;ageism&quot; in the lede, and their title, both seem odd, and seem to confuse the real issue of what I think what most people mean by &quot;ageism&quot;.<p>There seems to be a substantial tech industry aversion to hiring developers in 40s (sometimes 30s) or older.<p>But if you suggest that developers in their 40s expect salary to keep growing without limit, that fuels hairtrigger resentment arguments about how those people are just greedy and unrealistic, and that that&#x27;s the cause of any &quot;ageism&quot; they perceive.<p>That would be a diversion from legitimate issues of people getting their resumes illegally screened for age, interview tests targeted at people with CS101 fresh in mind, rejecting candidates for &quot;culture fit&quot; (not just over-20s, but women, certain ethnicities&#x2F;racial backgrounds, unapproved sex&#x2F;gender identification), etc.

No this is not ageism. After a certain point, if you are an individual contributor, your value is not worth more than someone with less experience.<p>A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience. I also believe that the idea of the 10x <i>developer</i> while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies.<p>I speak as someone in my mid 40s who has been at this professionally for 20+ years [1].<p>I’m debating whether I want to take the next step of consulting or just stay in development. I see my salary hitting a ceiling in the next two or three years and I think I am okay with that.<p>[1] well for all intents and purposes maybe 12 years. I stagnated for a few years and became an “expert beginner”.

Honest question: is this actually ageism or is it business cost-benefit analysis in action? You could argue that the benefit to the company of experience for a tech worker is only worth a maximum of X dollars. After that point, the company is better off hiring younger, <i>cheaper</i> employees with lower expectations than it is continuing to give raises, benefits, etc. to older workers.<p>I would expect a salary plateau to be a natural result of the above + supply and demand in the market. Maybe that’s what the term ageism has come to mean (not its original definition)?

The bigger issue for us Olds is that we have serious financial and family responsibilities that make us highly undesirable employees in today&#x27;s modern &quot;I&#x27;ve got mine! Fuck you!&quot; society.<p>Imagine that you have a close family member with Stage 4 cancer. Who wants to have you on their team? Nobody, that&#x27;s who. And you better be living in a jurisdiction with solid legal protections, or they will fire you in a hot second.<p>That is a far greater concern than salary stagnation.

Based on the findings I think it is premature to say this is ageism.<p>There are multiple other factors going on here:<p>1) As senior developers become more skilled there is a diminishing return in terms of compensation. This happens regardless of age. A developer with 40 years of experience is not really worth that much more than a developer with 30 years of experience.<p>2) As developers get nearer towards retirement there is less incentive for them to stay at the top of their field.<p>3) As developers get older they tend to want to find a place they enjoy working at rather than playing the salary game every 2 years.

1. There are diminishing returns to experience within software development, as you get more experience there are fewer and fewer companies that have any use for those extra years of experience.<p>2. The <i>perceived</i> value of that extra experience is even lower. How many recruiters or even engineering managers can honestly claim to be able to leverage the last 5 years of experience from someone with 20+ years?<p>3. In most industries your salary stagnates much earlier than that unless you transition to a management role, and I think it is safe to say that developers are much less keen on taking that step than say bankers.

I work with a lot of folks over 40, the two things I&#x27;ve seen that make me doubt ageism studies -- especially in tech, is that older engineers on average seem less likely to consider new technologies, and older engineers are more concerned about day to day stability and are less risk averse to consider another job which may pay higher because they have kids in school, mortgage, etc.

A similar discussion on ageism can be found at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20252097" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20252097</a>

Ageism is the consequence of high birth rates. If many young people are available at low prices, why would you pay more for an older worker ? You can&#x27;t have everything, have three children and then asking for a high salary. There are choices to be made in life.

I think generally current startup hiring discriminates in hiring for post vs pre internet age programmers and that could possibly account for the statistical differences in salary for developers that didn’t spend their entire careers under the current paradigm.

This is why you should always try and save at least 30% from every paycheck. Assuming you start working at 21, you should then have enough invested to live off the passive income by the time you reach 49.

&gt; <i>In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually.</i><p>I don&#x27;t know where they are getting their data but that&#x27;s a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;levels.fyi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;levels.fyi</a> that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely.<p>I don&#x27;t necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn&#x27;t see a single offer over $150k.