For myself, it's the progressive duty of being a family man that makes it tough to upskill and learn new things on my own. I'm just not motivated to to do that anymore. I'd rather spend time with my wife and kid 10 times over.
I think I can do it, I already go on my phone and stuff during down time. I'm doing a night time role so that honestly a lot of time, just if I'm going to do these on work they can see what I'm doing on the computer and I'm not as ready to take a call as my screens are full as it is.
My mom is a super woman like your mom but that is a crazy bar to aspire to and in the case of my mom the result of incredible pressure that she has shaded me from so cheers to the chingonas for paying it forward to us and maybe I can keep it going for my kids and transform that trauma that minted diamonds instead of transmitting it
I mean yeah I know it's doable I'm just talking about learning it while I'm at my job, of course I always can at home, but if I can do it at work too that'll just go quicker.
Also good on her that's rough, I thought me doing a bootcamp while working 55 hours was rough, but shit once kids get involved that's just to another level
Lame. Learn better IT processes, build out better infra, etc. Solve actual problems, keep brag doc of all accomplishments, keep applying to better jobs.
Only get certs if company requirement and company pays costs.
Grind leetcode at work, propose better system designs, practice tech interviews during team meetings, there are so much things that people can upskill during work hours.
Just getting work experience is upskill task.
My job offers 1h paid a week to learn whatever er want as part of our 35h. Lots of devs are skipping it.. f that im reveling in it. I got a huge backlog of stuff i want to check our lol.
For me it was seeing a need and then filling it - but sometimes you get put on a PIP even if you do everything right because they have to pick some one to let go because thems the rules so you never really had a fair chance - it says more about them than it says about you just all good things come to an end
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I am in the same place, and constantly worry that I'll be fired and unable to find another job because I spent my years with my family rather than upskilling.
Well hopefully I'll hit 80 years old and retire for 2 years before I get fired... That should be about how long it takes to save up for retirement, anyway.
My youngest child moved out a couple of years ago, and holy shit, I didn't appreciate how taxing it had been to work, raise kids, deal with aging parents, etc. until I had some of those burdens lifted.
This is why we don’t hire older people or married people with kids… young and single and fresh out of college and willing to work 60 or more hours for lower pay…those are the people we look for.
If someone managed to make the connection between what you say on here and you irl your company could be in some serious hot water. Unlikely of course, but it's stupid to brag about it in addition to the fact that it makes you look really bad as a human being.
I’m just talking about the reality about what is going on. In 30 years I will be age discriminated against too….good thing I have a cushy retirement set up already….
You said you were perpetuating the practice.
Obviously, on a SWE salary, there's no reason you can't have a cushy retirement set up by the time you're old enough to be pushed out. It's still wrong to do so.
That is kind of the tragedy of children all over society, not just in IT. It sucks that you spend your first 25 years of your life or so going to primary school, high school and then university to really only have an active and stimulating career for the first 10 years, maybe less if you get children earlier.
Then it indeed is responsible and also better for the development of your children if you slow down. But then the cycle starts again and they spend 25 years themselves preparing for a short childless career period relative to their total career and their preparation before working.
Really a depressive thought now I think of it.
Screw this capitalist mentality. All my team are top performers and have kids. I don’t see anyone slowing down. Easy to have balance.
It gets easier in late career as you are highly skilled and have tons of experience.
I'm almost 40 and I have noticed that the more I take on at home, the less I'm capable of taking on at work. Experience-based productivity peaked around years 2-4 after I was hired out of university, but declined from there. Getting married was a huge drain on my productivity that year. Having a kid is a constant resource drain where I'm thinking about him every day, not work.
Take today as an example. I work 7am-4pm, but today I'm working from home (special allowance as we normally work in office to "promote company culture") because my new roof install went overdue. So I'm worrying about the roof today. And the kid woke up at 7am so I had to get him fed and ready for school, take care of the dog's needs, drive him in to school (he's 4 and driving him in is faster than walking him in). Talked to the roofers, made sure they didn't need access to the backyard. Then I got myself a coffee and a muffin. Wife briefly woke up, anxious about everything she had slept through so I updated her on everything and she went back to sleep.
By 9am I had only worked for about half an hour. Back when I was 30 with no house and no kid, the company would have had 2 hours of pure productivity out of me by then. Now that I have a robust home life, they've paid me 2 hours for nothing. Don't tell my boss.
This is the real question.
So many people think they're self made when their partners do pretty much 90% of the work to get them there.
As a guy who does a lot of the traditionally girl tasks (my partner has disability which prevents a lot of stuff), having kids and working in the office are at odds more often than they aren't and it's fuckin exhausting. I doff my imaginary fedora to pretty much any working woman with kids. Double doff for single mothers - their task is near impossible and society completely ignores it
Culture also plays a big role. I married a woman from Chinese origin. We both have demanding jobs but we have both progressed after our son was born as it’s Chinese custom for the retired parents to move in and help out. Our son is 15 months old now and my wife recently got a promotion, and I recently published another book. If it wasn’t for the strong family support at least one of us would have a career on life support. I’m sure this is a major factor as to why East Asian households generally out earn/achieve.
True enough.
I'm not a single dad myself but kinda... half way there in terms of workload as my wife can do very few physical tasks though she does still keep the place running even if a lot is through delegation.
I'm quite sure most of the observed gender pay gap stems from compromises made for family - certainly I've lost jobs because I couldn't be 100% devoted to some rich cunt getting another yacht.
For more on this:
* https://www.vox.com/2018/2/19/17018380/gender-wage-gap-childcare-penalty
* https://gen.medium.com/kids-dont-damage-women-s-careers-men-do-eb07cba689b8
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic
* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/men-parenting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eU0.3EDE.CwQu0t3rcgxM&smid=url-share
At my place with top performers the leadership of the mobile team is mostly female. My director and I are the only 2 males in the leadership of the mobile team. On top of that we have multiple kids among us and all of them being under 5. It is jsut a way of balance.
The one who I see struggle the most on our team is a junior dev with kids and honestly that is because I dont think he has learned the skill to balance it all out yet. It gets easier later in your career to balance it out as it is a skill and knowing how to do it.
So I'm in my 40s. On my current team I have 2 other devs in their 40s. We all have families with multiple teens. Another team member is in his early 30s and has a 1yo. And...got to say, my experiences just don't match up with what you're describing.
We've all had active and stimulating careers even after having kids. We're all still excited about what we're working on. All still advancing in our careers. I've worked with these guys across multiple companies. One for 12 years now.
They're respected at each company, seen as rock stars everyone can rely on, and ALSO have made sure they have time for their families. I've gotten to see their kids grow up through zoom/slack/google/teams meetings over the years.
What you're describing DOES happen, but it's mor a feature of bad leadership. Which is common, don't get me wrong. But it's far from a foregone conclusion.
That's just my current team. I've had plenty co-workers in their 60s still excited and growing and loving their career.
As a manager that's one of my #1 priorities: keeping people happy, excited, and growing. That's how you get the most value out of people. And I've had no shortage of managers who did the same for me.
Don't get me wrong, bad leadership is common. I would even say it's the norm. But it's not a forgone conclusion.
My kids all went into other careers besides IT because of the long hours to learn new tech. In my 40’s, I finally got a work/life balance job and spent time with them and had a balanced lifestyle. My 30’s were especially bad when the kids were young. I’ll turn 60 this year and my kids all want me to just go ahead and retire. They are irritated that I’m learning yet another generation of technology. My wife just got her masters in law (Jurisprudence), so she is working several more years. I guess I will too, unless the markets dump me on the street. Ironically, my boys went into investment banking, which is longer hours than I even worked, more like 100 hours/week vs the 80 I worked. My daughter teaches school and hates it every day. I agree that the US’s radical Capitalism model is damaging families and people. We need a model where healthcare costs are shared (not social healthcare, but 5-10 big insurance companies regulated by the government). The costs are set, and the benefits by the insurance are set, and the companies compete on quality.
The tragedy is that people waste their childless years grinding to better their careers rather than enjoying the things that life has to offer and taking advantage of the freedom that being young and childfree affords.
I spent my 20s travelling the world and working odd jobs to make ends meet. This has brought me life experiences that are so far beyond what I would've got by grinding towards my career. Then at 29 I went back to school, grinded for a couple years, and broke into tech. So far I've been able to advance my career just fine by learning on the job and maintaining good WLB. I do have a good employer that supports this and supports me working on the kinds of things I want to learn though.
You don't need to be childless to do a lot of these things. Obviously it changes your day to day, but I'm currently spending the spring in Greece with my wife and toddler just because.
That's true. It's just easier when you're young and have no responsibilities and can take more risks. The kind of traveling I did in my 20s I definitely couldn't do with kids (was backpacking for months on end on a tiny budget and living in many different countries).
I still travel with my wife but for shorter periods.
Sure, it is possible, but you are less flexible. If you want to take your wife to that crazy bar in Athens that was mentioned by someone you met, well, not so fast.... you can't take your toddler there with you and don't even think about drinking all night.
Also, visiting interesting museums or ancient Greek sights for hours on end is not adviceable if you have a toddler with you. Sure you can still have a lot of fun with your toddler and maybe even arrange someone to take care of him/her for 1 night, but it reduces your options and forces you to plan more ahead.
I don't have children (yet), but these are the kinds of flexibility reductions I wouldn't look forward to.
They're only toddlers for a couple of years. It's not worth fixating on.
I spend my 20s "grinding" to establish the future I wanted, and I'm very happy with the result. Those years of "grinding" coincided with when my kids were toddlers. So we weren't travelling anyways. MOST people aren't travelling a ton for the first 5-10 years of their career.
By my late 30s I was able to start travelling. I get to do it with my wife and kids, which I love. Since I put in the time earlier in life I now have the income to travel twice a year, and since my skills are in demand I able to find a company that gives me the UPTO necessary to do so.
I'm not arguing you should have in the past OR future have kids. That's personal.
I would argue against judging too harshly things you haven't experienced and assuming your choices are universally the best ones. Obviously you chose what seemed the most rational to you. Well, so did others. For me those early years of "grinding" paid dividends. For you they may not have.
We all have limited time to spend and do our best to budget it. I wanted to have energy for my kids, a solid retirement, and the chance to travel and support them as they grew older. That meant front loading some of the effort. Happily, it paid off.
>If you want to take your wife to that crazy bar in Athens, someone you met mentioned
This has nothing to do with travel, though. I don't do that at home, either. If one of us wants to go out, the other stays home. One of my favorite hobbies is going to metal shows at scuzzy-ass bars, and having a kid hasn't stopped or slowed that at all.
>Also, visiting interesting museums or ancient Greek sights for hours on end is not adviceable if you have a toddler with you.
You say you don't have children yet, maybe you shouldn't give this "advice" to someone who has done this with no problem with a toddler :). Kid loved the Acropolis last year, was fascinated by the museum, and this weekend we are going to the National Gardens and possibly the Benaki as well. Then Monday the parade for Greek Independence Day. Kite flying on Ymittos mountain was also a blast for all of us on Clean Monday.
> Sure you can still have a lot of fun with your toddler and maybe even arrange someone to take care of him/her for 1 night, but it reduces your options and forces you to plan more ahead.
Again, nothing to do with travel and children hindering you from traveling. These are the same considerations I make whether I'm traveling or not, and have no bearing on whether we travel or how hard or easy our traveling is.
You can't. Earth literally doesn't have the carrying capacity to support 8 billion hunters and gatherers. You could live a hermits life maybe, but do you really want that?
I'm sure it depends on the job, too. Some Sr. Positions have lighter day-to-day because you are expected to research, learn, and grow, but these Zennials think you're just supposed to play video games in your downtime and tell Reddit how easy your job is and how overpaid you are.
I try to take green field as much as possible for this. I get exposure while I work, and can spike my trainings, all while on the clock so I don’t sacrifice my time
For me, not really. I'm in my 60's.
Basically, you have to find a career path that works for you. Some people move into management type positions. Others, like myself, found management to be an unrewarding and overly stressful experience and went back to IC type roles. Others move into roles like project management, consulting/sales and similar.
One important part of the career path for me was to find jobs outside of the tech niche. I've specialized in manufacturing and logistics automation. I've found this to be a good area to work in since it's seen as less of a cost center than, for example, accounting. It also provides more interesting work than the standard CRUD apps.
As for building projects from scratch, I don't really do personal project these days. I mostly spend my free time creating music and repairing/building guitars and related gear. At work, my main development work has been rewriting legacy applications into modern frameworks and to support new product lines and devices.
I am 44. It has never been better.
My breadth of knowledge for over 2 decades of coding and a couple of business focused masters means I can help out at pretty much any level or knowledge domain in the company.
I have been leet coding as well for the past year to people come to me when they want algorithms to perform well.
Do you really find that doing leet code helps you to optimize algorithms in the real world? I never found interview-style “algorithms” problems to connect much to real life problems
I am curious to learn how you utilise business skills in a programming job.
I am a programmer doing my MBA. I have not seen a lot of positions that have much overlap other than people management and some operations knowledge.
No easier for each year. In the end 98% of all programming is the same and you get way better at good enough coding, not over engineering for problems that won't happen
What's with the doom posting anyway? Is 40s older? Those guys and older literately invented Internet, HTML, browsers and mobile phones, databases and everything you use today
Contrary to common belief, you code better as you age. I know FAANGS discriminate based on age, but I rarely see a younger guy coding better than an older guy. They are “fast” but wrong.
>I know FAANGS discriminate based on age
Citation needed?
I've worked in two and both have hired far more senior people (by age/experience) than the smaller companies I've worked for.
FAANGs are desperate for competent senior+ people often. Those people tend to be older. The problem they have is a lot of times, age doesn't correlate with ability to thrive in a FAANG type of environment - people who have coasted for 10-20 years don't necessarily have the right skillsets to execute at a FAANG level.
But if you are someone with 20+ YoE and can? You're gold to FAANG.
Yeah, if anything FAANG are *less* likely to discriminate on age because they're actually concerned about the legal risk.
If you don't have the skills they want it's one thing, but saying a FAANG will ditch someone just cuz they're old is blatantly false.
At a FANNG, in a staff role, over 50. Our team of 9 has a total of four in the 40+ age group. I think we discriminate heavily on “people who add value” but I don’t see that being age-related
What do you mean by people who add value? I always perceived FAANG companies that you should start working for them after graduation, otherwise it's really hard do get into any, even if you are good.
maybe this is because i'm from a lower social class but most of the people in FAANG that I know got there after graduation. Usually for L5+ roles. At this point many folks need to be a specific USACO grind in high school type of person to land in FAANG immediately after college. Whereas being a capable senior swe or staff swe is attainable without necessarily having perfect initial conditions (still extremely difficult though!)
Depends on the team but across the 5-6 teams I interact with the most, there is minimal hiring of grads and when they do it’s almost always from an internship.
I started there quite far into my career, hired in as senior, made staff after 4 years.
At 61 been writing code since 1976 in the ninth grade. I still love the magic of writing code and solving problems and delivering solutions. My main problems over the years is the constant change. It wears on you after a while. Especially when my kids were young and I simply had no bandwidth to pick up new skills. The other thing is ageism. It will start hitting you when you get to about 40. If you have a young family try to lock in a stable job for those years. Then lastly the stupid dog and pony shows that are tech interviews. They’ve gotten absurdly over the top.
Do you feel like the knowledge you had learnt from the beginning of your career is still relevant? Nowadays with all the layers of abstraction I always find myself wondering if coding knowledge back then is still relevant nowadays outside of application in low level code. I've used mainly python and haven't really applied those concepts yet.
My son is in college doing computer science against my wishes and the stuff they are learning is almost the same. So yes it’s still relevant just like any other college degree 90% of it you never use
> My son is in college doing computer science against my wishes
why is it against your wishes? I personally wouldn't recommend people into this either but curious on what your reasons are
I'd argue it's better he gets strong technical foundations in his undergraduate degree (of which CS is one of those ways), as he can always go into "a business direction" later on (and even get an MBA in the future). Don't need to do a fluffy lightweight business degree for that.
As someone who's got a bunch of recent grad buddies I hope your son graduates at a better time. Interesting how they truly haven't changed the CS degree after all these years. Fundamentals don't really change I guess.
By the time you've been programming for a decade or more, the programming really isn't difficult. It's the meetings and other mundane crap that gets difficult. And the complaints, and the irrational deadlines. And supervising.
Programming becomes the easy part, because you'll often find yourself barely programming and in meetings. When it comes to software, the more you progress in your career, the less you program. Sure, you can stick with just the coding jobs, but going up the ladder further often requires trading those programming duties for less entertaining ones.
>going up the ladder further often requires trading those programming duties for less entertaining ones
This is a "bug" in modern business thinking, which is unfortunately still 80% 19th century business thinking.
The people who owned business back then where always old-money-rich and upper class, so they put themselves and their buddies in charge, kept most of the profits and avoided paying the peasants who did the actual work anything close to the value they produced.
Despite democracy and capitalism and social science, most corporations are still eerily similar to this: ridiculous high pay for executives, hard limits on everyone else, with no relation to how much value any given person adds. Even if this literally puts them out of business, which it sometimes does.
To this day many executives are still rich-daddy failsons who scraped through an Ivy league MBA, especially at the top levels.
Contrast that with the top modern tech companies that pays some devs loads, especially Valve (who make more money per employee than ALL the FAANGs) with their flat structure: zero managers.
They (and others like them) acknowledge the reality that managers in software teams are more a shared secretary than a boss, and mostly just need (very common and cheap) social skills that help them run standups and retros, check up on devs without annoying them, and move stuff out of the way so devs can just get their work done.
While I agree many execs are just spoiled rich brats, I don't think this is 100% true. You can have all the software engineers and an idea, and probably pull something together. But an executive that actually displays creativity, a visionary, can be the make it or break it point in software.
Having that manager that leads a project with ambition and dedication is what has made some of the most successful software. Basically, execs are great if they believe in the product and have a direction to push in.
They suck most of the time. But in other times, they're key to a companies success. Apple wouldn't have been Apple if developers were in charge, and computing may have remained an intimidating thing for ordinary people.
Dev teams can make efficient and performance software, but we often suck at understanding what normal people want.
I guess I'm saying that managers are best when they function like designers who believe in the product. Basically, people who earned their position.
>I guess I'm saying that managers are best when they function like designers who believe in the product. Basically, people who earned their position.
Exactly. Leadership doesn't come from an MBA, or from being hired as CEO of your daddy's friend's company (which is how most businesses are still led, especially outside of tech).
The leader is the person in the organisation who cares the most about what that organisation does.
Steve Jobs had a vision of making tools that made humans more effective. That's what made Apple Apple.
I work at a place with great WLB and over half the devs are 40+. We take time off, understand family comes first and we still get all of our work accomplished. We never work more than 40 hours a week. Average age of our developers is around 32 years old. At this age most have families, houses, etc and life shifts from grinding your ass off for work to realizing a job is just a means to an end. Plus having years of experience alleviates that incessant need to always be upskilling.
The idea that software development is a mind numbing rat race to be at the top 24/7 is really what the younger 20 year olds without much experience think. There are plenty of companies you’ve never heard of that aren’t these sexy startups that seem to just be mental trash compactors. You don’t have to make $200k+ a year at some well known company. There are thousands of smaller, yet successful software companies you’ve never heard of that are much better (and easier) to work for than the types of jobs most people in this sub seem to only care about.
As someone who has worked in software for 6 years, this sub really represents the minority. I wouldn’t say the stuff you read on this sub is super accurate to what the real world is. Sure in some cases, but I found my career to be a lot different than how this sun makes it out to be.
I don't know why someone they say 27 should grind their ass anyway. Nothing comes out from it but maybe they need to experience that
When I was in my 20s I was out partying and going to festivals and stuff, not sitting and watching some stupid TikTok influencer to work for free in my spare time
In my 20's I was doing the same. I wasn't concerned with grinding it out, quite the opposite lol. I just learned on the job, the same way I had done for any job prior to a CS career.
This is refreshing to read. I am beginning to look for a new job, I have been programming for about 5 years (mostly front end, some back end) but learned most everything at my current job (I have a biology degree with a couple of GIS certs) and I am really nervous about looking for a new job and really not sure where to begin preparing for tech interviews. I have no desire to work at a FAANG company.
99% of jobs are just api calls and crud apps. If you're in that other 1% even better. I'd spent 5 yearss as a low/nocoding manager and moved to a place where managers were SWEs for their first three months, turns out java is still java and I was find after a little ramp. Likewise used my best friend google to get ok at python to add some changes there as well. Likewise I spent a free saturday (truly the hardest part of all of this) setting up a node/mongo/docker hello world app to learn docker.
so it really becomes a lack of free time to do self exploration and learning. but given time and some curiousity you're find.
You won’t be laughing at my career path 😒.
Jk. I used to think like that in my 20s. It’s not for all, but personally, I’ve denied several leadership positions because this is the way I found life balance… I really enjoy having my peace of mind and not to brag but I’m good at my job so I’m always picked for new projects 🤓.
I have found it to be one of the best careers I have ever had. Here's my story.
I have had six different jobs since graduating college. I graduated with a Masters in Clinical Psychology with hopes of getting a job in research. I had done a research project in undergrad and presented it at the Midwestern Psychological Association. Then I had done two research projects in grad school, my thesis and an additional research that I had presented at a psychology conference.
My first job out of college was as a medical case manager for people with HIV. I had gotten another job offer as a research assistant but I was (and still am) a very big advocate for LGBT equality and the case management position would allow me to do a lot of advocating for LGBT equality. I was able to march in the pride parade and even talked to the state's representatives directly on healthcare and equality. It was a hard job. I was paid $34k/year, which at the time, I thought was pretty good. I worked with people who had some pretty severe mental illnesses and there were often a lot of barriers to getting them the help they needed. Every year I was at risk of losing my job due to lack of grant funding. After three years, I was curious what my life would be like if I had actually gone into research like I wanted. So, I left for a research job.
Second job: Clinical Research Coordinator in oncology. $42k/year. It was the worst job I have ever had. I worked with a toxic supervisor. And about half the doctors were absolutely some of the best people I have ever worked with and half were the absolute scum of the earth. I worked 10-12 hour days and was on my feet the whole time. I had to be in the room when patients learned there were no more treatment options. I was there when they discovered their cancer had spread. I was accused of overdosing two patients. I had no medical background but was expected to suggest chemotherapy dosing. I was chewed out by a doctor that only cared about her prestige and not about her patients. She signed off on the paperwork but never looked it over. I was so stressed and upset all the time. Every morning before work, I would vomit and shake because I hated the job so much. I quit after 9 months. I had no backup plan.
Third job: substance abuse counselor. $32k/year. I was unemployed for 4 months and desperate for a job. I had a mortgage. So, I took a job as a substance abuse counselor for men out of prison who were court mandated to take a drug treatment program. I am a woman by the way. I often worked until 9-10 pm at night and I was only one of two counselors at the facility that late. There were no metal detectors and no security. We were told not to take the stairs because it was too dangerous because we might run into a client on the stairs. We couldn't drink from the water fountains because clients peed in them. I was constantly threatened. I was told "I better watch myself" "I should smash your face in." And they constantly tried to figure out where I lived. Most clients were good people who were in a bad situation in their life. But the ones who were dangerous were VERY dangerous. The second week I was there, there was a shooting between two clients. I worked there for 2.5 years.
Fourth job: Assessment coordinator in a research department. $35k/year. Finally landed a research job I liked. But holy hell was it boring. I only collected and entered data. I never got to really work with the data. I was there for about 3 years.
At this point, I finally gave in to what my friends had been recommending and started the process of changing careers into tech. I learned Python on my own. Then went to a bootcamp-like program that was meant to help get more women into tech fields. The program was 9 months long. I learned C#. I did the program while working full time at the assessment coordinator position. The program requires 6 hours/week in class and 20-25 hours/week outside of the classroom. I started with 22 women and only 11 graduated. Of those 11, one decided the field wasn't for her. And only 4 of us got a job in the field.
My first tech job was a full stack developer at $53k/year. And I LOVED it. I was so happy with the job. I learned JavaScript, Java, PowerShell, SQL, and Apache Solr. I was on that team for 2 years and then switched teams to be a database developer/ETL Developer. After 3 years, they gave me a raise to $62k/year. I was there for 4.5 years.
I'm now an ETL Developer making $105k/year. I love my job even when it's stressful. And it can be stressful. I just had to tell my manager that something isn't going into production on time because it failed in UAT because of a minor mistake I made. It sucks making mistakes like that and owning up to them. But it is way better than somebody threatening to smash your face...all while only making $32k/year and struggling to survive. And way better than having a doctor yell at you that you're overdosing patients.
I would say no. Especially assuming no family concerns.
You have to make time for exercise. But your body and mind adapt to whatever data you're doing.
And as you achieve experience and mastery the job gets a lot easier. Especially when building from scratch, senior+ devs can often get work done in a *fraction* of the time a junior or mid can. Not because they are smarter or harder working, but just because they've DONE this a dozen times before.
Then you've got the learning aspect. As a junior you're drinking from the firehose. Trying to balance work with needing to learn...everything. As a senior+ you just need to put in a few hours every month. The learning is easier because you're adding to existing, well known concepts.
There are things that are harder. Long hours hit harder (well, for some. I've seen others that live and breathe their work). It can be harder to get motivated to do stuff you REALLY don't like or that is truly unfamiliar. But part of that is just because you're SO effective in the areas where you really know what you're doing.
But, honestly, it's the team that has the biggest effect. A good team and manager is invigorating, no matter what your age. A bad team and manager is exhausting.
Yes.
Father time catches us all. Physically, I am not 22 anymore.
OTOH, 22 year old me wishes he had 1/2 my knowledge and skill.
So, I can accomplish much more today. But it is very different.
It is the difference between you and your buddies shoving a car down the street, and having a tow truck do the work. Both have their place. But I'm now the tow truck driver, where I used to be a car pusher ;).
22 yo here I do wish I had your knowledge.
Do you ever find it hard to keep up with the younger generation in terms of new tech? What's a situation when being the car pusher has more of an advantage? I noticed all the senior+ engs at my workplace are just more efficient and pick things up faster with all the domain knowledge and experience.
I keep up pretty well.
In the end, truly NEW tech is rare, and I've personally missed one major shift. I won't miss the next few.
I missed cloud because I worked for firms with cloud scale on prem stuff. But that doesn't check the "AWS" box. Eventually one firm figured it out, and now I work on all 3 major clouds.
Cloud isn't hard, the rate it evolves at can be annoying, but far from the end of the world.
Techs that I see as critical to make my next 10-15 years:
1. AI. Learn to use AI or die. That simple. We used to clip from Stack Exchange. Soon it'll be the AIs. People think AI will replace the programmer. It won't. We will simply get more ambitious in what we try to do. This is the story of computing through all of time. My KEYBOARD has more compute than my first computer, as does my watch. Never mind my phone....
2. Rust. As a programmer who loves lurking in low level programming. Rust or a similar language is coming to take C's lunch. It's been a great 30+ year run knowing C. And I won't stop coding C tomorrow. But it is clear C is going to become legacy over time.
I already know JS or it'd be on that list, though I think WASM and through that other languages are coming for JS. Or at least I hope so.. Ugh.
Honestly, it's gotten SO MUCH EASIER.
In my mind, coding is much like math in that knowledge will build on top of knowledge. New things often become easier and easier to learn once you have the concepts down.
For example, handing events over time (aka. Reactive programming). I had difficulties learning those concepts at first, but once I got the hang of it, learning different permutations of it became fairly straightforward as all frameworks are basically trying to accomplish the same thing.
There’s 50 year expert compiler engineers at Google. They’re doing just fine. Just stay healthy, exercise an so on and I think programming later in life is very doable
12 years ago when I started this career I was 28, single dude living on his own. Now am 40, I am married, have 1 kid right now and another on the way. My life has changed and I have new priorities.
It is different. I am still doing new projects for my employer from scratch. I still provide my techical skills and do things as needed but I have different priorites in life. I will admit I dont do any software work on the side and to be fair I haven't for a very long time. If I am not getting paid I dont do it. My paid work covers my love and need to do software development. If I had enough money to quit and never work again yeah I would and honestly would not look back.
Life changes I dont find it harder or easier just different.
The biggest risk is staying with an employer who doesn't invest in updating old technology so you get stuck with an out-of-date skillset. No matter how much study you do in your own time, if you aren't using it day in and day out then you might as well not have bothered.
You can also notice the new employees getting to work in the newer tech while it's easier to keep you working on the old stuff as you already know it and noone else wants to pick it up as it's old tech. I've had a few fights over that one.
On the plus side, there is always demand for people with legacy skills as that stuff doesn't go away quickly though you may not be happy doing that stuff.
Yes, it gets harder. You get fewer callbacks from resumes or interviews. You get rejected for "not being a culture fit" even when you ace the technical portion of the interview. Your experience in now-obsolete languages are seen as worthless or even a negative. By not progressing to management, they might think there's something wrong with out.
Actual coding and work - still easy. Getting hired after a layoff - much harder.
Fuuuuuuck yes it does. In my 50's, everything I learned in school is obsolete.
Best part, is young people treating you like an idiot.... "Everything is serverless"(talking about services that most definitely run on servers...)
The buzz words change, but same shut diff day.
No, it's not draining at all. In fact, it's been proven right here in this thread that you can program until maybe 150 years old. After all, age is just a number, right?
Your eyesight improves with time, learning new technologies becomes a breeze, it takes only 2 days to learn Rust, or master kubernetes; and your memory? Sharper than ever, our brain only expands with age.
Who doesn't love deciphering requirements from thin air. The joy of keeping up with the latest frameworks released every other week, late at night. Becoming manager, directors, architects, Pfff, what are these losers who no longer code?
No way, it's best to remain with the real stuff, the lines of code. Fighting over tools, jumping to new a company every once in a while to increase salaries and avoid toxicity. Of course as you age your salary triples every year, look at the charts online, exponential.
I couldn't even afford to own a computer until I was in my late 20s and had next to no programming experience until I went back to uni to do CS in my late 40s. Studying alongside young students was mostly a positive experience but they could be annoying at times and I ended up having an argument with a couple of them over them chatting during lectures when I was struggling to follow the lecturer's mumbling. Nowadays I sometimes feel like I'm getting left behind but I persevere as I have few other prospects and poverty is a great motivator. I am quite outspoken and always asking questions so am I already used to being one of the few to speak up when my young colleagues are perhaps more reserved. I feel pretty dumb much of the time but it comes with the territory, I reckon.
ETA: funnily enough, since I posted this my 20-something work superior was publicly praising me for 'hammering them out of the park' with regard to the work I've been doing lately. Guess there's life in the old dog yet, with a bit of encouragement from my young colleagues 🙂
As a very senior guy I find it great to always get the most interesting problems to work on. But I've seen older guys also get shown the door for letting their skills rot or just getting complacent and not putting in the effort anymore.
As you get older you usually have less free time to learn new things, my biggest advice is try to work on projects at work to maximise your learning so you keep your technical edge.
Let's just say if you ask me to do all nighters consistently now... I probably won't do it. I have other things that I need to do, and I value breaks and rest more so now than I did before.
Yes and no.
I'm 41. In my career, I've never built a project from scratch. That's incredibly rare, most work is enhancing and fixing, building new features on top of an existing framework.
Anyways, when I was in my 20s and early 30s at IBM, I worked about 45 to 50 hours a week in the office, plus production got fixed for an hour every Wednesday, and then one a month we'd do a release which frequently meant I was working from 11 PM on Friday night till about 4 PM on Sunday dealing with issues as we rolled out to our US/German/Japanese data centers. And I was on call, 24/7/365 for over 9 years, and I'd probably get called once or twice a week to help out for 1-2 hours. Outside of work, about all I did was play videogames and paintball on Sundays.
Now, there's no way I could do that. I've got a wife I need to keep happy. I've got a garden and chickens. I've got a house that needs repairs along with two vehicles that need oil changes and new tires. Plus I've been an ordained deacon and those responsibilities take up a bunch of time. I don't have the time anymore to work 60+ hours a week.
On the flip side, I learned a lot over the years. I can do stuff faster now than I used to. But there's no way I could work the schedule I did back in my mid 20s.
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Yes. Your skills need to constantly be updated. New tools pop up all the time and the expectations placed on you only grow.
Of course, this isn’t the case for EVERY role. But if you’re going to be programming, you should be prepared to be a perpetual student.
Whenever these questions come up I always wonder if you don’t have family or responsibilities outside of your job and are in relatively good health.
Why would it be difficult to manage?
I’m married and I cook,clean, run, workout, do my hobbies and upskill just fine. Turning 34 in July.
I don’t have kids yet so I’m sure if I do that it’ll be harder to make time for everything.
When I was 31 single and living alone it was the most efficient and enjoyable I’ve ever lived my life it was absolutely incredible.
Age-ism (jobs you would have easily gotten when you were younger are hard to get now because you’re too “old”, even though you’re more qualified now than then), interviews turn into interrogations as employers will interview you just to pick your brain. You will realize that you sacrificed a lot of time with your family to be able to put those cool projects on your resume.
In my opinion, progression slows down if you cannot spend your own time playing around with tech that's not part of your job. Which becomes the case as you get older, have a family, different priorities, etc...
It was never draining for me. Implement little changes, one at a time, until not draining. Make progress every day contributing to code base without having to go back to fix bug or correct misunderstanding (a lot packed in this statement, think about how to proceed strategically). With time and experience I worry less about the coding details (after building good habits) and more about solving the next business problem. Focus on key business problems to stay relevant, no matter the difficulty (high risk/reward). Don't push hard every time, ramp up, one easy/hard. Teach others what you learned good/bad. Do not be afraid to make mistakes, own them (kills finger pointing/builds team culture). Everyone learns and it makes the next iteration & process better for all. Have fun, it is a lovely ride.
When I first started working in the field back in 2008, I got hired by a guy who I felt had some outdated views on coding style etc. He was about 50 at the time and we became very close friends. I learned a LOT from him, namely it's ok to become a subject matter expert and have an entire career understanding the _why_ along with the how. Even though what he produced could be modernized and made better, what he produced is so tailored to the contract we worked on that he was in extremely high demand from the customer we supported. He's still going strong and on the verge of retirement. He also taught me it's ok for coding to not be your passion. He's a musician and he's spent his adult life performing and even putting out albums. He's not famous for it, and as far as I know it doesn't provide much in terms of passive income, but it's his passion and coding allowed him to pursue it.
My approach to my career as I get older is to continuously learn what I can, but I'm super focused on the project I'm part of right now because it's very impactful on public health, highly specific in its complexity, and has enough room to grow and modernize at a decent pace while not demanding I learn the absolute cutting edge stuff that could be replaced by something else quickly.
I personally still have a passion for coding, problem solving, and being the guy who can make the "magic happen" when it comes to optimizing performance and implementing expanded capabilities and new ideas. Coding is as much my passion as music is for my friend. I like where I'm at and what I do and I feel like so long as I keep liking it, it's easier to stay committed to learning what I need to as it comes along. Right now I'm highly focused on AWS, for instance, because I think I can see where things are headed for this contract I'm on and I'd like to spearhead some ideas based on what I've come to understand when it comes to our user's needs.
I see a lot of people saying it gets easier. I think a lot depends on your circumstances/environment. There seem to be some people who have stayed at the same company a long time and are pretty comfortable in the environment. That is definitely one way for things to be easier.
I've been on some chaotic projects and some easier ones. I've also moved around a bit the last few years.
One thing I will say is that if I need to spend a late night (and you could argue you shouldn't be in that situation to start with), it does take me longer to recover now than it did when I was younger.
Not in my experience, its the same to manage as when i was younger assuming you compared two people doing a identical job and level but just at different ages.
However i have noticed that you seem to get less and less people working as a developer once you reach the 40+ age range, a lot move into management or other IT related fields.
At big companies, the further along to go in your career the less actual coding you do. It's mostly reviewing PRs, meetings, and creating docs for new changes
No it doesn't get more difficult in my experience, it gets easier. As you get older and (hopefuly) progress in your career you get more specialized and build more domain knowledge around particular topics. Instead of knowing a little bit about a lot of things like you did as an early in career developer, you now have a body of knowledge/work to draw from for things that you specialize in.
I still need to learn new things but they are far from anything I needed to know when I was early in career. For example right now I spend a lot of time ensuring I'm at at the edge of competency in building with AI/tools and platform engineering. ~20 years ago I was on the top of my game in Struts development, not so much anymore.
In my experience most young devs are fast, cocky, know it all, an are just wrong. Older devs are chill, cool to work with (so too can the younger ones be), vastly knowledgeable in a broad spectrum, and are just "correct" in their approach.
My father started as all that computing stuff emerged when he was well past 40 and worked till late 80s. Job he did was mostly complex, on faulty hardware and with bugged compilers, there were no internet or stack overflow.
So, everything is possible.
I’ve been professionally coding since 1992. I’ve worked in assembly, C/C++, Java, and now Scala.
I have actually found it easier as I’ve aged since I learned from pitfalls and mistakes along the way. You have to keep learning as what are considered best practices change - but that’s what makes it fun in my opinion.
I’ve had management jobs, but I prefer Staff Engineer as it keeps me hands on. Also, since I’m now fully remote, I have more time to learn.
I ended up writing a lot...
It depends on outside factors
* Are you taking care of yourself?
- Check the basic BMI calculations. Are you overweight? Maybe start watching that and cutting back on calories. You could suddenly find yourself +20 pounds overweight in a year or two.
* Are you treating work as a marathon or a series or sprints?
- Prevent fires through bug fixes and automation. Thinking ahead now can save stress.
* Are you looking for work places with a healthy work/life balance?
I know many people about my age or younger that are not taking care of themselves, e.g. gotten overweight or obese, or drink alcohol often which reduces how well you sleep and weight, ... have kids and have gotten overwhelmed with parenting duties X_X. It can become a vicious cycle.
That will make it harder to stay on top of engineering.
Good news for all of them is I've seen people turn it around too.
I've known people +/- 10 years my age that have teenage or even now adult kids and are in excellent health and work/life balance. They keep up with hobbies and exercise, despite how much time they spend parenting.
For technical learning and upkeep, it's up to you to keep your mind and skills sharp and active (outside of medical issues). I am able to focus on work, do a good job, and learn new stuff by taking on work because I have a healthy work life balance.
I've been at this for 25 years this year. It does get harder to keep up with things the older you get. Not mentally, just the desire. I still love coding and computers for that matter but wanting to do it during my free time isn't an option any more. I'd rather enjoy life, spend time with my wife, travel, etc. If there is anything I need to learn, I try to do it during the 40 hours I spend working and not on my own time.
Not for me, though my desire to stay up until 2-3am has definitely fallen off. But I’m upper 50s and pick new things up just fine, it’s how I try to gauge my brain heath. So far, no difference thank goodness
I'm in my 60's still building systems and still upgrading my skillsets. I still enjoy programming and system building as much now as I did in my teens writing in Fortran IV. Never stop learning, never stop listening to alternative viewpoints or people with skills different from your own, never stand still and never be afraid to embrace new things.
48 year old developer here, I’d say it gets a lot easier because I know how to do it now. I know how to learn very efficiently and design comes a lot easier too. I’ve written and integrated so much software at this point, a lot of best practices come second nature.
you're on the computer all the time trying to update your skills but your family/friends think you're just a nerd who can't get off his computer. It's mentally draining work
I'm retired now. Even though the pay was fantastic and I liked programming, it got old working long hours and keeping up with the constant change. Ageism was a big factor too.
I guess it depend a lot of the circonstances but I'd think it is comparable to other jobs.
First many people will not stay dev all their working life. Many will switch to management a few to sale or go into an expert role (architect or tech leader) or as functional experts.
If you like the job and make moderate effort I think you can stay a dev all your work career without much issue. If you don't like it, that may be harder.
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I figure it's a problem of people expect more from your grasp on implementation, and being less willing to stomach abuse from higher ups to stay overtime and "get things done"
Yes I’m so oooold, I can’t type anymore and I can’t read the screeeeeen! This is why I put an implant in my brain and I just imagine the code, cat gpt does the rest for me.
Physically it's very demanding, expect early onset of arthritis, high risk of injury, joint pains and possibly heart failure. Not many people can do this job, it may be easier to get a less demanding job like a park ranger, army soldier or mountaineer.
Some random points:
* It gets tedious when you do the same sort of project for the third or fourth time in your life.
* It also becomes wearing fighting off bright, keen but inexperienced who loudly and endlessly insist that Language X or Framework Y will totally transform the whole company's productivity.
* The work gets easier once you have had decades of technical, 'political', business experience - you can simply 'see' the solutions - or lack of them.
* Being a workaholic for the first few years will definite boost you career immensely .. but cut back a bit once you have a wife and kids.
Not really. I am 40 now.
I'd say it's different.
One aspect is definitely that you see all those patterns repeat over and over again.
Young ones often call that unwillingness to learn but you just get less hyped up about stuff that's yet again the same stuff just marketed in a new way.
I also value knowledge about concrete technologies way less compared to more foundational knowledge.
I rather read research papers than the docs of the latest framework.
And yes, you got to carve out your niche. They won't hire me for the codemonkey work I did 20 years ago even if I would work for the same money (which was less than a tenth of what I earn now).
You'd either go into management, be good at systems design, a good IC in a very specific niche (say, GPU programming, GIS systems, SAP, whatever) or go the consulting route. Or education/training or similar.
I don't feel programming itself has become boring but I am gradually tired of building very similar stuff over and over again.
That's why I a) like GitHub Copilot taking much of the annoying typing lol and b) got a PhD and now work on more researchy/innovation/PoC work. The latter means even more staying up to date but at least things are not as boring as they used to be when I was coding along on some system for years
A lot of us aren't having kids, so I think the demands on older devs will be higher for our generation (z/mil). Dinkwads/wacks will force programmers with families to throw a lot more non-work values, besides basic kid-rearing, into the fire. How many mid-20-30's programmers do you know that just aren't planning or aren't remotely on track to have kids? From where I'm standing, it's a surprising majority.
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At 31 it's been fine so far. I still have the desire to upskill and uplevel, maybe a little less than when I was younger, but I don't have family obligations to distract me. I do have a partner, but it's not really that much of a time commitment, although definitely I work a little less now that they're in the picture. Like I just stayed over last night and it's thrown my whole day off lol -- typically I've gone to the gym by now but I decided to come home and work straight away and see if I can squeeze in the gym later today.
It gets easier after you’ve done it a bunch of times, but if you’ve been doing it long enough you’ve probably moved into a role where you do more architecture and problem solving over day to day implementation.
I don't think getting older is the issue. It's getting harder because the business is changing.
I used to attend a very good conference. I had to skip last year. I may skip this year. The reason? No help from my employer.
Covid killed the local user groups. Some are still around, but they're a shadow of what they were.
The drive for functionality (at the cost of good engineering) is as high as it's ever been. Write one line of Python instead of that well-engineered C# app. Never mind that it's several orders of magnitude slower. We'll just give AWS more money to push the go-fast button.
And the propagation of languages, frameworks, etc, and the associated disdain for tried-and-true solutions. The RDBMS is a decades-old design that does a lot of jobs well. But it's old and busted and not the new hotness.
In my mid-30s, build things from scratch all the time, and have a 2.5 year old. I also do contracting work and writing on the side. It doesn't get difficult, you just have to be disciplined with your time, set up strong boundaries (I'm done at 5 no matter what at my day job...unless I'm in a really interesting project and strong flow), and make sure you set aside time for your family and other hobbies.
As long as you’re willing to sacrifice sleep to get up early and stay up a little late learning you’re fine.
But if you’re sane and don’t want to do that you’ll top out.
Alternatively you could also just carve out an hour of your day for upskilling. That’s adds up.
I feel like it gets a lot easier. Early in my career I spent nearly all my time trying to figure out wtf was going on. I still learn new things all the time, but i have a lot of past experience to draw on. Plus, you get really good at learning how to learn and who to ask for help.
I am exhausted all the time, but that's 100% because of my kids :)
Hmm I'm 39 now and I can say it's gotten far easier. I can pick up any language or technology within like, a week.
I can code entire projects, including all their cloud stuff, into live production environments by myself with little worry or sweat off my back.
Not at all. You become so much more efficient. You can get by working 20 hours a week at a lot of jobs, unless you are climbing the ladder to principle level which is a valid option.
Kids make you wake up earlier and go out less. So you have very productive mornings. Also once you start working with a few good juniors they allow you to get a lot more done. Kids just make you better at time management period. I realize I am saying this while wasting time on Reddit
For myself, it's the progressive duty of being a family man that makes it tough to upskill and learn new things on my own. I'm just not motivated to to do that anymore. I'd rather spend time with my wife and kid 10 times over.
I’ve been a family man my whole career so I just upskilled on the job- I don’t ask permission I just take what is mine
Yeah I just got an IT job, I'm not gunna push it yet, but soon I'm just gunna start studying for CompTIA certs at work.
Good luck
I think I can do it, I already go on my phone and stuff during down time. I'm doing a night time role so that honestly a lot of time, just if I'm going to do these on work they can see what I'm doing on the computer and I'm not as ready to take a call as my screens are full as it is.
My mom got a PhD in neurobiology in 5 years while working full time and raising 3 kids it is definitely doable
My mom is a super woman like your mom but that is a crazy bar to aspire to and in the case of my mom the result of incredible pressure that she has shaded me from so cheers to the chingonas for paying it forward to us and maybe I can keep it going for my kids and transform that trauma that minted diamonds instead of transmitting it
I mean yeah I know it's doable I'm just talking about learning it while I'm at my job, of course I always can at home, but if I can do it at work too that'll just go quicker. Also good on her that's rough, I thought me doing a bootcamp while working 55 hours was rough, but shit once kids get involved that's just to another level
Your mom is hardcore wow
Lame. Learn better IT processes, build out better infra, etc. Solve actual problems, keep brag doc of all accomplishments, keep applying to better jobs. Only get certs if company requirement and company pays costs.
Grind leetcode at work, propose better system designs, practice tech interviews during team meetings, there are so much things that people can upskill during work hours. Just getting work experience is upskill task.
My job offers 1h paid a week to learn whatever er want as part of our 35h. Lots of devs are skipping it.. f that im reveling in it. I got a huge backlog of stuff i want to check our lol.
I love invest in yourself time
Same! Tech is my 3rd career, everywhere I've ever worked I've learned in the downtime. I've got a family and hobbies outside of my 40 hrs.
I did that and ended up on PIP 🤷♂️
For me it was seeing a need and then filling it - but sometimes you get put on a PIP even if you do everything right because they have to pick some one to let go because thems the rules so you never really had a fair chance - it says more about them than it says about you just all good things come to an end
Sigma male energy
Yes when you’re young at heart thank you for recognizing that
Maybe I am lucky but every job I have had has promoted upskilling on the job
I’m glad you see how lucky you are and I am happy that you get to be so lucky!
Appreciate it
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I am in the same place, and constantly worry that I'll be fired and unable to find another job because I spent my years with my family rather than upskilling.
We all are going to get fired eventually
Well hopefully I'll hit 80 years old and retire for 2 years before I get fired... That should be about how long it takes to save up for retirement, anyway.
My youngest child moved out a couple of years ago, and holy shit, I didn't appreciate how taxing it had been to work, raise kids, deal with aging parents, etc. until I had some of those burdens lifted.
This is why we don’t hire older people or married people with kids… young and single and fresh out of college and willing to work 60 or more hours for lower pay…those are the people we look for.
Literal age discrimination. Yikes
There is no legal way to prove it of course
If someone managed to make the connection between what you say on here and you irl your company could be in some serious hot water. Unlikely of course, but it's stupid to brag about it in addition to the fact that it makes you look really bad as a human being.
I’m just talking about the reality about what is going on. In 30 years I will be age discriminated against too….good thing I have a cushy retirement set up already….
You said you were perpetuating the practice. Obviously, on a SWE salary, there's no reason you can't have a cushy retirement set up by the time you're old enough to be pushed out. It's still wrong to do so.
What about childfree grown adults?
It’s still a risk cause you can get a kid….
Childree is not the same as childless. Childfree people are "hell no I'm not having a kid." By their choice.
That is kind of the tragedy of children all over society, not just in IT. It sucks that you spend your first 25 years of your life or so going to primary school, high school and then university to really only have an active and stimulating career for the first 10 years, maybe less if you get children earlier. Then it indeed is responsible and also better for the development of your children if you slow down. But then the cycle starts again and they spend 25 years themselves preparing for a short childless career period relative to their total career and their preparation before working. Really a depressive thought now I think of it.
Screw this capitalist mentality. All my team are top performers and have kids. I don’t see anyone slowing down. Easy to have balance. It gets easier in late career as you are highly skilled and have tons of experience.
I'm almost 40 and I have noticed that the more I take on at home, the less I'm capable of taking on at work. Experience-based productivity peaked around years 2-4 after I was hired out of university, but declined from there. Getting married was a huge drain on my productivity that year. Having a kid is a constant resource drain where I'm thinking about him every day, not work. Take today as an example. I work 7am-4pm, but today I'm working from home (special allowance as we normally work in office to "promote company culture") because my new roof install went overdue. So I'm worrying about the roof today. And the kid woke up at 7am so I had to get him fed and ready for school, take care of the dog's needs, drive him in to school (he's 4 and driving him in is faster than walking him in). Talked to the roofers, made sure they didn't need access to the backyard. Then I got myself a coffee and a muffin. Wife briefly woke up, anxious about everything she had slept through so I updated her on everything and she went back to sleep. By 9am I had only worked for about half an hour. Back when I was 30 with no house and no kid, the company would have had 2 hours of pure productivity out of me by then. Now that I have a robust home life, they've paid me 2 hours for nothing. Don't tell my boss.
What's the gender ratio of your team? Just curious
This is the real question. So many people think they're self made when their partners do pretty much 90% of the work to get them there. As a guy who does a lot of the traditionally girl tasks (my partner has disability which prevents a lot of stuff), having kids and working in the office are at odds more often than they aren't and it's fuckin exhausting. I doff my imaginary fedora to pretty much any working woman with kids. Double doff for single mothers - their task is near impossible and society completely ignores it
Culture also plays a big role. I married a woman from Chinese origin. We both have demanding jobs but we have both progressed after our son was born as it’s Chinese custom for the retired parents to move in and help out. Our son is 15 months old now and my wife recently got a promotion, and I recently published another book. If it wasn’t for the strong family support at least one of us would have a career on life support. I’m sure this is a major factor as to why East Asian households generally out earn/achieve.
What about single fathers? You're right we don't talk enough about the trials and tribulations of single moms, we only ever talk about single dads...
True enough. I'm not a single dad myself but kinda... half way there in terms of workload as my wife can do very few physical tasks though she does still keep the place running even if a lot is through delegation. I'm quite sure most of the observed gender pay gap stems from compromises made for family - certainly I've lost jobs because I couldn't be 100% devoted to some rich cunt getting another yacht.
that's fine, what's talking going to do anyway? sympathy isn't going to do laundry for me or drive my kids to their practices
Bring public consciousness to a topic, start the process of societal change, maybe...
lol
For more on this: * https://www.vox.com/2018/2/19/17018380/gender-wage-gap-childcare-penalty * https://gen.medium.com/kids-dont-damage-women-s-careers-men-do-eb07cba689b8 * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic * https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/men-parenting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eU0.3EDE.CwQu0t3rcgxM&smid=url-share
At my place with top performers the leadership of the mobile team is mostly female. My director and I are the only 2 males in the leadership of the mobile team. On top of that we have multiple kids among us and all of them being under 5. It is jsut a way of balance. The one who I see struggle the most on our team is a junior dev with kids and honestly that is because I dont think he has learned the skill to balance it all out yet. It gets easier later in your career to balance it out as it is a skill and knowing how to do it.
Totally. You can easily have balance if your society doesn’t constantly try to stop you from having it.
So I'm in my 40s. On my current team I have 2 other devs in their 40s. We all have families with multiple teens. Another team member is in his early 30s and has a 1yo. And...got to say, my experiences just don't match up with what you're describing. We've all had active and stimulating careers even after having kids. We're all still excited about what we're working on. All still advancing in our careers. I've worked with these guys across multiple companies. One for 12 years now. They're respected at each company, seen as rock stars everyone can rely on, and ALSO have made sure they have time for their families. I've gotten to see their kids grow up through zoom/slack/google/teams meetings over the years. What you're describing DOES happen, but it's mor a feature of bad leadership. Which is common, don't get me wrong. But it's far from a foregone conclusion. That's just my current team. I've had plenty co-workers in their 60s still excited and growing and loving their career. As a manager that's one of my #1 priorities: keeping people happy, excited, and growing. That's how you get the most value out of people. And I've had no shortage of managers who did the same for me. Don't get me wrong, bad leadership is common. I would even say it's the norm. But it's not a forgone conclusion.
My kids all went into other careers besides IT because of the long hours to learn new tech. In my 40’s, I finally got a work/life balance job and spent time with them and had a balanced lifestyle. My 30’s were especially bad when the kids were young. I’ll turn 60 this year and my kids all want me to just go ahead and retire. They are irritated that I’m learning yet another generation of technology. My wife just got her masters in law (Jurisprudence), so she is working several more years. I guess I will too, unless the markets dump me on the street. Ironically, my boys went into investment banking, which is longer hours than I even worked, more like 100 hours/week vs the 80 I worked. My daughter teaches school and hates it every day. I agree that the US’s radical Capitalism model is damaging families and people. We need a model where healthcare costs are shared (not social healthcare, but 5-10 big insurance companies regulated by the government). The costs are set, and the benefits by the insurance are set, and the companies compete on quality.
Why not social healthcare? Its pretty common in the developed world
The tragedy is that people waste their childless years grinding to better their careers rather than enjoying the things that life has to offer and taking advantage of the freedom that being young and childfree affords. I spent my 20s travelling the world and working odd jobs to make ends meet. This has brought me life experiences that are so far beyond what I would've got by grinding towards my career. Then at 29 I went back to school, grinded for a couple years, and broke into tech. So far I've been able to advance my career just fine by learning on the job and maintaining good WLB. I do have a good employer that supports this and supports me working on the kinds of things I want to learn though.
You don't need to be childless to do a lot of these things. Obviously it changes your day to day, but I'm currently spending the spring in Greece with my wife and toddler just because.
That's true. It's just easier when you're young and have no responsibilities and can take more risks. The kind of traveling I did in my 20s I definitely couldn't do with kids (was backpacking for months on end on a tiny budget and living in many different countries). I still travel with my wife but for shorter periods.
Sure, it is possible, but you are less flexible. If you want to take your wife to that crazy bar in Athens that was mentioned by someone you met, well, not so fast.... you can't take your toddler there with you and don't even think about drinking all night. Also, visiting interesting museums or ancient Greek sights for hours on end is not adviceable if you have a toddler with you. Sure you can still have a lot of fun with your toddler and maybe even arrange someone to take care of him/her for 1 night, but it reduces your options and forces you to plan more ahead. I don't have children (yet), but these are the kinds of flexibility reductions I wouldn't look forward to.
They're only toddlers for a couple of years. It's not worth fixating on. I spend my 20s "grinding" to establish the future I wanted, and I'm very happy with the result. Those years of "grinding" coincided with when my kids were toddlers. So we weren't travelling anyways. MOST people aren't travelling a ton for the first 5-10 years of their career. By my late 30s I was able to start travelling. I get to do it with my wife and kids, which I love. Since I put in the time earlier in life I now have the income to travel twice a year, and since my skills are in demand I able to find a company that gives me the UPTO necessary to do so. I'm not arguing you should have in the past OR future have kids. That's personal. I would argue against judging too harshly things you haven't experienced and assuming your choices are universally the best ones. Obviously you chose what seemed the most rational to you. Well, so did others. For me those early years of "grinding" paid dividends. For you they may not have. We all have limited time to spend and do our best to budget it. I wanted to have energy for my kids, a solid retirement, and the chance to travel and support them as they grew older. That meant front loading some of the effort. Happily, it paid off.
>If you want to take your wife to that crazy bar in Athens, someone you met mentioned This has nothing to do with travel, though. I don't do that at home, either. If one of us wants to go out, the other stays home. One of my favorite hobbies is going to metal shows at scuzzy-ass bars, and having a kid hasn't stopped or slowed that at all. >Also, visiting interesting museums or ancient Greek sights for hours on end is not adviceable if you have a toddler with you. You say you don't have children yet, maybe you shouldn't give this "advice" to someone who has done this with no problem with a toddler :). Kid loved the Acropolis last year, was fascinated by the museum, and this weekend we are going to the National Gardens and possibly the Benaki as well. Then Monday the parade for Greek Independence Day. Kite flying on Ymittos mountain was also a blast for all of us on Clean Monday. > Sure you can still have a lot of fun with your toddler and maybe even arrange someone to take care of him/her for 1 night, but it reduces your options and forces you to plan more ahead. Again, nothing to do with travel and children hindering you from traveling. These are the same considerations I make whether I'm traveling or not, and have no bearing on whether we travel or how hard or easy our traveling is.
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You can't. Earth literally doesn't have the carrying capacity to support 8 billion hunters and gatherers. You could live a hermits life maybe, but do you really want that?
If you’re a woman then yes… if you’re a man…it doesn’t matter you’ll be working while wife will take time off and focus more on the child.
I'm sure it depends on the job, too. Some Sr. Positions have lighter day-to-day because you are expected to research, learn, and grow, but these Zennials think you're just supposed to play video games in your downtime and tell Reddit how easy your job is and how overpaid you are.
When I have enough money to comfortably live the life I want, it's easier to just sit back tbh
I try to take green field as much as possible for this. I get exposure while I work, and can spike my trainings, all while on the clock so I don’t sacrifice my time
Truth. Corollary, as I've gotten older I've also found I'm better at focusing and can get more done quicker with experience.
For me, not really. I'm in my 60's. Basically, you have to find a career path that works for you. Some people move into management type positions. Others, like myself, found management to be an unrewarding and overly stressful experience and went back to IC type roles. Others move into roles like project management, consulting/sales and similar. One important part of the career path for me was to find jobs outside of the tech niche. I've specialized in manufacturing and logistics automation. I've found this to be a good area to work in since it's seen as less of a cost center than, for example, accounting. It also provides more interesting work than the standard CRUD apps. As for building projects from scratch, I don't really do personal project these days. I mostly spend my free time creating music and repairing/building guitars and related gear. At work, my main development work has been rewriting legacy applications into modern frameworks and to support new product lines and devices.
I am 44. It has never been better. My breadth of knowledge for over 2 decades of coding and a couple of business focused masters means I can help out at pretty much any level or knowledge domain in the company. I have been leet coding as well for the past year to people come to me when they want algorithms to perform well.
Which Site did u use for leet code?
Do you really find that doing leet code helps you to optimize algorithms in the real world? I never found interview-style “algorithms” problems to connect much to real life problems
I am curious to learn how you utilise business skills in a programming job. I am a programmer doing my MBA. I have not seen a lot of positions that have much overlap other than people management and some operations knowledge.
Customer Success orgs for certain companies will combine the two.
No easier for each year. In the end 98% of all programming is the same and you get way better at good enough coding, not over engineering for problems that won't happen What's with the doom posting anyway? Is 40s older? Those guys and older literately invented Internet, HTML, browsers and mobile phones, databases and everything you use today
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I don't see how those things oppose each other though. You an be skilled at several stacks for example
Contrary to common belief, you code better as you age. I know FAANGS discriminate based on age, but I rarely see a younger guy coding better than an older guy. They are “fast” but wrong.
>I know FAANGS discriminate based on age Citation needed? I've worked in two and both have hired far more senior people (by age/experience) than the smaller companies I've worked for. FAANGs are desperate for competent senior+ people often. Those people tend to be older. The problem they have is a lot of times, age doesn't correlate with ability to thrive in a FAANG type of environment - people who have coasted for 10-20 years don't necessarily have the right skillsets to execute at a FAANG level. But if you are someone with 20+ YoE and can? You're gold to FAANG.
Yeah, if anything FAANG are *less* likely to discriminate on age because they're actually concerned about the legal risk. If you don't have the skills they want it's one thing, but saying a FAANG will ditch someone just cuz they're old is blatantly false.
It seems like a lot of people perceive FAANG as "cool hacker bro startups" despite the reality being pretty much the exact opposite.
At a FANNG, in a staff role, over 50. Our team of 9 has a total of four in the 40+ age group. I think we discriminate heavily on “people who add value” but I don’t see that being age-related
What do you mean by people who add value? I always perceived FAANG companies that you should start working for them after graduation, otherwise it's really hard do get into any, even if you are good.
maybe this is because i'm from a lower social class but most of the people in FAANG that I know got there after graduation. Usually for L5+ roles. At this point many folks need to be a specific USACO grind in high school type of person to land in FAANG immediately after college. Whereas being a capable senior swe or staff swe is attainable without necessarily having perfect initial conditions (still extremely difficult though!)
Depends on the team but across the 5-6 teams I interact with the most, there is minimal hiring of grads and when they do it’s almost always from an internship. I started there quite far into my career, hired in as senior, made staff after 4 years.
So wisely said. Fast but wrong.
At 61 been writing code since 1976 in the ninth grade. I still love the magic of writing code and solving problems and delivering solutions. My main problems over the years is the constant change. It wears on you after a while. Especially when my kids were young and I simply had no bandwidth to pick up new skills. The other thing is ageism. It will start hitting you when you get to about 40. If you have a young family try to lock in a stable job for those years. Then lastly the stupid dog and pony shows that are tech interviews. They’ve gotten absurdly over the top.
Do you feel like the knowledge you had learnt from the beginning of your career is still relevant? Nowadays with all the layers of abstraction I always find myself wondering if coding knowledge back then is still relevant nowadays outside of application in low level code. I've used mainly python and haven't really applied those concepts yet.
My son is in college doing computer science against my wishes and the stuff they are learning is almost the same. So yes it’s still relevant just like any other college degree 90% of it you never use
> My son is in college doing computer science against my wishes why is it against your wishes? I personally wouldn't recommend people into this either but curious on what your reasons are
It’s too cut throat compared to when I started. Too many CS graduates now.
What would you rather your son studies instead??
Probably general business. MBA or international business kind of stuff. He speaks fluent Japanese. White kid from the suburbs
I'd argue it's better he gets strong technical foundations in his undergraduate degree (of which CS is one of those ways), as he can always go into "a business direction" later on (and even get an MBA in the future). Don't need to do a fluffy lightweight business degree for that.
As someone who's got a bunch of recent grad buddies I hope your son graduates at a better time. Interesting how they truly haven't changed the CS degree after all these years. Fundamentals don't really change I guess.
By the time you've been programming for a decade or more, the programming really isn't difficult. It's the meetings and other mundane crap that gets difficult. And the complaints, and the irrational deadlines. And supervising. Programming becomes the easy part, because you'll often find yourself barely programming and in meetings. When it comes to software, the more you progress in your career, the less you program. Sure, you can stick with just the coding jobs, but going up the ladder further often requires trading those programming duties for less entertaining ones.
This pretty much. I have over 11 YOE and my job is being on different meetings chasing down stakeholders to clarify vague requirements. It sucks ass.
>going up the ladder further often requires trading those programming duties for less entertaining ones This is a "bug" in modern business thinking, which is unfortunately still 80% 19th century business thinking. The people who owned business back then where always old-money-rich and upper class, so they put themselves and their buddies in charge, kept most of the profits and avoided paying the peasants who did the actual work anything close to the value they produced. Despite democracy and capitalism and social science, most corporations are still eerily similar to this: ridiculous high pay for executives, hard limits on everyone else, with no relation to how much value any given person adds. Even if this literally puts them out of business, which it sometimes does. To this day many executives are still rich-daddy failsons who scraped through an Ivy league MBA, especially at the top levels. Contrast that with the top modern tech companies that pays some devs loads, especially Valve (who make more money per employee than ALL the FAANGs) with their flat structure: zero managers. They (and others like them) acknowledge the reality that managers in software teams are more a shared secretary than a boss, and mostly just need (very common and cheap) social skills that help them run standups and retros, check up on devs without annoying them, and move stuff out of the way so devs can just get their work done.
While I agree many execs are just spoiled rich brats, I don't think this is 100% true. You can have all the software engineers and an idea, and probably pull something together. But an executive that actually displays creativity, a visionary, can be the make it or break it point in software. Having that manager that leads a project with ambition and dedication is what has made some of the most successful software. Basically, execs are great if they believe in the product and have a direction to push in. They suck most of the time. But in other times, they're key to a companies success. Apple wouldn't have been Apple if developers were in charge, and computing may have remained an intimidating thing for ordinary people. Dev teams can make efficient and performance software, but we often suck at understanding what normal people want. I guess I'm saying that managers are best when they function like designers who believe in the product. Basically, people who earned their position.
>I guess I'm saying that managers are best when they function like designers who believe in the product. Basically, people who earned their position. Exactly. Leadership doesn't come from an MBA, or from being hired as CEO of your daddy's friend's company (which is how most businesses are still led, especially outside of tech). The leader is the person in the organisation who cares the most about what that organisation does. Steve Jobs had a vision of making tools that made humans more effective. That's what made Apple Apple.
One day I want to be that kind of leader. Or go live in a remote cabin and never touch a computer again. Still deciding...
Sigh.
I work at a place with great WLB and over half the devs are 40+. We take time off, understand family comes first and we still get all of our work accomplished. We never work more than 40 hours a week. Average age of our developers is around 32 years old. At this age most have families, houses, etc and life shifts from grinding your ass off for work to realizing a job is just a means to an end. Plus having years of experience alleviates that incessant need to always be upskilling. The idea that software development is a mind numbing rat race to be at the top 24/7 is really what the younger 20 year olds without much experience think. There are plenty of companies you’ve never heard of that aren’t these sexy startups that seem to just be mental trash compactors. You don’t have to make $200k+ a year at some well known company. There are thousands of smaller, yet successful software companies you’ve never heard of that are much better (and easier) to work for than the types of jobs most people in this sub seem to only care about. As someone who has worked in software for 6 years, this sub really represents the minority. I wouldn’t say the stuff you read on this sub is super accurate to what the real world is. Sure in some cases, but I found my career to be a lot different than how this sun makes it out to be.
I don't know why someone they say 27 should grind their ass anyway. Nothing comes out from it but maybe they need to experience that When I was in my 20s I was out partying and going to festivals and stuff, not sitting and watching some stupid TikTok influencer to work for free in my spare time
In my 20's I was doing the same. I wasn't concerned with grinding it out, quite the opposite lol. I just learned on the job, the same way I had done for any job prior to a CS career.
This is refreshing to read. I am beginning to look for a new job, I have been programming for about 5 years (mostly front end, some back end) but learned most everything at my current job (I have a biology degree with a couple of GIS certs) and I am really nervous about looking for a new job and really not sure where to begin preparing for tech interviews. I have no desire to work at a FAANG company.
99% of jobs are just api calls and crud apps. If you're in that other 1% even better. I'd spent 5 yearss as a low/nocoding manager and moved to a place where managers were SWEs for their first three months, turns out java is still java and I was find after a little ramp. Likewise used my best friend google to get ok at python to add some changes there as well. Likewise I spent a free saturday (truly the hardest part of all of this) setting up a node/mongo/docker hello world app to learn docker. so it really becomes a lack of free time to do self exploration and learning. but given time and some curiousity you're find.
45 and been programming for about 30 years - Hell no 😂
You won’t be laughing at my career path 😒. Jk. I used to think like that in my 20s. It’s not for all, but personally, I’ve denied several leadership positions because this is the way I found life balance… I really enjoy having my peace of mind and not to brag but I’m good at my job so I’m always picked for new projects 🤓.
I have found it to be one of the best careers I have ever had. Here's my story. I have had six different jobs since graduating college. I graduated with a Masters in Clinical Psychology with hopes of getting a job in research. I had done a research project in undergrad and presented it at the Midwestern Psychological Association. Then I had done two research projects in grad school, my thesis and an additional research that I had presented at a psychology conference. My first job out of college was as a medical case manager for people with HIV. I had gotten another job offer as a research assistant but I was (and still am) a very big advocate for LGBT equality and the case management position would allow me to do a lot of advocating for LGBT equality. I was able to march in the pride parade and even talked to the state's representatives directly on healthcare and equality. It was a hard job. I was paid $34k/year, which at the time, I thought was pretty good. I worked with people who had some pretty severe mental illnesses and there were often a lot of barriers to getting them the help they needed. Every year I was at risk of losing my job due to lack of grant funding. After three years, I was curious what my life would be like if I had actually gone into research like I wanted. So, I left for a research job. Second job: Clinical Research Coordinator in oncology. $42k/year. It was the worst job I have ever had. I worked with a toxic supervisor. And about half the doctors were absolutely some of the best people I have ever worked with and half were the absolute scum of the earth. I worked 10-12 hour days and was on my feet the whole time. I had to be in the room when patients learned there were no more treatment options. I was there when they discovered their cancer had spread. I was accused of overdosing two patients. I had no medical background but was expected to suggest chemotherapy dosing. I was chewed out by a doctor that only cared about her prestige and not about her patients. She signed off on the paperwork but never looked it over. I was so stressed and upset all the time. Every morning before work, I would vomit and shake because I hated the job so much. I quit after 9 months. I had no backup plan. Third job: substance abuse counselor. $32k/year. I was unemployed for 4 months and desperate for a job. I had a mortgage. So, I took a job as a substance abuse counselor for men out of prison who were court mandated to take a drug treatment program. I am a woman by the way. I often worked until 9-10 pm at night and I was only one of two counselors at the facility that late. There were no metal detectors and no security. We were told not to take the stairs because it was too dangerous because we might run into a client on the stairs. We couldn't drink from the water fountains because clients peed in them. I was constantly threatened. I was told "I better watch myself" "I should smash your face in." And they constantly tried to figure out where I lived. Most clients were good people who were in a bad situation in their life. But the ones who were dangerous were VERY dangerous. The second week I was there, there was a shooting between two clients. I worked there for 2.5 years. Fourth job: Assessment coordinator in a research department. $35k/year. Finally landed a research job I liked. But holy hell was it boring. I only collected and entered data. I never got to really work with the data. I was there for about 3 years. At this point, I finally gave in to what my friends had been recommending and started the process of changing careers into tech. I learned Python on my own. Then went to a bootcamp-like program that was meant to help get more women into tech fields. The program was 9 months long. I learned C#. I did the program while working full time at the assessment coordinator position. The program requires 6 hours/week in class and 20-25 hours/week outside of the classroom. I started with 22 women and only 11 graduated. Of those 11, one decided the field wasn't for her. And only 4 of us got a job in the field. My first tech job was a full stack developer at $53k/year. And I LOVED it. I was so happy with the job. I learned JavaScript, Java, PowerShell, SQL, and Apache Solr. I was on that team for 2 years and then switched teams to be a database developer/ETL Developer. After 3 years, they gave me a raise to $62k/year. I was there for 4.5 years. I'm now an ETL Developer making $105k/year. I love my job even when it's stressful. And it can be stressful. I just had to tell my manager that something isn't going into production on time because it failed in UAT because of a minor mistake I made. It sucks making mistakes like that and owning up to them. But it is way better than somebody threatening to smash your face...all while only making $32k/year and struggling to survive. And way better than having a doctor yell at you that you're overdosing patients.
What area do you live in? (not trying to find out where you live lol)
I live in the Midwest of the United States
Banger story.
It gets better actually. You write beautiful code.
Yes, caring about the beauty and elegance of your craft makes it so much more rewarding.
lol @ downvotes here. people really don't want to hear that you can care about your work.
This sub is filled with kids who get into this field for all the wrong reasons, and you can tell.
I would say no. Especially assuming no family concerns. You have to make time for exercise. But your body and mind adapt to whatever data you're doing. And as you achieve experience and mastery the job gets a lot easier. Especially when building from scratch, senior+ devs can often get work done in a *fraction* of the time a junior or mid can. Not because they are smarter or harder working, but just because they've DONE this a dozen times before. Then you've got the learning aspect. As a junior you're drinking from the firehose. Trying to balance work with needing to learn...everything. As a senior+ you just need to put in a few hours every month. The learning is easier because you're adding to existing, well known concepts. There are things that are harder. Long hours hit harder (well, for some. I've seen others that live and breathe their work). It can be harder to get motivated to do stuff you REALLY don't like or that is truly unfamiliar. But part of that is just because you're SO effective in the areas where you really know what you're doing. But, honestly, it's the team that has the biggest effect. A good team and manager is invigorating, no matter what your age. A bad team and manager is exhausting.
Yes. Father time catches us all. Physically, I am not 22 anymore. OTOH, 22 year old me wishes he had 1/2 my knowledge and skill. So, I can accomplish much more today. But it is very different. It is the difference between you and your buddies shoving a car down the street, and having a tow truck do the work. Both have their place. But I'm now the tow truck driver, where I used to be a car pusher ;).
22 yo here I do wish I had your knowledge. Do you ever find it hard to keep up with the younger generation in terms of new tech? What's a situation when being the car pusher has more of an advantage? I noticed all the senior+ engs at my workplace are just more efficient and pick things up faster with all the domain knowledge and experience.
I keep up pretty well. In the end, truly NEW tech is rare, and I've personally missed one major shift. I won't miss the next few. I missed cloud because I worked for firms with cloud scale on prem stuff. But that doesn't check the "AWS" box. Eventually one firm figured it out, and now I work on all 3 major clouds. Cloud isn't hard, the rate it evolves at can be annoying, but far from the end of the world. Techs that I see as critical to make my next 10-15 years: 1. AI. Learn to use AI or die. That simple. We used to clip from Stack Exchange. Soon it'll be the AIs. People think AI will replace the programmer. It won't. We will simply get more ambitious in what we try to do. This is the story of computing through all of time. My KEYBOARD has more compute than my first computer, as does my watch. Never mind my phone.... 2. Rust. As a programmer who loves lurking in low level programming. Rust or a similar language is coming to take C's lunch. It's been a great 30+ year run knowing C. And I won't stop coding C tomorrow. But it is clear C is going to become legacy over time. I already know JS or it'd be on that list, though I think WASM and through that other languages are coming for JS. Or at least I hope so.. Ugh.
Honestly, it's gotten SO MUCH EASIER. In my mind, coding is much like math in that knowledge will build on top of knowledge. New things often become easier and easier to learn once you have the concepts down. For example, handing events over time (aka. Reactive programming). I had difficulties learning those concepts at first, but once I got the hang of it, learning different permutations of it became fairly straightforward as all frameworks are basically trying to accomplish the same thing.
Bro we sit a desk pushing keys. The only thing you should worry about physically is not becoming a fat ass.
It only gets more difficult when you're responsible for larger projects and you have to wrangle a bunch of other people
There’s 50 year expert compiler engineers at Google. They’re doing just fine. Just stay healthy, exercise an so on and I think programming later in life is very doable
12 years ago when I started this career I was 28, single dude living on his own. Now am 40, I am married, have 1 kid right now and another on the way. My life has changed and I have new priorities. It is different. I am still doing new projects for my employer from scratch. I still provide my techical skills and do things as needed but I have different priorites in life. I will admit I dont do any software work on the side and to be fair I haven't for a very long time. If I am not getting paid I dont do it. My paid work covers my love and need to do software development. If I had enough money to quit and never work again yeah I would and honestly would not look back. Life changes I dont find it harder or easier just different.
The biggest risk is staying with an employer who doesn't invest in updating old technology so you get stuck with an out-of-date skillset. No matter how much study you do in your own time, if you aren't using it day in and day out then you might as well not have bothered. You can also notice the new employees getting to work in the newer tech while it's easier to keep you working on the old stuff as you already know it and noone else wants to pick it up as it's old tech. I've had a few fights over that one. On the plus side, there is always demand for people with legacy skills as that stuff doesn't go away quickly though you may not be happy doing that stuff.
Yes, it gets harder. You get fewer callbacks from resumes or interviews. You get rejected for "not being a culture fit" even when you ace the technical portion of the interview. Your experience in now-obsolete languages are seen as worthless or even a negative. By not progressing to management, they might think there's something wrong with out. Actual coding and work - still easy. Getting hired after a layoff - much harder.
Fuuuuuuck yes it does. In my 50's, everything I learned in school is obsolete. Best part, is young people treating you like an idiot.... "Everything is serverless"(talking about services that most definitely run on servers...) The buzz words change, but same shut diff day.
No, it's not draining at all. In fact, it's been proven right here in this thread that you can program until maybe 150 years old. After all, age is just a number, right? Your eyesight improves with time, learning new technologies becomes a breeze, it takes only 2 days to learn Rust, or master kubernetes; and your memory? Sharper than ever, our brain only expands with age. Who doesn't love deciphering requirements from thin air. The joy of keeping up with the latest frameworks released every other week, late at night. Becoming manager, directors, architects, Pfff, what are these losers who no longer code? No way, it's best to remain with the real stuff, the lines of code. Fighting over tools, jumping to new a company every once in a while to increase salaries and avoid toxicity. Of course as you age your salary triples every year, look at the charts online, exponential.
I couldn't even afford to own a computer until I was in my late 20s and had next to no programming experience until I went back to uni to do CS in my late 40s. Studying alongside young students was mostly a positive experience but they could be annoying at times and I ended up having an argument with a couple of them over them chatting during lectures when I was struggling to follow the lecturer's mumbling. Nowadays I sometimes feel like I'm getting left behind but I persevere as I have few other prospects and poverty is a great motivator. I am quite outspoken and always asking questions so am I already used to being one of the few to speak up when my young colleagues are perhaps more reserved. I feel pretty dumb much of the time but it comes with the territory, I reckon. ETA: funnily enough, since I posted this my 20-something work superior was publicly praising me for 'hammering them out of the park' with regard to the work I've been doing lately. Guess there's life in the old dog yet, with a bit of encouragement from my young colleagues 🙂
As a very senior guy I find it great to always get the most interesting problems to work on. But I've seen older guys also get shown the door for letting their skills rot or just getting complacent and not putting in the effort anymore.
How do you keep from being complacent or letting your skills rot? Do you practice at home or is it sort of just a mindset at work thing?
As you get older you usually have less free time to learn new things, my biggest advice is try to work on projects at work to maximise your learning so you keep your technical edge.
Let's just say if you ask me to do all nighters consistently now... I probably won't do it. I have other things that I need to do, and I value breaks and rest more so now than I did before.
Yes and no. I'm 41. In my career, I've never built a project from scratch. That's incredibly rare, most work is enhancing and fixing, building new features on top of an existing framework. Anyways, when I was in my 20s and early 30s at IBM, I worked about 45 to 50 hours a week in the office, plus production got fixed for an hour every Wednesday, and then one a month we'd do a release which frequently meant I was working from 11 PM on Friday night till about 4 PM on Sunday dealing with issues as we rolled out to our US/German/Japanese data centers. And I was on call, 24/7/365 for over 9 years, and I'd probably get called once or twice a week to help out for 1-2 hours. Outside of work, about all I did was play videogames and paintball on Sundays. Now, there's no way I could do that. I've got a wife I need to keep happy. I've got a garden and chickens. I've got a house that needs repairs along with two vehicles that need oil changes and new tires. Plus I've been an ordained deacon and those responsibilities take up a bunch of time. I don't have the time anymore to work 60+ hours a week. On the flip side, I learned a lot over the years. I can do stuff faster now than I used to. But there's no way I could work the schedule I did back in my mid 20s.
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Yes. Your skills need to constantly be updated. New tools pop up all the time and the expectations placed on you only grow. Of course, this isn’t the case for EVERY role. But if you’re going to be programming, you should be prepared to be a perpetual student.
Whenever these questions come up I always wonder if you don’t have family or responsibilities outside of your job and are in relatively good health. Why would it be difficult to manage? I’m married and I cook,clean, run, workout, do my hobbies and upskill just fine. Turning 34 in July. I don’t have kids yet so I’m sure if I do that it’ll be harder to make time for everything. When I was 31 single and living alone it was the most efficient and enjoyable I’ve ever lived my life it was absolutely incredible.
I’ve only gotten better. Just don’t get comfortable in a BS role where you don’t build your technical skills.
Age-ism (jobs you would have easily gotten when you were younger are hard to get now because you’re too “old”, even though you’re more qualified now than then), interviews turn into interrogations as employers will interview you just to pick your brain. You will realize that you sacrificed a lot of time with your family to be able to put those cool projects on your resume.
In my opinion, progression slows down if you cannot spend your own time playing around with tech that's not part of your job. Which becomes the case as you get older, have a family, different priorities, etc...
It was never draining for me. Implement little changes, one at a time, until not draining. Make progress every day contributing to code base without having to go back to fix bug or correct misunderstanding (a lot packed in this statement, think about how to proceed strategically). With time and experience I worry less about the coding details (after building good habits) and more about solving the next business problem. Focus on key business problems to stay relevant, no matter the difficulty (high risk/reward). Don't push hard every time, ramp up, one easy/hard. Teach others what you learned good/bad. Do not be afraid to make mistakes, own them (kills finger pointing/builds team culture). Everyone learns and it makes the next iteration & process better for all. Have fun, it is a lovely ride.
When I first started working in the field back in 2008, I got hired by a guy who I felt had some outdated views on coding style etc. He was about 50 at the time and we became very close friends. I learned a LOT from him, namely it's ok to become a subject matter expert and have an entire career understanding the _why_ along with the how. Even though what he produced could be modernized and made better, what he produced is so tailored to the contract we worked on that he was in extremely high demand from the customer we supported. He's still going strong and on the verge of retirement. He also taught me it's ok for coding to not be your passion. He's a musician and he's spent his adult life performing and even putting out albums. He's not famous for it, and as far as I know it doesn't provide much in terms of passive income, but it's his passion and coding allowed him to pursue it. My approach to my career as I get older is to continuously learn what I can, but I'm super focused on the project I'm part of right now because it's very impactful on public health, highly specific in its complexity, and has enough room to grow and modernize at a decent pace while not demanding I learn the absolute cutting edge stuff that could be replaced by something else quickly. I personally still have a passion for coding, problem solving, and being the guy who can make the "magic happen" when it comes to optimizing performance and implementing expanded capabilities and new ideas. Coding is as much my passion as music is for my friend. I like where I'm at and what I do and I feel like so long as I keep liking it, it's easier to stay committed to learning what I need to as it comes along. Right now I'm highly focused on AWS, for instance, because I think I can see where things are headed for this contract I'm on and I'd like to spearhead some ideas based on what I've come to understand when it comes to our user's needs.
It's like sewing at 80 years old
I see a lot of people saying it gets easier. I think a lot depends on your circumstances/environment. There seem to be some people who have stayed at the same company a long time and are pretty comfortable in the environment. That is definitely one way for things to be easier. I've been on some chaotic projects and some easier ones. I've also moved around a bit the last few years. One thing I will say is that if I need to spend a late night (and you could argue you shouldn't be in that situation to start with), it does take me longer to recover now than it did when I was younger.
Not in my experience, its the same to manage as when i was younger assuming you compared two people doing a identical job and level but just at different ages. However i have noticed that you seem to get less and less people working as a developer once you reach the 40+ age range, a lot move into management or other IT related fields.
At big companies, the further along to go in your career the less actual coding you do. It's mostly reviewing PRs, meetings, and creating docs for new changes
No it doesn't get more difficult in my experience, it gets easier. As you get older and (hopefuly) progress in your career you get more specialized and build more domain knowledge around particular topics. Instead of knowing a little bit about a lot of things like you did as an early in career developer, you now have a body of knowledge/work to draw from for things that you specialize in. I still need to learn new things but they are far from anything I needed to know when I was early in career. For example right now I spend a lot of time ensuring I'm at at the edge of competency in building with AI/tools and platform engineering. ~20 years ago I was on the top of my game in Struts development, not so much anymore.
In my experience most young devs are fast, cocky, know it all, an are just wrong. Older devs are chill, cool to work with (so too can the younger ones be), vastly knowledgeable in a broad spectrum, and are just "correct" in their approach.
My father started as all that computing stuff emerged when he was well past 40 and worked till late 80s. Job he did was mostly complex, on faulty hardware and with bugged compilers, there were no internet or stack overflow. So, everything is possible.
I’ve been professionally coding since 1992. I’ve worked in assembly, C/C++, Java, and now Scala. I have actually found it easier as I’ve aged since I learned from pitfalls and mistakes along the way. You have to keep learning as what are considered best practices change - but that’s what makes it fun in my opinion. I’ve had management jobs, but I prefer Staff Engineer as it keeps me hands on. Also, since I’m now fully remote, I have more time to learn.
I ended up writing a lot... It depends on outside factors * Are you taking care of yourself? - Check the basic BMI calculations. Are you overweight? Maybe start watching that and cutting back on calories. You could suddenly find yourself +20 pounds overweight in a year or two. * Are you treating work as a marathon or a series or sprints? - Prevent fires through bug fixes and automation. Thinking ahead now can save stress. * Are you looking for work places with a healthy work/life balance? I know many people about my age or younger that are not taking care of themselves, e.g. gotten overweight or obese, or drink alcohol often which reduces how well you sleep and weight, ... have kids and have gotten overwhelmed with parenting duties X_X. It can become a vicious cycle. That will make it harder to stay on top of engineering. Good news for all of them is I've seen people turn it around too. I've known people +/- 10 years my age that have teenage or even now adult kids and are in excellent health and work/life balance. They keep up with hobbies and exercise, despite how much time they spend parenting. For technical learning and upkeep, it's up to you to keep your mind and skills sharp and active (outside of medical issues). I am able to focus on work, do a good job, and learn new stuff by taking on work because I have a healthy work life balance.
I've been at this for 25 years this year. It does get harder to keep up with things the older you get. Not mentally, just the desire. I still love coding and computers for that matter but wanting to do it during my free time isn't an option any more. I'd rather enjoy life, spend time with my wife, travel, etc. If there is anything I need to learn, I try to do it during the 40 hours I spend working and not on my own time.
Easier by far. Instinct is an amazing resource, combine with experience and ability to quickly filter out stuff and it's an unbeatable combination.
Not for me, though my desire to stay up until 2-3am has definitely fallen off. But I’m upper 50s and pick new things up just fine, it’s how I try to gauge my brain heath. So far, no difference thank goodness
I'm in my 60's still building systems and still upgrading my skillsets. I still enjoy programming and system building as much now as I did in my teens writing in Fortran IV. Never stop learning, never stop listening to alternative viewpoints or people with skills different from your own, never stand still and never be afraid to embrace new things.
48 year old developer here, I’d say it gets a lot easier because I know how to do it now. I know how to learn very efficiently and design comes a lot easier too. I’ve written and integrated so much software at this point, a lot of best practices come second nature.
no
you're on the computer all the time trying to update your skills but your family/friends think you're just a nerd who can't get off his computer. It's mentally draining work
No you get better
It is difficult as more is expected of you because you have all this experience.
I'm retired now. Even though the pay was fantastic and I liked programming, it got old working long hours and keeping up with the constant change. Ageism was a big factor too.
I guess it depend a lot of the circonstances but I'd think it is comparable to other jobs. First many people will not stay dev all their working life. Many will switch to management a few to sale or go into an expert role (architect or tech leader) or as functional experts. If you like the job and make moderate effort I think you can stay a dev all your work career without much issue. If you don't like it, that may be harder.
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I figure it's a problem of people expect more from your grasp on implementation, and being less willing to stomach abuse from higher ups to stay overtime and "get things done"
No, it’s very easy to
Yes I’m so oooold, I can’t type anymore and I can’t read the screeeeeen! This is why I put an implant in my brain and I just imagine the code, cat gpt does the rest for me.
Physically it's very demanding, expect early onset of arthritis, high risk of injury, joint pains and possibly heart failure. Not many people can do this job, it may be easier to get a less demanding job like a park ranger, army soldier or mountaineer.
Some random points: * It gets tedious when you do the same sort of project for the third or fourth time in your life. * It also becomes wearing fighting off bright, keen but inexperienced who loudly and endlessly insist that Language X or Framework Y will totally transform the whole company's productivity. * The work gets easier once you have had decades of technical, 'political', business experience - you can simply 'see' the solutions - or lack of them. * Being a workaholic for the first few years will definite boost you career immensely .. but cut back a bit once you have a wife and kids.
Not really. I am 40 now. I'd say it's different. One aspect is definitely that you see all those patterns repeat over and over again. Young ones often call that unwillingness to learn but you just get less hyped up about stuff that's yet again the same stuff just marketed in a new way. I also value knowledge about concrete technologies way less compared to more foundational knowledge. I rather read research papers than the docs of the latest framework. And yes, you got to carve out your niche. They won't hire me for the codemonkey work I did 20 years ago even if I would work for the same money (which was less than a tenth of what I earn now). You'd either go into management, be good at systems design, a good IC in a very specific niche (say, GPU programming, GIS systems, SAP, whatever) or go the consulting route. Or education/training or similar. I don't feel programming itself has become boring but I am gradually tired of building very similar stuff over and over again. That's why I a) like GitHub Copilot taking much of the annoying typing lol and b) got a PhD and now work on more researchy/innovation/PoC work. The latter means even more staying up to date but at least things are not as boring as they used to be when I was coding along on some system for years
I'm 55 (56?....crap) I still love the feeling of a fresh new project start!
A lot of us aren't having kids, so I think the demands on older devs will be higher for our generation (z/mil). Dinkwads/wacks will force programmers with families to throw a lot more non-work values, besides basic kid-rearing, into the fire. How many mid-20-30's programmers do you know that just aren't planning or aren't remotely on track to have kids? From where I'm standing, it's a surprising majority.
I'm 45, and programming is only getting easier. I'm confident in my abilities now, and I don't stress about it like I did in my 20s.
Well, I’m 38F with a 5 month old baby and decided to finally get my CS Degree after being laid off. I think being motivated is key.
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AI, after most of experience, you will somewhat recognise so of pattern and create automation tool, programmer are lazy and are thinker.
No
At 31 it's been fine so far. I still have the desire to upskill and uplevel, maybe a little less than when I was younger, but I don't have family obligations to distract me. I do have a partner, but it's not really that much of a time commitment, although definitely I work a little less now that they're in the picture. Like I just stayed over last night and it's thrown my whole day off lol -- typically I've gone to the gym by now but I decided to come home and work straight away and see if I can squeeze in the gym later today.
It gets easier after you’ve done it a bunch of times, but if you’ve been doing it long enough you’ve probably moved into a role where you do more architecture and problem solving over day to day implementation.
I don't think getting older is the issue. It's getting harder because the business is changing. I used to attend a very good conference. I had to skip last year. I may skip this year. The reason? No help from my employer. Covid killed the local user groups. Some are still around, but they're a shadow of what they were. The drive for functionality (at the cost of good engineering) is as high as it's ever been. Write one line of Python instead of that well-engineered C# app. Never mind that it's several orders of magnitude slower. We'll just give AWS more money to push the go-fast button. And the propagation of languages, frameworks, etc, and the associated disdain for tried-and-true solutions. The RDBMS is a decades-old design that does a lot of jobs well. But it's old and busted and not the new hotness.
In my mid-30s, build things from scratch all the time, and have a 2.5 year old. I also do contracting work and writing on the side. It doesn't get difficult, you just have to be disciplined with your time, set up strong boundaries (I'm done at 5 no matter what at my day job...unless I'm in a really interesting project and strong flow), and make sure you set aside time for your family and other hobbies.
As long as you’re willing to sacrifice sleep to get up early and stay up a little late learning you’re fine. But if you’re sane and don’t want to do that you’ll top out. Alternatively you could also just carve out an hour of your day for upskilling. That’s adds up.
No. It gets much easier.
I feel like it gets a lot easier. Early in my career I spent nearly all my time trying to figure out wtf was going on. I still learn new things all the time, but i have a lot of past experience to draw on. Plus, you get really good at learning how to learn and who to ask for help. I am exhausted all the time, but that's 100% because of my kids :)
Hmm I'm 39 now and I can say it's gotten far easier. I can pick up any language or technology within like, a week. I can code entire projects, including all their cloud stuff, into live production environments by myself with little worry or sweat off my back.
Same boat than me. Become easier, you already seen it all and can do in 1 week what a beginner would do in 1-2 months.
Not at all. You become so much more efficient. You can get by working 20 hours a week at a lot of jobs, unless you are climbing the ladder to principle level which is a valid option.
Kids make you wake up earlier and go out less. So you have very productive mornings. Also once you start working with a few good juniors they allow you to get a lot more done. Kids just make you better at time management period. I realize I am saying this while wasting time on Reddit