[novocaine]

It's a structural problem. If everyone expects 20 years of experience people to be principal engineers, and only 5% of roles are principal jobs, then after 20 years 95% of engineers need to leave the industry.

And so, the industry is mostly populated by inexperienced people and many of its pathologies and adverse outcomes are due to this.

[s1artibartfast]

> 20 years of experience people to be principal engineers and only 5% of roles are principal jobs, then after 20 years 95% of engineers need to leave the industry.

I'm not sure I follow your math. 5% of roles are principal jobs, but devs with 20+ years are not 100% of the talent pool. This doesn't hold up if devs with 20+ years are are 5% or less of the talent pool.

[novocaine]

You're right - my comment was sloppy!

Still, given "20+ years of experience" represents all programmers of ages, say, 45-65 - or two decades worth of CS graduates - I feel that cohort far exceeds the market for principals? If you think it is smaller, maybe that's because everyone who wasn't in the top n% had to leave?

Although other commenters have pointed out that the growth of the industry counters that, that won't last forever!

[s1artibartfast]

I thought it was an interesting question and found this page[1] . It is a survey of 50k devs on Stack overflow. 3.8% percent of those surveyed were over 50. Cenensus data here[1] gives ~20% over 50

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/2-out-of-3-developers-are-...

https://datausa.io/profile/soc/15113X/#about

[moneywoes]

Is fair to say we have an up and out culture like big law, consulting and finance?

[novocaine]

Yes, but nobody under 35 realises they're perpetuating it until its their ass getting upped and outed like everyone else

[rabidrat]

I agree with the sentiment, but in this industry which has exponential growth, the number of people in it doubles every 5 years, I think. So if you've been working 20 years, there are now 16x as many people as when you started...so you are in the most senior 6% of people if you managed to stick around.

[mech422]

Except after 20 years in the industry, there's a vast amount more work available...And the industry is still running at a shortage of tech. people.

(oddly enough, the 'average' programmers entire career was 10 years last I checked. People seem to burn out and move on..)