[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