[goatinaboat]

Programmers have been well paid since at least the dot com bubble, that's a conservative 20 years, wouldn't consider that 'fairly recently' imo.

Outside of a few hotspots like Silicon Valley, programming salaries tend to ramp up quickly in the first few years then hit a plateau. Other professionals like lawyers, accountants, doctors start more slowly but their plateaus are much, much higher. This is why 25-year-old programmers think that they're rich. They haven't hit that plateau just yet, but most will, and sooner than they think. And not long after that they will have their first encounter with ageism. A lawyer or a doctor will never experience that, because his profession values experience. That is the hardest part of staying in this industry for decades, you get to see all your hard-won knowledge become worthless, for no reason other than fashions change.

The vast, vast majority of programmers aren't in tech firms, they are writing internal software for companies in other industries for whom software is a cost, not a profit centre. Those programmers are paid the same as any other mid-level office workers. These programmers are barely represented on sites like HN however so they are almost invisible.

[Spoom]

I hit the plateau but managed to break into FAANG, which doesn't seem to have the same plateau. In Cleveland, the plateau seemed to hover around $100K - $120K. I think FAANG or certain unicorn startups avoid the ceiling that most companies hit, though of course it's a challenge to get into them.

[hanselot]

I agree and disagree here. Certainly not old enough to be able to input on the wisdom/experience aspect yet, but from what I have seen in my time in this industry, investing your time in what is current is a surefire way to get left behind. The technology that sticks over the years are the things other people would rather take shortcuts to use, or wrappers upon wrappers upon wrappers.

With every abstraction away from the core computing libraries, you take a bigger risk and enter into a bigger gamble with your time.

I certainly know I am keeping miles away from node and webassembly (although the latter is interesting), simply because I was under a guy who has focussed his efforts not on acquiring fancy knowledge, but rather using simple techniques to achieve complex results.

Soon the very simple things I learned to appreciate, ended up being things I now use every single day to do stuff way more complicated than a person of my intellect should be able to accomplish.

Anyways, this got kind of sidetracked on the way, but I have to work with colleagues who have cemented years of knowledge in archaic tech, that while current at the time, ended up fading away over the years. They still have knowledge and skills, but they let their experience shackle their thinking, and oftentimes come up with extremely complicated solutions for very simple problems.

I think this is also the point in their lives where they got comfortable enough to think they don't need additional training, where I was very much taught that there is no limit to knowledge that can be acquired.