[peacemaker]

The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.

Perhaps in some of the "trendy" "bro-culture" startups you'd have a more difficult time as an older developer but even in those places, the level of experience and skills older devs bring can be extremely valuable.

But say you were laid off in your 40's, now what? Well, there are so many bigger, less volatile companies out there with solid pay that are desperate for senior people with experience. There's also consulting for those who have spent a career building up a network of contacts. You can still leverage those old contacts for future opportunities as well.

Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern. Here I agree you might not make as much money but employment is always available to developers who are skilled, experienced and flexible.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern.

Why only single out government/public sector jobs as palces for all-age job stability?

Aerospace, defence, semiconductor, automotive, industrial, medical, healtchare, banking, insurance, manufacturing, naval, rail and freight, logistics and transportations, basically all legacy businesses, all are hiring SW engineers and are staffed by mostly older workers, but HN mostly snuffs at these fields because they're not in SV, are seen as un-cool, boring, old and crusty and don't pretend to change the world through innovation and paying millions in TC for 10h/week of pretending to work from home to psuh ads to people, like Google does, but it's not like you will starve to death and be homeless if you work as a dev in those "un-cool" kinds of fields for a lot less than what Google pays, going from 1% top earners to 5% top earners. If you're a 10x dev you'll find top paying jobs no matter your age.

This might sound harsh, but perhaps the last ~10+ years of hyper-growth in the VC funded SW sector has warped many devs perspective on their own value and what the rest of the real world is like, where if a company doesn't offer FAANG TC then it's automatically unlivable.

Hell, if AI makes my medicore coding skills redundant, as I'm not a 10X dev, I can always go into trades. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, you name it, are making bank now as there's a shortage of trades and the labor market is overcrowded with all kinds of BS consultants and "laptop workers", as per the last south park episode which I recommend you watch.

[lawgimenez]

There are a lot of decent programming jobs anywhere in the world too, we might not be FAANG but jobs are decent enough to raise a family and build a house.

[FirmwareBurner]

> build a house

Not where I live you can't build a house on a dev wage. Average dev wages is ~55k/year and average house price is something like 500k+.

[lawgimenez]

I live in Southeast Asia, cost of living here is low.

[FirmwareBurner]

I live in Europe :(

[peacemaker]

I agree, all of those fit in my (admittedly lazy) "and such" part of the statement. Loads of jobs for all ages

[WesolyKubeczek]

> The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.

To the contrary, this is the very finest distilled HN for you. I wouldn't expect less.

[JKCalhoun]

> The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.

Must retire? No, of course not.

I worked through most of my 50's though and definitely saw "the writing on the wall". I don't want to scream "Ageism!" because I think people are often too quick to pigeon hole a thing that has much more complex roots.

For example, because of my white hair, beard, I'm probably not the guy you would go to and ask a Swift question to. And I don't blame anyone for having that ... instinct.

But it was a combination of things like that began to inform me that my better days in the industry were behind me.

Believe me, I tried to act as mentor when I knew I was probably within a year or two of heading out of the industry but I found the young'uns didn't want a mentor either. Oh well. I think I would have at their age but not everyone is the same.

[Dave3of5]

Are you saying that there is no ageism in the tech industry at all ?

[JohnFen]

There absolutely is ageism, but it's not as widespread as many younger devs seem to think. It also tends to be concentrated in a particular segment of our industry. Big picture, there isn't enough ageism to lose sleep about it.

[hashtag-til]

Within the AI bubble, I think there is lots of ageism, but in real world mission-critical i.e. "serious stuff" there is plenty of jobs for experienced engineers.

[peacemaker]

Well no, I clearly wasn't saying there is no ageism at all. I was taking issue with the comment regarding developers having to leave tech over 50 years old.

[Wytwwww]

> idea that you must retire from tech before 50

Well I guess the idea is that all the "best" engineers would have already made millions by the time they hit 50 and so therefore those who are left are...

[JohnFen]

People who think this way are blinded by their own worldview. A large number of the best engineers aren't in the business to become wealthy, and they don't leave the industry if they become wealthy.

The ones who are in it just for the money rarely become the best engineers.

[ZaoLahma]

Perhaps in the hyper inflated SV economy, but in the rest of the world you don't get to retire until you've reached the normal retirement age (minus a few years perhaps), and that makes it quite natural to see newly employed software engineers who are in their mid or even late 50s. I've worked with plenty of them.

I must admit though that I've only seen one newly hired in their 60s, but probably the very few that find themselves involuntarily out of a job at that age can afford to and choose to retire a little bit earlier than planned.

[ghaff]

Once you get into late 50s/60s, I know quite a few people in tech at that point who have had reasonably well-paying jobs (though certainly not top-level FAANG salaries) who have presumably managed their finances well who are pretty much ready to wind down at that point--whether forced or otherwise. They mostly haven't classically retired but they're working part-time on often IT-adjacent types of projects.

[godzillabrennus]

Translation:

To avoid being unemployable in your 50’s learn COBOL so you can work for a big stupid company or government.

[BillTheDuck]

Not at all.

Once out of the umbrella of the FAANGS, there are tons of jobs for SWE, just not at the eye watering salaries.

East Coast, tons of jobs at the 100K range.

[harimau777]

The problem is that salaries above 100K are important to live securely in many places in the US.

[scarface_74]

Yet the household median income in the US is less than $100K and people seem to survive

[harimau777]

That's why I said "in many parts of the US". There are certainly places in the US where someone can live quite comfortably on $100K. There are other parts where it would be quite difficult and where it would be almost impossible to own a home on that income.

[scarface_74]

“Living comfortably” and “owning a home” is not synonymous. Is there any place in the US that a household will be homeless and hungry making $100k?

[godzillabrennus]

Survival is not thriving. Lots of political upheaval underway in the US as a result.

[scarface_74]

Yes like this famous article about how someone felt poor with a household income of $200K-$500K a year.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/10/09/budget-breakdown-of-a-co...

And if you talk to the people who strongly identify with the MAGA movement, their main concerns are guns, illegal immigration, “persecution because of their Christian beliefs”, and for some strange reason - Disney.

People who know me and one of my friends calls us the “odd couple”. I’m a Black mostly agnostic bleeding heart libertarian capitalist pig who works in tech (including a stint in BigTech), my friend is a White former military high school dropout who is an evangelical Christian, gun loving and rural, who rails against those “illegals”.

But he attends a predominantly Black church and has been married to a deaf Vietnamese woman for two decades who he loves dearly.

I also use to live in a famous “sun down” town in Georgia made famous by Oprah. I’m often in conversations with modern “conservatives”. I don’t argue, I just listen.

[geraldwhen]

This would be a 66% pay cut for me. As in, it would take 3 years of that pay to match one of my current year’s pay. Investing aggressively and retiring at 50 seems like a smarter option.