What I'd be interested in, if anyone has a perspective to share, is whether we should be worried? Will the job market change? Will our salaries stagnate or fall?
Experienced engineers will still have an advantage in a job search. Few things to consider:
- First job: Getting the first one is always the hardest, the whole needs experience, but where do I get experience if no one gives me the chance scenario. Luckily programmers can have highly visable projects.
- Job markets do change: It's about supply and demand. US programmers makes more, especially in the SF Bay Area than anywhere else. Just read recently that we hit the point where we're graduating more nurses now than job openings for them. I think that's a very similar case where there was a huge push for the profession and now supply is more than demand.
- The best: I see people complain about VISAs in a lot of articles. The best in the profession all demand high pay no matter where they come from. I haven't met many highly skilled/sought after candidates from outside the country that demanded less than their Amercian counter-part.
That's an outstanding point, especially in today's economy.
It sucks that a conventional programming career generally ends at age 35-40, but for someone not wedded to a programming career, and who has a modicum of talent and interest in the field, yeah, that'll get them started.
They will then have plenty of time to arrange their first transition into another career, and they will have learned a lot of generally useful stuff in the meantime.
> It sucks that a conventional programming career generally ends at age 35-40,
That's an illusion, created by two factors:
* Many people choose to leave the "coder" job as they age, and mentally it's a difficult field to enter if you never coded befo reage 35.
* The explosion of the size industry means that the number of young novices dwarfs the number of older veterans. You can see this now, as the young novices of the 2000s bust are still in demand when they are now veterans.
So you've not heard of, or do not believe, the claims of rampant age discrimination?
I have my own telling experience there, based on being able to hide my age in my resume and my looks, and doing the former in the middle of a job search as well as subsequent ones.
Not sure that age discrimination is rampant but I do believe (and witnessed in interviews) that lot of people don't keep up with technology and then later use age discrimination as excuse.
Experience in relevant technologies trumps almost everything else.
Disclaimer: I am in my late 40s
Does "keep up" require experience that can be cited on a resume?
"Experience in relevant technologies trumps almost everything else."
Hmmm, in my experience, unless it involves a big paradigm shift, such as moving to OO or functional programming, new "relevant technologies" can be quickly learned on the job, unlike being able to design systems, write good code, debug quickly if that's possible, build and debug systems, etc. The sort of stuff that takes more than a few years to learn how to do well.
Maybe it's that the explosion in programming careers coincided with a bunch of kids that left school in the run-up to the last tech bubble? They are mostly in that range. Those are the ones who were growing into the web world (and were more likely to stay technically engaged).
I expect we'll continue to see that age slide a bit, though due to the senior programmer income plateau (and supervisory experience accrual), you also have the move to management effect. Many good programmers will become leads, architects, managers etc.
I have no idea why you would think a programming career ever ends in relation to an age? It may also be that people 35-40 don't want to work at companies or with the lifestyle you see around you?
Anything, really (well, aside from areas requiring additional formal education and/or expensive in time and/or money credentials; this not a path to becoming a doctor, lawyer, scientist, etc.). There's very basic "work skills" that any job requires, e.g. showing up; the object here is to get a "real", career type of job before, say, a couple of years have passed unemployed, after which I've read its very very hard to get such a job.
I would also imagine it's easier to transition to something else desirable from a programming job compared to retail (which isn't doing well anyway), food service, etc., jobs which many of us are mentally/temperamentally unsuited.
When I read/skimmed it, What Color is Your Parachute?(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Color_is_Your_Parachute%3...) spent a lot of ink on this. And as has been noted by many, most Americans change careers several times, it's definitely not out of the ordinary.
That sounds like an awful waste of 20 years' worth of skills and experience. I never saw this "check out at 35-40 and do something else" advice given in other specialized and relevant professions, but I can see how it may fit in the context of a jobs bubble where the industry can't sustain all the gold-rushers for their entire working life.
"That sounds like an awful waste of 20 years' worth of skills and experience."
Indeed. But then again, what can you say about a field where "senior" is commonly added to titles after 5 or so years?
If you're a programmer in the US and below the age of 40, I sincerely hope you investigate this before you find yourself only able to get consulting work. Or perhaps embedded, there are those who respect grey hairs in that field. Or government work; that's likely to be only attractive if you get a job requiring a serious security clearance, e.g. TS/SCI or Q, from an organization that's willing to have to mark time or whatever while you get it, then of course stay in jobs requiring a high clearance.
But this has been going on since at least the '90s, it has nothing to do with jobs bubbles, heck, it was strong at the height of the dot.com bubble, when I had my personal epiphany on it (was 35 in 1996), it's age discrimination. Or partly wage discrimination, young people, and/or those on H-1B and L-1 visas are cheaper, more malleable, etc. Google has provided one of the more notorious examples, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist...
> It sucks that a conventional programming career generally ends at age 35-40
I think this is a myth. I'm 39. I've yet to see any sign that experienced engineers who keep their skills up to date have any issue at all. We just hired someone I estimate is in their late 50's.
Keep an eye on graduation rates. Enrollment numbers mean nothing for your concern. How many people do you think can meet a min GPA after completing core physics, math, and CS classes?
Programmer salaries aren't outrageous. Most peoples' real incomes have declined substantially, making programmer salaries look high. US GDP is $15.68 trillion (2012), with 146 million people employed (April 2014). That's $107,000 per worker. US median wage is around $27,000.
Programmers are one of the few occupations that have managed to retain bargaining power.
Compare the lifestyle (e.g. house, vehicle, ability to have a single income household with kids without getting into massive debt) a programmer in the Bay Area can buy right now compared to the lifestyle a plumber could buy forty years ago. The plumber of 1974 comes out ahead.
The only reason everyone hasn't noticed this huge decline is because the inflation numbers are rubbish and everyone has been kept distracted by wedge issues and wars.
> The only reason everyone hasn't noticed this huge decline is because the inflation numbers are rubbish
and a large part is that progress has raised productivity and the standard of living quite a bit, but the top x% have captured the profits from that progress.
By no means. I believe that having GDP per worker be 4x median wage is socially and politically dangerous, and results in persistent high unemployment because of lack of demand.
The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Capital needs a return, but we've seen current levels of wealth inequality in the past and it means bad things for the average person.
Edit: Another way of stating my position is that I'm against extreme income inequality. That does not mean that I am in favour of perfect income equality.
- First job: Getting the first one is always the hardest, the whole needs experience, but where do I get experience if no one gives me the chance scenario. Luckily programmers can have highly visable projects.
- Job markets do change: It's about supply and demand. US programmers makes more, especially in the SF Bay Area than anywhere else. Just read recently that we hit the point where we're graduating more nurses now than job openings for them. I think that's a very similar case where there was a huge push for the profession and now supply is more than demand.
- The best: I see people complain about VISAs in a lot of articles. The best in the profession all demand high pay no matter where they come from. I haven't met many highly skilled/sought after candidates from outside the country that demanded less than their Amercian counter-part.