Long term programmer?

March 16, 2012 7:35 AM

Programmer longevity concern ?

I am a computer programmer, well-paid, working on interesting stuff for a government contractor. I am also a fulltime telecommuter.

I am reasonably happy doing what I am doing, and would be ok retiring at this job. I'm 38 and have about 13 years experience.

Periodically I hear about young programmers being advised to seek advancement into management to get ahead.

That being said, while being content programming and making great annual reviews, what healthy career stuff should I be doing to .... I dunno ... be safer and provide for a rosy future? Am I going to grey out of this field?

posted by toastchee to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: The problem isn't so much one of being too old to program; rather, it's the expectation that, as you get older, you'll expect to see pay and responsiblity rises that reflect your levels of skill and experience. But those may not be your own expectations, which is fine.

I work with a couple of programmers in their 60s who are still very much engaged in what they do and putting out perfectly good code. But neither of them earn as much as I do in my early 40s, because I've taken on some additional managerial responsibilities for the IT part of the company I work for. They're both happy doing what they do (and doubly happy not to be obsolete), but for a lot of people there's an expectation that as their experience grows, they'll fit better in a managerial role, leaving the programming to younger and (supposedly) more flexible minds.

I think that what we're seeing now is a generation of people who have worked in programming from their first job, who have a lot of valuable experience that only comes from writing a couple of million lines of code, and who fully intend to keep doing it for as long as they can. And there's no sign of the market for programming skills drying up. Quite the contrary.

Whether you 'grey out' is largely a question of whether you get bored, lose the sense of excitement and creativity that comes with coding, and can't work up the energy to learn the new stuff as it comes along. I think that's the factor that pushes people out of programming and into management; age may be a factor, but I don't think it's the reason.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:59 AM on March 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

Keep up on trends in language and technology development. Seriously. Yes, I could've completely stayed as a C programmer, but that is graying out.

When you learn a new language, you learn to look at problems differently and whether or not you use that language in your daily job, you may find that you use techniques from that new language in your current work because it makes a solution more readable/maintainable.

For example, I learned F# and have found that I can use F# paradigms in C# or Java and my code is better for it.
posted by plinth at 8:10 AM on March 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

It depends how how rare and valuable your skill-set is. Certainly going management will broaden your choices, but you'll be competing in a heavily-populated field. A lot more people can manage than can, say, write bulletproof code for a life-support system.

If you're good at what you do, investing a similar amount of effort into demonstrably sharpening your skills may have a bigger payoff (at the expense of having to be more mobile to relocate to a job that needs your sort of expertise).
posted by introp at 8:14 AM on March 16, 2012

Best answer: As a programmer at 41 I worry about this a lot. I watched my IT manager father get forced into early retirement in his late 50s, and while that isn't an identical problem it certainly is in the same genus when it comes to the technology culture.

What I've noticed as a graying coder is that there's still work but a lot of it we're just not suited for because of cultural expectations and salary requirements.

The death-march culture is problem one, and while we seasoned professionals can scoff and recognize it as a counter-productive one - and have our arguments supported by whatever version of The Mythical Man Month is being re-written that year - the reality is that it exists. So a huge swathe of the field is unofficially cut off from us because (1) we're not going to work till midnight for wages we left behind years ago and (2) those places expecting that aren't going to pay us more to work fewer hours than they have in their head they expect from a programmer.

Philosophically I am okay with this. With twenty years under my belt I am seasoned in valuable ways that people in their first few years are not. I know patterns they don't and can spot problems beyond my immediate focus area - I know to say "hey, I've seen this sort of approach before and we had deployment issues because of XYZ; are we prepared to deal with that sort of problem?" They don't want that from their hires and I don't want to work for a place that doesn't value that in me. But it means I'm statistically less likely to fit into as many jobs.

That, I would assert, is why we're told to look into management directions. Those slots aren't 60% devoted to the water-carrier sort of level. They pay commensurate with our senior (in experience, though also in age) status and value our experience.

I'd somewhat disagree with introp on this. That statement about how many people can do management is true if you use a very wide category definition, but the same is true if we use a definition of programmer that includes folks writing 5 line javascript enhancements to put jQuery calendars onto a date field. I think if you narrow programmer to mean people with more extensive application chops and narrow manager to mean people who are involved in technical design and direction it's more equitable.

But honestly, arguing about exact numbers is sorta besides the point. I think the key for us is to worry less about exactly how many options there are as an absolute number and more to focus on making sure that our options remain as wide as possible.

So rather than thinking in this binary programmer/manager sort of thing, I view my career options more like a blob. Think of a puddle on a tile floor, spreading out in several directions. As I get older and more experience and have greater financial requirements my part of the blob that covers up junior programmer opportunities moves away. They won't hire me and I don't want the job.

So I try to make sure the other side of the blob expands as well. I insure I'm capable of using my experience and knowledge for design by expanding my skills in specification and design. I've been PMI trained and will get my PMP certification later this year. I try to be more involved in the infrastructural matters where my code runs.

It may be that some of this edges me into the direction of management; some places have a very either/or sort of classification to developers and managers. But my experience is that plenty of places would LOVE to employ managers who are more technically savvy. The problem is that "our people" haven't always embraced learning skills outside the just-code-it mentality - many times to our detriment not only in our careers, but also as coders.

Some places may make you make an either/or choice but my observation has been that the people who learn how to do the skills to be technical directors get to decide how technical they stay. I also think the decentralized world and telecommuting is going to mean people who have a foot in both places are always going to be valuable.
posted by phearlez at 9:07 AM on March 16, 2012 [11 favorites]

Try to get a programmer analyst job in the public sector? The government doesn't adopt the greatest new thing regularly and you're likely to not have the most challenging tasks, but your idle time can then be dedicated to contributing to open source projects.
posted by DetriusXii at 5:36 PM on March 16, 2012

Here's what happened to me. The company I worked for had financial difficulties and I was laid off because those with the highest salaries can always be replaced with young people for cheap. Then, when I looked for other work, I was interviewed by young people who didn't want to hire an old person who reminded them of their parents. Theoretically, that's illegal, but hard to prove. I had always been a desirable candidate when I'd looked for work but recruiters who sent me out now told me to leave dates off my resume and to make it look like I hadn't worked in so many places. You think that people hire for skills but there are all sorts of cultural beliefs that go into the hiring process and being older than the other candidates works against you.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:25 PM on March 16, 2012 [1 favorite]