I personally think this is the only reason causing work force depreciation among software engineers. If shit is changing every six months, then keeping up with changes should be part of the job, not part of the weekend.

Because 50% of the potential workforce are excluded.

Great insight and data. Adapting to a field like SWE just gets harder as you age.

What professions are you guys thinking of going into? Not sure what I want to be when I grow up and out of engineering, a Doctor? Lawyer? Accountant? Financial Advisor? Relationship building and networking seem to be the keys to generating wealth at an old age. Heck look at our pres candidates, they arent there because they are old, they are there because they had enough time (which comes with age) to form the relationships that support them to be there.

Agreed.

The oldest devs I’ve worked with have to be mid 40’s, don’t think I’ve worked with anyone in their 50’s, they’ve long left.

At 35 working in software for 15 years I don’t see any career progression, I’m probably getting my highest pay of my career as stuck in a job now where my options to move involve a pay cut. The only career progression I have is people management which I have no interest in and will be bad at as not my skills.

I don’t want to be dealing with corporates and agile nonsense in to my late 40’s.

The only option I’m seeing is save as much as I can while I’m getting paid well in order to have some kind of hobby business in 10-15 years time.

In the beginning, Computers were people who computed things.

Then mechanical adding machines came along and made them more productive, but demand kept up. A phase change

Then tabulating and sorting machines, along with storage on cards brought formal methods of managing data to organizations. A phase change

Then electronic computers were put into place to start to do the computing. The humans who previously computed were in demand elsewhere. A phase change

There was 1 programmer... Alan Turing... then 100, then more... the rate of doubling about every 5 years, on average since then.

Computers were expensive, and it took time to learn to get the most out of them. Over time, libraries of code began to be commonly used, and operating systems were born. A phase change

As the price of computers went down, and the amount of programmers and data went up, there were punch card operators, who transcribed handwriting to punched cards.

The computers still required maintenance, tubes to replace, circuits to adjust, etc... they were kept away from everything else in their own rooms. Operators were the priesthood that emerged to care for them.

Every new computer was faster, but incompatible... requiring frequent rewriting of applications to be compatible with the new systems. Most programs had a life of less than a decade.

Then IBM broke the rules, and the 360 could run 1401. Backward compatibility and legacy code were born, a phase change. Programmers didn't need to rewrite code, but by accident this created the Y2K problem.

Online teletype printers and time sharing allowed programmers and users to directly access the machines. Cardpunch operators were no longer needed. Programming got a lot faster, and complexity went up.

Then Minicomputers came along, and were easier for end users, another phase change.

Then Microcomputers came along, and everyone had their own computer... you needed about 1 Administrator for 20-50 PCs, to fix the problems, and keep things going

Then things got more reliable, and went to the cloud, so administrators got outsourced, another phase change

What makes any of you really think that there won't be another phase change?

The reason there aren't many old developers is that every 5 years the number of programmers doubled.... so most have less than 5 years experience. There are about 120 times more programmers now than when I started, 7 programmer doublings ago.

We may, or may not, have a phase change that devalues programmers, developers, devops, architects, whatever you care to call yourself.

I myself did programming, then electronics technician work, then 15 years as a sysadmin, then 5 years making Bevel Gears....now I'm diving back into programming.

Great read. Couple thoughts:

1. Wonder what professions SWEs tend to dropout to?

2. The average earnings by degree chart is interesting. But software, being so winner takes all, probably has much higher variance than other industries. Would be interesting to see the comparisons at higher percentiles.

3. "The return to being a fast learner is higher in jobs with low rates of skill change because the learnings can compound over time instead of dwindle in relevance." The caveat being that there's a high skill bar for those other jobs. My hunch is that lots of professions (outside of ones that need years of schooling like med) actually don't have that high of a skill bar, just a matter of pedigree/experience/networking/playing politics.