!rant

I’m curious about the age of tech workers, and what they do career wise as they approach 40, 50, and beyond.

I’m young and benefit from it right now, but the ageism seems strong in this industry and I won’t be young forever.

Does anyone here have a tech career in their 40s+ and if so what advice would you offer to a younger generation of technology professionals to maintain relevance and a satisfying career?

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good question

@Diactoros – The 40+ yr olds with (technical backgrounds) in my company are product owners, department leads, CTO, or CEO.

I’m on the slippery slope towards 40 and I am working in a senior leadership position in a large development department within a very large company.

Next move for me will be CTO or equivalent role, possibly at a smaller company than where I am now.

I still work on my own products at the evenings. So even though I’m at senior management level now, I still write code

Every. Night.

@SSDD

I wonder how you feel your personal prospects are? Sounds like things are going well from the corporate perspective but I’m curious if anyone knows someone 40+ who did not travel the corporate management pathway.

I think most of my peers and coworkers are so busy living their early-mid twenties and making fun of the tech-unsavvy that they’re not really concerned with the future beyond five years.

As I approach 30 I notice more and more that I’m skewing older in groups I spend time in. It’s hard not to extrapolate and realize in 10 years time if I’m not in corporate management of IT or doing consulting work I’m not sure I’ll be in technology - and I find the prospect of management work a bit mind numbing.

Just curious about others paths.

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@Diactoros I’m very happy with my personal prospects / trajectory. But yeah I wouldn’t like to be 40+ and to be one of many devs in a dev team. They said though... that’s just me. I’m sure loads of folk would be just delighted with that.

📌

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I’m 47. Fuck. It’s worse when I write it.
I’m in a senior developer (very senior) position. I code whenever I get the chance. I architect applications. I share my years of pain with young developers, who mostly don’t listen and insist on learning by failing instead of from the fails of others. I hack people quite a bit. Being an introvert who’s happiest away from everyone but except equally introverted developer wife, I come home to bourbon driven development after a day of pretending to care about feelings.
If all you do is code, someone younger and cheaper will replace you. The secret to a long career is to keep finding bigger and hairier problems. Keep pushing. Keep learning new things. Don’t. Ever. Stagnate. Drive or be driven. I love my job. I have fun almost every day because I’m working on the hardest problem I can find. If you’re bored, you’re doing it wrong and falling behind.

I never understood "ageism", unless you can't keep yourself awake or have a huge lack of mobility it would make sense to hire experienced "old" devs.

@yamatoman I appreciate your reply. 47 isn’t that far away from me in the grand scheme of things, so I’d appreciate whatever I can learn through another.

Seems like the biggest take away so far is to make sure you’re cultivating a passion for technology so your skills are always fresh and you don’t lose your edge.

I suppose I’ll have to figure out how to balance that with the healthy relationships and active style of living I find rewarding.

Mother of God I feel young with my 22 years of age now haha

@yamatoman lol at bourbon driven development. That’s amazing I’m using that next time I interview someone and ask them to tell what BDD is.

@SSDD "on friday we do BDD. How profiecent are you with it?" 😄

@SSDD we also do DevHops.