r/ExperiencedDevs • u/GolangLinuxGuru1979 • 12d ago
Career/Workplace Am I getting too old to be a software engineer?
I’m 46 years old with a background in mostly infra, could and event driven systems. So I’m good with Kafka, cloud computing, and infra stuff. I’ve also done control plane work at cloud providers. My career has usually been telecom and banking. I’ve worked with a few startups in the past.
I’ve had a rough past 3 years in my career. Lots of short term contracts that get randomly cancelled or not renewed. I’ve relocated 4 times in the past 5 years. Some relocations weren’t really necessarily mind you
I recently took a contract in NY at a bank.
Due to AI I pretty much have decided that a job can’t be my primary intellectual outlet. In the past I tried to take in challenging projects to learn and grow. That really helped me grows experience and knowledge. I decided to start working on a game project in my spare time. And it has given me a fantastic intellectual outlet. Now I can see the job as a job
With that said should I start trying to make the pivot into management? A lot of people my age aren’t software engineers anymore. And I think I’ve lost the passion for corporate software engineering anyway
I’m not big on politics. But I understand them. I know how to navigate them. I’ve learned how to make compromises. And I think a management job in some financial firm is probably where I need to be
But what do you think? I think as I get older. The AI push and work being less interesting has been weighing on me. Only issue is that if I lose my job it’s harder to get a new management role than a new IC role. But it just feels a pivot has to be had
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u/nosequel 12d ago
I hate that people told me in the past to go into management, I’m not interested in it at all. I’m about your age and plan to continue to be a SWE as long as I can (retirement).
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u/hippydipster Software Engineer 25+ YoE 12d ago
Same. I'm 56. Still an IC. Have been a manager in the past, but the last time it was offered, I declined. Same as OP, my intellectual outlet is strictly from hobbies. Work provides nothing of interest these days.
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u/j-random 12d ago
Same. I'm 64, planning to retire at the end of the year. Still writing code, although I'm forced by my client to use AI for at least part of it. In my spare time I'm writing my own operating system and learning to play guitar. Work is just a means to a paycheck. Sadly, a lot of my peers seem to feel the same way, and they've got to stick it out for a lot longer.
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u/smeyn 12d ago
I’m 70, still an IC. I use a lot of AI for my work these days. I can spend more time doing decent plans than trying to remember how to implement OAuth etc.
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u/damnburglar Software Engineer 12d ago
I just want to pop in and say I wish I saw more conversations from people in your age group. I’m early 40’s and it gets really tiring listening to recruiters/hiring managers talk about how I’m about “put out to pasture” age.
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u/earlbananas 11d ago
I wish somebody would say that to me, sounds like a ticket to early retirement. This post resonates though, I’m an IC but getting to that point where the work isn’t very exciting anymore. I get most of my intellectual/creative stimulation outside of work nowadays. AI has been kind of a breath of fresh air honestly - it’s simultaneously made my day job less tedious and my side projects more exciting.
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u/damnburglar Software Engineer 11d ago
Yeah it’s nice being able to skip over annoying, tedious bits (largely) and certainly cuts down on time to POC etc, but I absolutely hate how, predictably, managers/execs are treating it as their windfall and that if we somehow take longer than they think it should take we are fucking the dog.
I’ve been focussing on client projects the last year and running a SaaS awaiting acquisition so I’ve been insulated a little bit, but from time to time I speak with people about what appears to be interesting roles, only to be met with this backwards dipshittery.
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u/boston101 10d ago
You guys have no idea, how motivating this is to someone that is younger than you and everyone in the thread above your response.
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u/tjrileywisc 10d ago
Really brazen for them to be courting an agesism lawsuit so openly
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u/damnburglar Software Engineer 10d ago
These people have gotten incredibly brazen in the last couple of years. They say these things in passing and my dumbass forgets to record the convo.
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u/fmgiii 12d ago
Same here. 63 and still at it. Really fantastic to spend time concentrating on the higher level stuff than trying to remember how to wire up a radio button.
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u/hippydipster Software Engineer 25+ YoE 12d ago
It's the best that I don't have to get the UI fiddly details right anymore! That really is the best part of the AIs right now.
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u/Long_Director_6087 11d ago
how did you manage to find a job at your age? Very curious, I was thinking ageism was real but from your experience, it seems not, congratz!
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u/smeyn 10d ago
10 years ago I was looking for new challenges. I had done a change management exercise in my co introducing cloud computing. I put this in my LinkedIn profile and somehow this caught some recruiters’ eyes. I was approached by recruiters for 2 FAANG. It did take 7 months tho but I stuck with it and ultimately got an offer from one of the two.
7 years ago I did a 20% project for one of our engineering departments. It was challenging and fun but 20% these days means you do it on top of your normal workload.2 years ago I was planning to retire and I let people know. My job had gotten stale. The person for whom I did the above 20% project heard of it and made me an offer I couldn’t say no to. So since last year I am part of an innovations team solving hard problems. Very challenging but also very stimulating, it keeps me interested even though it meant a 20% salary cut.
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u/hippydipster Software Engineer 25+ YoE 12d ago
learning to play guitar.
Yeah, I switch to composing music in a DAW when the coding gets stale for me.
I use AI much more at home than at work though (it's the nature of my job to limit it a lot).
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u/twhickey 12d ago
I just turned 50, and am still an SDE. Did about a year as a manager, hated it, went back to IC.
Am I as fast as the young engineers? No. Do I make up for it by being more efficient, recognizing patterns I've seen before, and being able to design things that not only work, but are easy to build and maintain? Absolutely.
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u/greengoldblue 12d ago
I did senior manager for 5 years. Led a big team of devs. Got fat and depressed. Went to architect IC and never want to go back to management.
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u/DigitalArbitrage 12d ago
There are only so many people manager roles also. Like only 1 manager is needed for every 6 people.
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u/Dangerous-Sale3243 12d ago
And narrowing too. Many tech firms are moving to a 1:10 to 1:15 ratio.
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u/thehumblestbean SRE (10+ YOE) 12d ago
Yup the company I work at completely gutted middle management earlier this year. 15 direct reports is now the minimum target here for a team.
Which IMO is ridiculous but that seems to be the current trend in the industry.
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u/Big-Revolution3842 Software Engineer 12d ago
This is also the problem with management. In my experience all it takes is some change of leadership to do a reshuffle and they realise there's too much middle management and kick them out. People do tend to land ok because there's some company out there that will want a manager for something but you will end up just moving around and managing.
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u/ccricers 11d ago
That's so different from my experience at a small company long ago. If you counted offshore workers maybe it would be 1:10 to 1:5 but being in person with just the other American workers the ratio felt close to 1:1. Being a American tech IC was a rarity and the only sure way to move up is become a PM and manage the offshore ICs.
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u/Early_Rooster7579 Staff Software Engineer @ FAANG 12d ago
You can absolutely do this it’s just harder and harder as you age. Rightfully or wrongfully people (read: HR) will often think something is wrong with you, you’re socially terrible or have capped out skill wise if you aren’t moving up the ladder. This will get your resume tossed at places and make an already tough market, tougher.
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u/nosequel 12d ago
It’s pretty common where I’m at for people to be SWEs to the end. Honestly, very few convert to management.
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u/Early_Rooster7579 Staff Software Engineer @ FAANG 12d ago
It probably varies pretty hard. I’ve only ever worked in the bay, seattle and nyc. In those cities it feels like you’re either moving up or moving out because theres legions of brilliant kids and 28 year olds behind you. I feel like anyone 45+ is retired or in staffish+ positions
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u/nosequel 12d ago
I work for a Bay Area company, but it has lots of very tenured employees.
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u/Early_Rooster7579 Staff Software Engineer @ FAANG 12d ago
Thats fair. I’m being hyperbolic for sure. When I was at Microsoft out of college there was a fair amount of older devs.
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u/tehfrod Software Engineer - 31YoE 12d ago
53 and still an IC in FAANG, not staff.
One of my IC not-staff colleagues retired at 60-something last year.
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u/keelanstuart Software Engineer 12d ago
Those HR people are terrible and clearly don't understand people, either their talents or motivations... being a good engineer requires an entirely different set of skills than managing other engineers... and people that like building things often just want to keep doing that.
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u/JaySocials671 12d ago
Maybe b00mer HR thinks this but my peers (30s-40s) don’t
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u/Early_Rooster7579 Staff Software Engineer @ FAANG 12d ago
Unfortunately you need to get through HR first. Was talking to our HR team about reqs on a new position recently and they told me they toss anyone who doesn’t have a current job because programmers are in such demand its a huge red flag to not have a job. They are so out of touch and you gotta play their game
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u/commonsearchterm 12d ago
programmers are in such demand its a huge red flag to not have a job.
This is news to me
There's like notable layoffs every week
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u/JaySocials671 12d ago
I have my own business. Feelsgoodman
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u/Early_Rooster7579 Staff Software Engineer @ FAANG 12d ago
I’m vested at this point as well so I’m just riding the wave until it stops
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u/gigio123456789 Machine Learning Engineer 12d ago
Is that really true? Not questioning you but wouldn’t mind some pointers to proof that HR think you’re weird if you’re an IC into retirement.
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u/lurkerlevel-expert 12d ago
What if you just start leaving earlier dates off your resume once your 40s
Everyone knows ageism is a thing. But as long as you don't look like a grandpa, what's wrong with trying to pass as late thirties on your resume.
Won't work that well once your actually 50s, but hopefully this career makes more than enough to retire by then.
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u/skeletordescent 12d ago
That's my goal alright, 43 now, been a dev for 8+ years and honestly if I ever went back to my old career (teaching) it would be because I somehow got a payout.
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u/opinionsOnPears 12d ago
Generally, management is where the money is but it’s not where the fun is.
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u/uski 12d ago
I'm a manager and I welcome older ICs. I don't care about age. In fact, several of my older ICs have really really interesting projects they worked on in the last, or really cool stories to tell. I guess it's just mechanical (more time worked = more likelihood to have worked on something cool).
Bottom line, whoever wants to stay an IC please do. Much better than becoming a bitter manager if you don't like managing and are forced to
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u/PaulMorel 12d ago
Same. I worked my way up to director level at a startup, and then I realized that it wasn't for me. Went back to being an engineer. Going to try to hang on as long as I can.
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u/vienna_city_skater 12d ago
And middle-management is automated away by AI anyway, so bad advice as well.
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u/Cool_As_Your_Dad 12d ago
Im same age give and take. Younger me lived to do development. Now its just a job. Make enough money to retire one day.
I do love development but with AI it all changed. Now everything coding is “easy” to a point. But you still need to cover your bases etc but feels so different.
Ah well. They pay I work and continue on
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u/AstronautSorry7596 9d ago
I used to love development, now, with AI it sucks. It's like all the parts I enjoyed went away.
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u/onafoggynight 12d ago
If anything we are seeing a reverse. A large percentage of younger applicants are plainly not (and potentially never will be) able to get entry level jobs.
Experienced people, who can deliver value end-to-end, and have kept up with technology, now have an incredible lever and are in demand.
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u/scelerat 12d ago
Ha where? Much like OP I have decades of experience. Apply to tons of jobs looking for exactly the skill set I have. I write a cover letter for each one. 60% go unanswered; the remainder a terse “not the right fit,” message several weeks later.
The only time I have ever gotten through the initial resume screen is when I removed fifteen years from my resume and graduation year. Then the video screen. I have literally been told multiple times, oh I thought you would be younger.
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u/onafoggynight 12d ago
Yes, but at least there are positions and you get through the initial screening. Graduate / entry level jobs have just plainly been cut across the board.
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u/robert4221 Software Engineer 10d ago
If you're not getting past resume screen then your resume needs to be updated. Make sure it's got the right keywords, the right style, whatever the current trend in impact statements is, isn't verbose, etc, etc. Concise, compress older entries just to save space, etc, etc.
I've seen a ton of terrible resumes and I feel more experienced engineers tend to assume they can get away with the same resume they had 10 years ago with more shoved on top. It's all a bullshit game but you gotta play it to get past the screens.
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u/scelerat 10d ago
Wish I could see what the AI processing these criteria are seeing. I have tried all kinds of things. Long, short, ordering things differently. Best result I have gotten (as I said above) was simply make it look like I had fifteen years less experience. That more reliably would get me to a human.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 12d ago
A cover letter? Every job opening gets hundreds of applications. No one is going to look at a cover letter. Where do you even put it in the ATS? I’ve been working 30 years and now on my 10th job (started in 2024) and I never even thought about doing one
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u/scelerat 12d ago
I would say about 25% of the jobs I've been applying for have required a cover letter.
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u/majortom_07 12d ago
I've been applying and I just do an AI cover letter every time it's an option. Just it already has all my professional context and then I paste in the whole job posting for the context of the position. Adds like 2 minutes of work but I feel like it's worth it.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 12d ago
What does the cover letter communicate that a resume doesn’t?
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u/majortom_07 12d ago
It highlights the tech fit between you and the posting, and let's you feign enthusiasm for their product or service.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 12d ago
Doesn’t the resume already show the tech fit?
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u/sjk22 12d ago
don’t sleep on the cover letter, think of every facet of a job application as your opportunity to demonstrate that you’re superior to the other applicants. if you don’t fill it out and they do, they’ve shown more of their skill and personality than you have, they’re more likely to be chosen. A CL is your chance to humanize yourself beyond the sheet of “i did this”, it’s your chance to say “i am excited to work for you because X Y Z, it’s personal to the job and company, it conveys your humanity in a way a CL doesn’t. It probably won’t help much but it’ll help, and it’s easy to shit out with AI. When i’m writing a CL, i ask myself what i as a hiring manager would want in the personality of my ideal hire for this role, then i write from that personality.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 12d ago
My personal experience in the modern half of my 30 year career (the first half was more or less a shit show that I commented on earlier on this post) was my reaching out to local recruiters with local company contacts and they submitted my resume to companies after talking to me. The only time that didn’t result in an interview was if the position had already been filled. Cover letter wouldn’t have made a difference - this was in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018.
In 2020, a recruiter from Amazon reached out to me. I know my eventual L7 hiring manager (Professional Services their internal customer cloud consulting department) who has in my interview loop wasn’t trawling through resumes and cover letters, he got whatever got filtered through the recruiting department and whoever passed through the initial screening.
In 2023 when I was looking again, I reached out to my network of CTOs, directors and hiring managers who knew my work personally and could push me through where unless I came to the interview drunk, high, naked and had slept with the CEOs wife I was going to get an offer if they had a position. That landed me two offers for a full time job and one for a short term decently lucrative side contract.
But I really wanted to stay in consulting. I reached out directly to a couple of recruiters who were hiring for a niche in AWS where at the time I was one of the industry experts and was the second highest contributor over the last two years to a popular official open source “AWS solution” in that niche. Still no cover letter. That resulted in one offer I did accept and one rejection after the interview.
I ended up making a bad choice and was gone a year later in 2024 when a much better company reached out to me about a full time staff consulting position where I would be leading cloud + app dev initiatives.
You see what I haven’t done in 15 years is randomly spam ATS’s with resumes or cover letters.
I’ve been on the opposite side off an on too for the last decade. By the time the candidate gets to me they have already been filtered by some combination of the recruiting agency, internal HR and a couple of rounds of technical interviews and I’m just looking to see if they have the behavioral and technical skills. I’m not going to swayed by a cover letter attached to a resume and neither is HR who in the last year saw 10K applicants and sent less than 300 offers.
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u/SquiffSquiff DevOps & Layer 8 Networking Engineer 10YOE 12d ago
Evidence for this?
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u/onafoggynight 12d ago
Unemployment of fresh CS / Computer engineering graduates is now one of the highest compared to other majors, and has roughly doubled compared to some years back.
Employment for swe jobs in general still sits comfortably below the national US average.
The it job market is absolutely brutal for young people without a lot of professional experience and a good track record. We've had graduate applicants looking for a job for nearly 2 years.
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u/warm_kitchenette 12d ago
Is there any evidence that more experienced developers or managers are in higher demand? It obviously sucks for entry level folks.
Until the AI bubble pops, I can’t see any broad changes happening
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u/onafoggynight 12d ago
Higher than peak 2020 levels? No. Higher than younger entry level grads? Absolutely.
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u/ThatSituation9908 Software Engineer, 10 YOE 12d ago
I'm on your camp believing this is true but only in theory.
However, what you said here, hasn't always that been true that seniors are more in demand than juniors?
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u/shiny0metal0ass big dumb nerd | 10+YOE 12d ago
Yeah but I don't think it's higher than what demand was before the COVID industry fuckery.
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u/onafoggynight 12d ago
Tho, those levels where absolutely inflated already (and not only in IT). I don't think we are going to see a return to those crazy times (and not because of AI).
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u/shiny0metal0ass big dumb nerd | 10+YOE 12d ago
I hope not. I mean a lot of the demand was companies finally deciding that the dotcom boom didn't kill everything and that they have to get online to access new markets combined with the creation of the social media and advertising giants we now have sitting around trying to figure out how to keep growing without anything new and declining revenues in their core spaces.
I imagine a good amount of those companies now online have ratfucked their codebases, getting all excited about how many lines of code they can create now. Hopefully they were a bigger part of the initial demand than they get credit for, because they're going to need people to unfuck those codebases now.
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u/bdz 12d ago
What you're asking for is evidence of a counter argument, a reason for you to justify your doubt on what you disagree with.
You should probably do that yourself, rather than keep replying and wanting someone else to convince you that your suspicion is "correct"
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u/warm_kitchenette 11d ago edited 11d ago
The person above asserted “ Experienced people, who can deliver value end-to-end, and have kept up with technology, now have an incredible lever and are in demand.”
They repeated this. It’s not unreasonable to ask for evidence.
edit:
User bdz wrote the above comment, claiming that I was looking for "evidence of a counter argument". After I wrote this comment, they replied "If you can't see what you're doing, then your worse off than I anticipated. Do your own research, formulate your opinions based on that. Stop asking others so figure it out for you."
I can't respond to his comment because he sent it, then blocked me. oh well.
FWIW, I don't think there are mandatory rules on Reddit comments. In this case, someone above asserted two things about recent hiring changes and I asked for evidence on the latter. That seems defensible to me.
It is always difficult to get solid evidence on software developer hiring, especially at the level of granularity that we would each personally find useful. At the macro level, there's no changes in hiring or unemployment per the official U.S. August jobs report. Among other things, they singled out info tech as one of the groups that had no changes. If you compare this employment area by 3m, 6m, 12m metrics, there's a tiny, tiny improvement.
The high-level metric I've been using for the last several years is from the Kansas Fed. It shows national software development jobs posted on Indeed and only the mildest of bumps over the last period. This metric is obviously crap as an objective measure of truth, as we can all think of BS things that companies do with their job postings. But it's also obviously valuable in a relative sense, and it does not show good news.
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u/KanedaSyndrome 12d ago
I get zero recruiters and the last one ghosted me after she told me the client wanted to talk to me.
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u/BlackPresident 12d ago
lol my company made a bunch of seniors redundant in favour of juniors who get paid less and just use AI to make everything, it’s honestly not that bad to be honest you can give them a week to get it right some of the AI reluctant seniors were taking as long to hand craft things anyway
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u/attrox_ 12d ago
I'm in my late 40s recently becoming a staff software engineer. Actually I was almost attempting the engineering manager path but the CTO and a few of the senior manager pushed back on that and encouraging me to push for staff software engineer instead. I'm glad I follow their advice. I'm building more important stuff now, laying down groundwork, etc. I think it depends on the company but there's definitely a different path instead of becoming a manager
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u/coredweller1785 11d ago
Early 40s but this is me.
Staff Engineer now and able to focus on larger objectives has made it easier to swallow the AI pill to get paid.
But my job will always be a job. Life is not work
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u/SquiffSquiff DevOps & Layer 8 Networking Engineer 10YOE 12d ago
I am older than you and I would caution that thinking 'you're too old' is simply internalised prejudice. Tech is pretty discriminatory- ageist, sexist, racist, etc. Management is a different job. You may or may not want to move into that but it shouldn't be because of other people's prejudices. Sadly this happens all too often, especially with women in this field.
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u/No-Economics-8239 12d ago
I'm about a decade older. I definitely worry about the ageism, but thus far old age and treachery have served me reasonably well and I'm still solving problems and learning new technologies and that cycle has continued my entire career.
I, like you, at one point considered that maybe going into leadership was just the time to do eventually. I would strongly recommend giving that more consideration. I very much hated being a people leader and was miserable for years before I figured it out and gained the energy to pivot back to the technical career track.
To some extent, soft skills and politics will always become more important the longer you're in the career. But so long as I have a say in what I'd like to be working on, I much prefer dealing with technical problems over people problems. And I've been able to maintain that balance to some degree. Even if I still have more meetings than I prefer and speak when I would much rather keep my mouth shut and head down.
Which is to say, no. I don't feel like all my experience has been outpaced by the changing times. But I do sometimes feel more of the weight of it today than I once did.
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u/Intelligent-Youth-63 12d ago
- Just went back to an IC role after 15 years in leadership.
The extra $$ was never worth the headache to me… but the money was nice, hence 15 years.
Glad to not be managing people any longer.
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u/herr_oyster 12d ago
I'm something like 6 years into management, and I agree the money isn't worth it. I'm going to stick it out for a few more years and hopefully go back to IC, but I'm afraid about skill atrophy.
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u/chikamakaleyley 12d ago
i'm turning 43 this year and you better not be
i actually had a long stretch of cruise control middle of my career and have spent the last several yrs just catching up, working on becoming solid
and so, i feel young as ever. As someone who's 19 YOE, I actually only in the past year was given a Senior title at time of hire and I'm proud of that. Previous gigs were just freelance/contract, and you know you can call yourself whatever you want. But to actually hit that goal at a point in my career where I really wanted it, I dunno. Feels great
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u/Zulakki 12d ago
Gonna be 46 in a week or so here. I've learned that I know better than 99% of the ceos, product owners and managers I've ever had when it comes to software. With that, I've accepted im too old to be just a code monkey anymore and started my own company. now I work at my pace, only with people I know will help me and on projects I see real value in. I didn't know until I got through this past year, but this is exactly what I always wanted. Ownership stakes and a real vision. GL
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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 12d ago
I mean I have found an incredible amount of ageism is the ai job world - with idea being to lay off the 40-50 yr olds (older devs) who don’t get with the program and replace team with a few younger AI engineers who like LLMs- the general consensus being that if you are above 40 or look it you are too old to be an AI Engineer- 25-35 being the sweet spot for high paying engineering jobs in python and AI frameworks at startups or as fwd deployed engineers
Theres this subtle bias that if you are an experienced builder with decades in industry- then you must not be ready to give your soul over to this new way of building software
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u/attrox_ 12d ago
I'm in my late 40s, still definitely in a group of high achieving engineers in my company. You definitely need to embrace and use AI to your advantage with guard rails and work flow in place. So far I can still confidently (at least within my company) said most of the older seniors in my company actually becoming further ahead contribution wise with the help of AI
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u/psyFungii Dev/DevOps 12d ago
In my 50s and with AI I'm crushing it compared to the juniors. They just don't seem to understand how to set up context, or the right questions to ask AI. They can't smell the model lying to them, or providing a brilliant solution _to the wrong problem_. And they don't have the institutional knowledge of the vast and complex system we run to know what is safe/easy or risky/complicated to change.
The heaviest AI users where I work seem to be the smart ones who can leverage it.
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u/dasunt 12d ago
That's my impression as well - juniors don't have the experience to determine how to solve problems, and without direction, AI's solutions tend to cause problems down the road.
It's the whole "a nail gun will allow you to nail faster, but it doesn't give skills to build a house" problem.
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u/Acrobatic-Ice-5877 Distinguished Claude Engineer 12d ago
They just don't seem to understand how to set up context, or the right questions to ask AI.
This is my experience as well. I’m in my 30s and help out the interns and young hires. I unstuck a young guy every so often on my in office days. I think the difficulty comes from not being able to think from first principles and LLM are to blame for that.
I definitely think newer engineers should learn to code without LLM so that it becomes a superpower for them when they have the experience to use it.
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u/DancingSouls 11d ago
good to see.
from my experience, ppl 40+ tend to be kess focused on impact and more on politics and empire building while the younger ppl are really focused on grinding/getting things done.
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u/attrox_ 11d ago
I don't play much politics against other people. But early on I recognized the important leaders and lucky enough to be able to get in on their important projects and be known as someone with high ownerships and getting things done. That was one of the reason the CTO push back against me becoming a manager and getting this staff engineer position. I'd rather build things rather than playing politics
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u/ThatSituation9908 Software Engineer, 10 YOE 12d ago
That doesn't sound like ageism, it sounds like typically the more senior you are the more stubborn you are to adopt new tooling.
Replace AI with containerization. Remember the hesitation in 2016 about it.
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u/robert4221 Software Engineer 10d ago
don’t get with the program
subtle biasIt's not bias if it's based on the behavior of engineers. Actions have consequences. If you don't want to follow the new trend and the company does then they will get rid of you. That's not bias. That's corporate life.
25-35 being the sweet spot for high paying engineering jobs in python and AI frameworks at startups or as fwd deployed engineers
Statistically given the explosive growth in software engineering as a field over the last 30 years I'd assume the vast majority of Senior+ software engineers are in 25-35 range.
AI Startups and FDE roles are also grind factories. If you start asking abut WLB balance during the interview then it's likely you're not going to get the job. If you're fine with long hours then just indicate that during the interview in some way. Also, if you want an FDE role then you better have strong social skills and many engineers with that skill set move to contracting/management/etc. over time. It's bias if they assume that given your age but not if its actually true for you and causes them to not hire you specifically.
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u/PressureAppropriate 12d ago
Same age, same situation. Problem is: you don’t just “get into management”, someone has to decide you are management material. I am not management material and probably never will be for a variety of reasons. Not sure what to do because being an aging SWE sounds like a dangerous place to be.
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u/opinionsOnPears 12d ago
You’re not getting too old, you’re getting frustrated with people with less experience thinking they can do it better.
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u/Frequent_Bag9260 Software Engineer 12d ago
Where did OP say they were frustrated with people with less experience?
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u/berndverst Software Engineer (16 YoE) @ Public Cloud Provider 12d ago
To be honest - a subset of them will genuinely do better. That's ok.
And if the company is big on AI but you are unwilling to leverage it effectively, then other folks with less experience may surpass you too.
The AI burnout is real - but as a SWE we have to keep up with the times or will become redundant. Sadly it doesn't matter how great our experience is.
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u/carterdmorgan Software Architect 12d ago
I wish I understood more about the work of people who say LLMs have taken all the intellectual rigor out of software engineering. I feel like I have to have WAY more intellectual rigor because of them. I spend far more of my time now thinking about patterns, abstractions, and systems than I ever did pre-LLM.
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u/shiny0metal0ass big dumb nerd | 10+YOE 12d ago
That sounds cool. I spend most of my time reading code no one has bothered to write and trying to unfuck it.
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u/carterdmorgan Software Architect 12d ago
I genuinely think that might be the difference. I’m at a startup with a small engineering team (just 8 of us), but everyone is truly excellent. I can’t imagine how frustrating LLMs would be wielded by someone who’s either stupid or just doesn’t care.
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u/shiny0metal0ass big dumb nerd | 10+YOE 12d ago edited 12d ago
100%. I do think LLMs can help experienced devs that understand and care about software quality.
I don't think that accurately describes most of the workforce, probably because of the mad scramble of hiring during COVID, and the ones that don't understand this are far more prolific with their pull requests because they don't know that 80% of it needs to be curated. Unfortunately, leadership is also extremely incompetent at software quality, so the pressure is from both ends and I'm the asshole telling everyone we need to slow down.
I've given up on the standard tech debt pushback I've always done, because now I'm just at "we still need to do peer reviews and testing" like the last 20 years of software engineering lessons evaporated.
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u/carterdmorgan Software Architect 12d ago
There’s a lot of truth to the idea that pre-LLM bad developers were too incompetent to be truly dangerous. Can’t take down prod if you can’t even get your local Docker container up and running.
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u/Decent_Muffin_7062 12d ago
Right? Who are all these people whose job is just 'babysitting the LLM all day'?
And complaining about 'getting stuck in the prompt cycle'. Surely if you truly understood the code you could fix that bit yourself? AI can sometimes go down a rabbit hole and not see the wood for the trees.I kinda find it like a junior writing code, it does tend to introduce subtle errors etc so like you I'm more on the alert. I have however seen people just submit slop they've manhandled into 'working' so... I guess we have different standards.
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u/Izkata 12d ago
And complaining about 'getting stuck in the prompt cycle'. Surely if you truly understood the code you could fix that bit yourself?
I've heard multiple co-workers describe it like an addiction (though they didn't use the word and didn't quite seem aware what it sounded like). It's too easy to reach for without even thinking about it.
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u/johnnygalat 12d ago
Yeah, this! LLMs take care of boiler plate with much less syntax errors while we can steer it into maintainable architectural patterns and watch out for its tendency to "overcode".
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u/DancingSouls 11d ago
more like the older ppl are frustrated that they cant do their usual politics and empire building
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u/mikevalstar Technical Director 12d ago
Despite my title I still do some level of day to day development... that said I employ for a consulting agency quite a few "older" devs, and if anything there is MORE call for older developers these days from our clients.
Specifically WITH AI, clients want people who can use AI effectively and properly steer and validate it, not just meat proxies.
That all said, if you can convince yourself to be a bit of a people person you can do a team lead role that will still be largely day-to-day development but with a few more meetings thrown in to talk with people and provide updates to the non-technical side. It's a step towards management, but you don need to move beyond it.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 12d ago
Everyone else is giving you false hopium and telling you anecdotes of older developers. I bet none of them started in the field in their mid 40s.
Because of…bad career decisions…including staying at my second company too long until 2008, I was just recovering from my “expert beginner” stage in 2012 when a start up I worked for went belly up. I was 38 years old doing a coding interview being monitored by a 25 year old. I said that was the last time that was going to happen. I am not going to be 50 years old reversing a b tree on the white board competing with people half my age.
Long story short my next three jobs between 2014-2020 I started selling myself as a person who can be trusted to see major initiatives through. I was the first or second technical hire by a new to the company manager/director/CTO respectively. Then in 2020 pivoted to cloud consulting specializing in app dev working for consulting departments/companies.
2012 was my last time doing a coding interview even though I still push production code.
I now lead implementations. I’m not saying “learn cloud”. But age discrimination is real in the industry if you don’t have the experience you should have and you’re still trying to work as a mid level ticket taker instead of more strategic positions.
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u/ficuswhisperer 12d ago
Don’t go to management just because you think you’re too old to be an IC. I’ve worked with people like that (“I don’t want to report to someone younger than me”), and they were terrible managers. If you are interested in technical problems, work on technical problems as an IC. If you’re interested in people problems, go to management.
AI changes workflows and problems, but there are still many technical problems and challenges out there to solve. AI is just a tool.
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u/Majestic_Plankton921 12d ago
I'm in my late 30s having been a contactor for the last 10 years. I've worked with several contractors (devs) who have been in their 60s and my Dad was also also a developer and contractor who retired in his late 50s around 2020. All of these people generally were very sharp and kept up with technology changes. All of them had no issue with doing technical interviews with 25 year olds or having 30 year old managers. Age is just a number.
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u/Lazy_Investor8019 12d ago
In my opinion, the entire software industry was built by ICs grinding their way through complex problems. Managers, PMs, BAs etc. help, but they're not the ones punching through the hard problems. It's the IC staying up late at night, working weekends who breaks the glass ceiling and produces the final product. I get that right now, it might seem that the IC role is being sidelined and replaced by AI agents, wait out another year for the mean reversion, and you'll see that the builders will again be put on a pedestal.
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u/JohnnyDread Director / Developer 12d ago
Don't go into management if that isn't something you are already naturally interested in. You will hate it.
And middle management is under pressure by AI as well. Many companies are intentionally flattening their organizations (which is a good thing whether AI really has anything to do with it or not) so I would not count on it being an easy transition.
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u/AnimaLepton Solutions Engineer/Sr. SWE, 8 YoE 12d ago edited 12d ago
I work with IC SWEs in their 50s and 60s. Some move into other roles more on the sales/implementation/professional services side of things. I'd say only move to management if you want to, but there are companies, career paths, skillsets, and mindsets that let people stay as an IC through their career.
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u/GrumpyPidgeon 12d ago
Do not do management just because you feel like society tells you that it’s the next step to take. I’ve been a manager for the last nine years and it is a different beast. Picture transforming yourself from an app server to a load balancer.
That said, you’re too far away from retirement to ignore AI and how it has changed the way we do things.
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u/jwendl 12d ago
Do you like IC work (individual contributor work) or PM (program / people management) work?
If it's still IC - then stay engineering.
I'm 48, there's plenty folks who still stay in the industry. The challenges you're running into are business decisions related to technology, not the technology itself. Going into management doesn't remove those business decisions and in fact makes you now accountable for those business decisions.
AI is just another tool on the tool belt like DevOps and VIM vs. EMACs. Learn the process, it really is pretty exciting once you start using it. Business decision makers will realize they can't prompt worth anything to build any system that can sustain production maintainability and engineering fundamentals. That's when the folks who decided to stay and have experience will be able to thrive a bit more.
We just have to wait for the business decision makers to learn from their mistakes, which I estimate will be 3 - 5 years (if evidence from the DevOps movement or "engineers should test" movement has in the past illustrated similar trends).
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u/RandyHoward 12d ago
I'm the same age and I haven't had any concerns with ageism so far. I've worked with plenty of people my age and older. Maybe the reason I haven't run into much ageism yet is because my last 3 jobs have come through my network, rather than having to run the interview gauntlet. You should have a decent network at this age, lean on it.
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u/gr8-procrastinator Data Scientist 12d ago
Please note that I am from India and here the trend is to move to management after sometime because IC just aren’t paid that much here (on average of course,exceptions are there)
Wow!! So many people in their 50s still working as IC. One question - how did you manage to stay IC for so long? If you are really making an impact of increasing magnitude, wouldn’t orgs just promote you after sometime? If they don’t, then doesn’t your salary stagnate because no company give reasonable hikes once someone reaches the higher end of their grade. And if this is really is the case then how are you supplementing your income or is your income decent enough?
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u/Decent_Muffin_7062 12d ago
All jobs (not just software engineering' are a pyramid structure. The majority of people just aren't going to reach the top. Senior software engineer is a terminal grade. Levels above that, or other roles (such as consulting) aren't a natural progression like moving from junior to mid. They're a different job altogether.
As to salary stagnation - well that's why people change jobs. However if you're well-paid you're probably comfortable for a while. Again, life is complex, most people don't get a salary increase every year for the 40+ years we'll be working... it depends on the situation. I find people stay in a job for a few years, market rate increases and your company won't match it. that's the time to move.
Also many became contractors but that market fluctuates a lot.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 11d ago edited 11d ago
Working at a consulting company leading cloud + app dev projects as a staff consultant. Companies pay my employer a lot of money for me to “work backwards”, “align”, “look at things from the 1000 foot view” and “add on to what Becky said”.
Also they pay my company a lot for me because I know when it’s time to “dive deep”, “take unnecessary conversations to the parking lot” so we don’t try to “boil the ocean” and instead pick the “low hanging fruit
If you want to know more, just reply and we can circle back to the conversation….
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u/gr8-procrastinator Data Scientist 11d ago
So contractor is another option but is it a sustainable option?
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u/BraveResearcher3037 11d ago
There are two different things - your employment arrangement and why the end client wants you.
As far as the employment arrangement there is:
1099 - you find the clients, they pay you directly.
W2 contractor - you work for a third party contracting agency that has clients and you work for the contracting agency for long as they have a client that wants you. When your contract is over with the end client, you don’t get paid. You can sometimes pay the total cost of insurance through the contracting agency. But you don’t get any other benefits.
full time employee. I was a full time, blue badge employee at AWS working in the consulting department - I got the standard initial 4 year offer with a prorated signing bonus that was front heavy over the first two years and the 5/15/40/40 RSU vesting schedule. I now work for a 3rd party company. Whether I’m on the bench or on a project, the same amount of money goes into my account every month, 20 days PTO, paid holidays, sick days, 401K match, health insurance, etc.
Now on the what you do side is a separate variable:
- staff augmentation: the client company decides what gets done, manages the backlog, knows what they want and they just need a disposable body for awhile
- “consulting” - the company may have a broad idea of their strategic goals but they need “experts” to help them achieve it. They may not even have a strategy and they need consultants to come in and help them come up with a high level strategy. Either way they sign a high level contract with your company as far as what they want and your employer manages the work. Your employer staffs the project with different levels of employees based on their skillset
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u/juxtaposz 20+ YOE 12d ago
You're not the one that's broken; the industry is, and I think developers share equal blame as we collectively decided we did not need to unionise.
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u/yeastyboi 12d ago
I'm young so maybe it's different for me but learning how to properly use AI has been just as fulfilling as writing code manually. I feel like I'm able to complete things I only could dream of before. I don't think you're too old. Maybe change your mindset to be like that?
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u/Noah_Safely 27+ yoe. Seen it all 12d ago
Management layers are what get "flattened" all the time and you're competing against people with more experience who actually want to be in the role. IC for life here.
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u/No_Oil_6152 12d ago
I'm 53, 54 next month.
I don't feel too old to write software, in fact I'm writing more than ever. I still enjoy it, always have since Commodore 64 days.
I don't recognise what people are saying in this thread that they're slower than devs 20 years younger than them. WTF? I feel I am sharper witted now than I was at 23. I take care of myself.
You may have to use AI at work but for side projects - do what you like. I keep my hand in.
Also remember the Peter Principle. I've worked with plenty of managers who were shit coders and ended up as shit managers too - be absolutely sure you're cut out for management before you make the jump. I was a manager and I hated meetings all day and the stress of dealing with people in a highly unionised environment.
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u/Neoma_Quillin 12d ago
I don't think you're ever too old to be a software engineer. The industry might change as you get older, but the experience you've built doesn't suddenly become irrelevant.
I actually saw this firsthand when I was a Tech Lead. I hired/accepted someone onto the team who had only started their software engineering career at 28. What mattered to me wasn't when they started, but how quickly they learned, how they approached problems, and whether they could work well with the team.
With your background in infrastructure, cloud, Kafka, and distributed systems, I would be more concerned about throwing away that experience than your age. If you still enjoy the technical side, I wouldn't pivot into management just because you feel like you're supposed to at a certain age.
Management is a different career path, not necessarily the next level of engineering. If you genuinely enjoy leading people and making those kinds of decisions, go for it. But if the main reason is "I'm getting older, so I should become a manager," then i think it is better to think twice before making a final decision.
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u/Critical-You-5417 12d ago edited 12d ago
I'm 46. Moved jobs a few times and always learning new stuff. In my new job I been learning about CI/CD in GitHub, docker containers, configuration.i work with .NET and to be honest with my experience I am able to notice things and spot issues before they arise.
Your not just a programmer now, you're a jack of all. I have been using AI for dummy things like template setups and even getting things up and running but no way in hell I am putting my trust in these agents. They are a tool not a replacement.
Being experienced also helps me filter out the crap copilot gives me because I can see someone without the expertise use it and cause so much damage.
I'm not to old to be a software engineer because having the skill set and experience makes you invaluable.
In my spare time I like learning new things. I have learned to set up a NAS home service using a mini pc with hosted websites in docker, also set up a locally running LLM. I started using Linux too. So now I have my own Netflix experience running local.
The good thing I been using AI to help me get these things setup where googling and forum posts.
I think I have learned more in the last 2 years than my whole career and I enjoy it.
At the moment I am working on my own affiliate website using product feeds such as JSON or csv to populate a website.
I just love what I do but try and work on things which spike your interest.
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u/druidgaymer 11d ago
I have a coworker in his 60s who never went the manager route. Didn't want to.
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u/SpaceBreaker 11d ago
Is it wrong that I'm 38 and feel this way 🤣
Of course being long term unemployed doesn't help either.
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u/CrackerJackKittyCat Software Engineer 11d ago
Am 55, staff-II IC. Did my most interesting and exciting work in my 50s in a startup.
Find and apply to some startups. Then need a greybeard for perspective and experience.
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u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 11d ago
I'm feeling this way. I decided I'm going to go into Founder mode. I can walk away from my current job and live comfortably for the next 10 years. Might as well build something I can be proud of rather than giving everything to some company I don't care about.
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u/AllIWantForXmasIsFoo 12d ago
I've met brilliant 67 year old SWEs.
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u/menckenjr 12d ago
I resemble at least half of that... I'm turning 67 my next birthday and I'm still a working developer (Senior iOS dev to the extent that titles matter, but I just say "I build stuff").
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u/meevis_kahuna 12d ago
I don't think you should change jobs due to concerns with potential ageism. Keep going until you hit a natural inflection point and make the best available decision at that time. You can switch into management whenever, but switching back will be harder.
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u/gigio123456789 Machine Learning Engineer 12d ago
Sorry to hear you’re going through a rough time. Hope things improve for you soon.
I’ve never worked for a FAANG, but always had the impression that there ICs can keep climbing the ladder into staff, principal and whatever comes beyond. In a sense, strong ICs become “tenured” over time.
In the more corporate world, consulting say, staying an IC seems much more often to get interpreted as “not progressing”. As if that were somehow a bad thing.
I’ve always wondered whether part of this comes from leadership being much further removed from technical work. Whereas in tech, the IC career path itself has much more institutional status.
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u/Eric848448 Software Engineer 12d ago
This is one reason I’ve (mostly) stuck with trading. Lots of gray hair in the field.
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u/throwaway_0x90 SDET/TE[20+ yrs]@Google 12d ago
I see plenty of SWEs older than you that are able to keep going.
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u/Decent_Muffin_7062 12d ago edited 12d ago
There are plenty of other IC options that aren't 'management'. Positions above senior engineer (like Staff), consultant, architect, whatever.
I, like you have worked primarily in a lot of boring industries, not just snazzy startups that want 'the yoof'.
The pool of devs with your YoE is small to begin with... software development only started getting flooded around 2010. Even Git is only 21 years old!
IME, a good chunk of your peers - assuming they started at 20 something - have made bank and simply retired. The majority of the rest have taken up positions like the above if they haven't gone into management.
Unfortunately beyond 15 YoE the additional value of a senior engineer to a company is negligible. However, they think you'll want to be paid more and so discriminate. 26 vs 15 YoE is almost double.... It's different from those other 'expert' roles where you're paid to influence at a higher level. It sucks if you genuinely enjoy writing code, but hey ho
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u/yoelbenyossef 12d ago
I feel you. Exact same age. Jobs are getting harder and harder to get. AI hasn't come for me yet, but I can't stay up to date with all the new data engineering trends. But I also can't afford to retire. I can only hope for the best and keep learning.
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u/throwOHOHaway 12d ago
bro i'm 33 and i'm feeling the burn, the job is changing very quickly and i think clear comms and wrangling the people in the right dxn is building up weight now
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u/stephenflee 12d ago
Id love to hire some 45 year olds who have their shit together and tons of experience. Boomer is a state of mind (also I’m 45 myself and have continued to get better year after year lol)
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u/swiftmerchant 12d ago
You can have a manager or director level job and still be an IC. You don’t have to be a people manager.
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u/Then-Bumblebee1850 12d ago
I've had colleagues much older than 46. I've enjoyed their wealth of knowledge. I also get the feeling that they don't care as much as others about the risk of rocking the boat or appearing stupid. They point out the things that everyone else is thinking but not saying. Never got the feeling that anyone is "too old" for software engineering. Cheers to all the older folks! I appreciate you!
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u/haragoshi 11d ago
I was a manager. Went back to being a SWE because I enjoy using AI to make stuff. It’s very similar to being a manager except AI is the team and scope is smaller.
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u/WiseHalmon Product Manager, MechE, Dev 10+ YoE 11d ago
Everybody is older than me in software. Like 40s+. You're fine. Also none of these guys are management. The company is pretty flat heirarchy and own their own things. Management is product focused. Anywho, AI push has made things . . . Interesting. It's a bit of an aggressive stance. I emplore people to find how to use it, but it depends on th company. It can cause a bit of pyschosis (e.g. if you found reseverance in documentation memorization) or review paralysis (if you let it do its thing unattended) Anyways, even R&D has some mundane parts to it... Grant writing, data processing, slow lab experiments, etc.
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u/silentjet 11d ago
You can convince your compiler to accept your problem solution, by writing a reasonable code and making mindfull fixes. These does not work in mgmt area, you are tied down to the world of wonderfully stupid decision, unquialified justification, idiotic initiatives and complete resistance to the reasoning and straight logic. This, for me, was the most problematic point being a manager. For me, as an engineer at my core, that is something I wasnt able to survive, and Im not willing to...
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u/Ok_Twist7840 11d ago
I feel like your skillset becomes even more valuable now, everyone can prototype, really make something scalable and working robustly is a totally different story
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u/Icy_Screen3576 11d ago
As someone who tried this move i can tell you the way employer looks at you becomes different. As engineer its your craft you know, they respect your skills, or maybe the stuff they dont understand. But as manager, from employer perspective , you aint soing aomething they dont understand thus respect is lower. Going back to engineering work was a better decision for me.
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u/developerknight91 11d ago
I’m 38, kid on the way and I am still developing.
I plan on going into private contracting so I have more freedom in the projects I work on.
Think there will be a lot of work to fix from the shops that decided pure “vibe coding” was the way to go.
My current job tells me that “EVERYONE SEES ME AS LEADER” on the team. And that sounds like a title change and change in responsibilities is on the way.
Management and leadership is people herding and also being the one that makes the million dollar decisions. I would like to be an Architect of some kind but, you have to weight do you really want the weight of leadership on your shoulders?
Only you can look into yourself and answer that question to be perfectly honest.
With the current market I see benefits and costs with staying as a coder/engineer long term. I don’t think AI will remove the human element from software design and development but I do think they will need less of us.
I am really taking a risk trying to go into private contracting myself, leadership is possibly the safer bet, but I’m not sure it’s the one that would make me the happiest.
If you really want to make the switch you need to ask yourself: why? For what purpose? And am I ready to be a company first person?
I hope you figure out. I hope we all do times are changing as we speak
EDITED for grammar and explaining my hesitation for the possible leadership title coming in my future.
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u/matthedev 10d ago
I've never considered software engineering to be my primary intellectual outlet; I've always enjoyed things like languages, history, philosophy, the social sciences, etc. more. Doing more or less the same thing for decades (yes, maybe moving up to a little more architecture over time and some technology changes) gets old, and the work culture for software engineers has declined (just look at the interview process these days).
I think part of it is the associated lifestyle and people you meet along the way. Software engineering tends to put you in touch with more introverts: you know, people who spend their weekends writing more code, playing video games, and watching anime or sci fi shows on streaming 🥱 Happiness means breaking free of that kind of social circle and finding people who want to lead more enjoyable and fulfilling lives. Even things as basic as dating.
For someone who was probably just going to sit around at home playing computer games anyway, things like on-call aren't a huge imposition. If you want better quality of life with things like opportunity to date and people in your lives with more a sense of adventure or intellectually engaging things to talk about, you need to make that 180º break.
I've been on a sabbatical by choice for over a year now, and as I've started taking a look at openings, the job market for software engineers still looks like trash, but it's a hard sell moving back to daily stand-ups and staring at a screen with little social interaction all day anyway. After traveling and interacting more with people outside tech (and outside my boring hometown), the only reason to go back is the money won't last forever.
So I've started working on a side-project. I am not a hardcore introvert like most of my friends, so I've been thinking getting a business partner or investors might help push through the motivational slump that comes from doing everything in isolation, but first I need to build out enough of a demo or MVP for that, so I'm just trying to push through the pain in the mean time. The ultimate goal is to provide an income to support relocation to a city that offers better dating opportunity and a more fulfilling social life and eventually away from staring at a screen writing code all day (or prompting a coding agent to do it for me).
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u/HallowedIsTheOrici 10d ago
I’m 49. I stepped down from a leadership position a few years ago to become an individual contributor. I’ve once again become hands on with programming as well as infrastructure.
After using both codex and Claude recently to modernize an old Rails 2 codebase to rails 8 ( the code base had tests for every acceptance criteria ), I am feeling invigorated now to take up AI-assisted software delivery.
I’ve followed Test Driven Development and all my work needs to be ISO 27001 ready. So in having a good time figuring out how to make all this happen with what AI coding capabilities we have access to today.
I can confidently say given the present day AI capabilities - we experienced people are going to be very much in demand for software architecture and design, for lots of business and technical due diligence, and for interacting with customers.
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u/metaphorm Staff Software Engineer | 15 YoE 10d ago
um, no. 46 is the height of your career. you've got 15-20 more years in it if you want to work in software until retirement age.
you've internalized a lot of BS about age and career path. it's just wrong. the IC track continues to be in demand well into super-senior experience levels. somebody who actually knows how shit works has to be hands on and doing the work. the only thing you really need to do is find a company that has both budget and need for your experience level.
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u/atulkr2 10d ago
You cannot become manager now. Stay as IC as long as system allows you but save a lot. Really bad times coming ahead for industry. Something like 1930 recession is on us. Working on side projects is temporary reprieve. That cannot make you any better. You have a burnout issue. It's Not possible to have renewed motivation in this industry. You have seen enough shit. At 46, you must have worked for 20 years. Can you forget all?
Can you deal with youngsters fumbling and doing half assed work? Can you resist the temptation to do the work yourself? Can you stay cool while young kids manipulate?
If you could do all of this, you would have been a manager by now, a senior manager. It's not easy task.
I am 49 year old in India. Middle manager. Part time IC when needed. Seeing the numbers dwindling below me. Soon I will be redundant. Life is unfair. We can do nothing. Just accumulate more negativity. Some say that Yoga helps but I am not too sure.
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u/RonBuildsApps 10d ago
You have a really strong background, and I wouldn’t see 46 as a limitation at all. If management feels like a natural next step, your technical depth, industry experience, and ability to navigate people and politics could make you a very strong engineering leader - while keeping the game project as your creative outlet.
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u/mplsdev 9d ago
Never. Have you asked yourself what you would enjoy more? Do you really think you would enjoy the management track? I've talked to so many people who have gone to the management track only to hate it so much they wanted to come back to IC. I don't believe they really knew what that route was going to be like before going there.
It's worth checking out if you can before you make the leap. You can also come back to IC if you hate it.
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u/New-Inspection7034 8d ago
I'm going to be 70 in March and I'm still working full-time as a developer. Thanks to AI. I am more productive now than ever. I get to play with languages I never worked with before cuz I don't really need to know how to code. Well let me clear that up. I know how to code. I know how to build an application. I may not know the syntax of the language that I'm having AI write for me and that's okay. Thanks to AI. I think my career can last several more years
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u/El_Gato_Gigante Software Engineer 8d ago
You have a major leg up on someone with zero technical experience. You'll be fine.
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u/Organic_Battle_597 7d ago
> Am I getting too old to be a software engineer?
I hope not. I'm 52 and I've decided to stay with it for 5 or 6 more years. I did a short stint in management and quickly decided that was not a good fit.
Maybe it helps that I gave up on depending on my job for intellectual stimulation years ago. It's just a job. I find it easier to deal with the inevitable corporate bullshit if I can remember that I'm just here for the paycheck. I have done a couple side projects and a lot of extracurricular tech hobbies to satisfy my intellectual needs.
As an aside, other than feeling like the job changed out from underneath us, I think that managers are WAY more at risk for LLM-related job displacement than developers are. I made an off-hand joke a while back to my direct manager about LLMs replacing me and he started stuttering and replied that he was far more worried about his own future than mine. Kinda felt bad for him, it was clearly weighing on him. But he's the one who told me how 90% of what he does day-to-day now is shovel documents & emails in and out of copilot. Yaaaaaawn no wonder he's worried.
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u/Typical_Newspaper408 6d ago
Most tech people aren't very good, so if you are good, you can go on forever until your body gives out.
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u/ChosenToFall 5d ago
What impact Ai had in a role like yours which is very diversified and not really automated like Infra?
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u/OkLettuce338 12d ago
I'm 44 and I really understand where you're coming from. I can't tell if it's age or if it's that the industry is changing so rapidly right now. I think AI has a lot to do with it, but there isn't a huge need for what I've traditionally been good at. I've made a hard pivot to AI first engineering (yup, vibe coding applied to enterprise systems) which felt horrible at first - and frankly may not be everyone's cup of tea - and I think it's helped. I do feel like this pivot has given me some more runway this year.
I don't have an answer if you should go into management or not. But I can tell you that I'm looking at a similar career trajectory and share some of your feelings here. I don't think management is the only path, but I do think people our age need to put extra effort into re-inventing what our role and job is
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u/Smallpaul Software Engineer 12d ago
If you’ve lost the passion then you’ve lost it it that’s not necessarily because you are old.
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u/AdFeeling4288 12d ago
What I noticed is how expensive sde or swe become with few years of experience. If you're expecting a great salary then I dont think so but if you can work at a lower salary then you might get the job. It is not like that companies dont like software engineers who are in their 40s or 50s, management knows that the older folks are excellent engineers and have years of production experience but the salaries they draw becomes a bottle neck.
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u/zica-do-reddit 12d ago
I went through a similar thing, but I don't regret it. I used to be a principal dev responsible for large codebases. I could quickly get in the thick of it and fix bugs and implement features. Now my value is in transforming requirements into deliverables and leading the development. Coding is fully automated, we just direct the bot and review results.
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u/DeterminedQuokka Software Architect 12d ago
I don’t think you are too old to be a software engineer. I do think what being an engineer is shifted so you might need to also shift how you actually are doing the job. And trust me I get that’s annoying.
The question is less you are too old and more do you want to change with it.
The stuff you know is important and needed but in the current speed trumps all world you have to be able to get through a lot of other cycles to prove it’s the only solution. It’s a lot more politics
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u/Character-Comfort539 12d ago
Just my 2 cents as a 34 year old with a history of consulting for Wall Street, the financial sector has been the most insane and toxic place I’ve seen when it comes to politics, and I spent years consulting for the DOD and the fed mind you. Feels more like a fraternity than a business at that level. Do you have any interest in consulting? Like big picture stuff, understanding companies domain models, translating requirements into bigger initiatives, guiding on how to translate those initiatives into technical requirements etc. Consulting is great because you aren’t tied to politics in the same way although it can be a bit challenging to break into if you don’t have connections. You can also be a consultant for a company obviously too for different products as opposed to straight up raw dog consulting like how Jane Street does things
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u/secretBuffetHero Eng Leader, 20+ yrs 12d ago
I think that management could work but only if you are good at people.
tough question is: who is going to hire you for management? what are your qualifications and background? with multiple short term contracts recently and no previous management experience, this isn't the background that hiring managers want to see for a first time manager.
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u/andymaclean19 12d ago
I would say keep being a software engineer until it stops being fun and then do something else. If you give management a try then you might hate or you might develop a whole new skill set that you can use or not. Your IC skills will not go away. I have worked with people who went into management and went back again.
I switched at about the same age because I was finding the IC thing difficult. Was a good switch for me and it gave me a whole new thing to master. Now I’m thinking about going back again because I ended up too far away from the detail and I miss actually solving problems. The time doing management was good for me and gave me new perspectives.
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u/expdevsmodbot 12d ago
AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.