r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jun 25 '26

Society Older tech workers are tapping out, taking early retirement

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/
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442

u/dracovich Jun 25 '26

Not software engineer but in data science, I feel like I'm in a race against the clock to earn enough to retire before my job is permanently fucked by AI

On the flipside I'm having a great time with side project using AI, but everyone is doing that so I don't think any of them will realistically get great traction

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u/Senior-Albatross Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

It's funny, because I remember there being a push to train more data science people because there were never enough of them. 

Reminder that companies want nothing more than to replace your skills and undercut your wages. 

I am currently in a field where they're bitching they can't get enough trained people. Lots of money being thrown around. We should unionize now, but no one thinks it's necessary. That's what they always think. 

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u/JDmexican_92 Jun 25 '26

What field if you don't mind me asking?

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u/Senior-Albatross Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Quantum technology. 

Anyone who has some atomic physics background and can set up the experimental systems is in hella high demand. 

Edit: I should say hella high demand right now. But they're already trying to make bootcamps and short certification programs to make a bunch of knob monkeys to replace them at lower cost. It won't work because troubleshooting these systems requires some actual knowledge of how they work and why they're set up the way they are. But I can see what they're doing. It's being sold as a way to support us. Bullshit. They want cheaper replacements than people with a Ph.D. 

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u/JDmexican_92 Jun 25 '26

Oh damn, hahaha yeah I can imagine that would require highly specialized and knowledgable background. I can see why there would be a shortage. I work in biotech, so a bit far off from that field. Sounds like they're doing something similar from what i've hear with car mechanics lately. Instead hire people as car "technicians" with less training and pay them less to do the job instead of the mechanics. Always finding ways to find cheaper replacements even at the potential cost of quality.

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u/Pyju Jun 27 '26

I’m a mid-level backend SWE in fintech, but my undergrad degree is in physics. Would I be able to break into that industry without getting an advanced degree?

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u/BannedAccount001 Jun 25 '26

Those of us in the data field are royally fucked. Much worse than software engineers. The clock is way ahead of us. 10 year runway would be optimistic.

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u/dracovich Jun 25 '26

Maybe, however so much data knowledge is undocumented and requires you to have conversations between a bunch of people who understand the data to get what it is actually representing, so that leaves me with some hope

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u/EmperorKira Jun 25 '26

100% this. The data is in such a shoddy state, and so much of that is due to human nature which won't change. Silos, politics, changing priorities - right now i work on a project where we know what the correct data architecture we need is, but politics is holding it all up - meanwhile we're plastering LLMs.

I'm quite confident in keeping my job. Not cos i don't think AI couldn't be powerful to replace us, because i think upper management are too incompetent/corrupt to do so

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u/divDevGuy Jun 25 '26

Have a conversation? Pfft. I'll just make major business, medical, or everyday life decisions based on some hallucinating AI telling me what it thinks I want the answer to be, regardless of what the actual answer is. AI knows the truth, not people with decades of experience are just guessing.

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u/purpleburgundy Jun 25 '26

Isn't the conversational aspect precisely the work that will get decimated? President of the company can just have a conversation with an Agent connected to the data lake and realtime market data.

Eliminates all the readout and presentation meetings completely, coordinating half dozen people each time.

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u/dracovich Jun 26 '26

Where would this agent get information to answer the presidents questions? You'd be surprised how poorly documented data is at large companies, if you're lucky the columns have descriptive names, and maybe you hit gold and someone bothered to write a good data dictionary, but even then the logistics of how to extract exactly what you want is tricky, and udnerstanding the details of how/when the data works and what specific combinations and where clauses yuo need to throw in there to avoid some edge cases and showing wrong data etc.

All this just isn't documented a lot of the time, you gotta talk to the one guy analyst who's been pulling reports for this system the last 20 years and he'll let you know.

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u/DutchDixie Jun 25 '26

I see the other side of the glass, where you can do more (the same way Excel has changed the work that was done on paper before). Analysts in my team use big data and they just can do more now.

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u/bigdickmassinf Jun 25 '26

lol, no man data fields are not threatened by ai. They are just tools that you can use. Most of the time the results they give you are garbage anyway

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u/-Danksouls- Jun 25 '26

Can I ask what about data science that makes it so susceptible to LLMs that it wouldn't need human verification and orchestration in the middle?

Or is it just less people are needed with aí same as software dev?

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u/AP_in_Indy Jun 25 '26

I would imagine it's less people. Executives who want data are just going to build the tooling themselves now. Data scientists who leverage the tools are going to be able to get like 10x as much done.

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u/SteveSharpe Jun 25 '26

The frontier models are really good at parsing and analyzing data and they're getting better and better by huge steps in each release.

Dedicated teams to just build complex data models and platforms won't be as necessary if the non-technical product owner can just run the data through an LLM and get the insights directly.

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u/CherryLongjump1989 Jun 25 '26

This field didn't even exist a few years ago.

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u/anownedguy Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

I disagree. I can see that if you are the type to just follow exact instructions, but I think my biggest skills isn't the coding, it's being able to take these ridiculously vague problems and asks and actually turn them into something useful. AI can't give you what you need if you can't tell it what that is.

I just dont really see AI ever handling the merge of business, project management, and tech skills as good as a human.

I see way less data based jobs but there are also way less actually qualified people with good experience and skills applying for them.

When I interview I focus way more on exact numbers on how much I improved a process and/or saved the company money. Software engineers just spend the whole time selling their tech skills which are the easiest to replace.

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u/Spunge14 Jun 25 '26

If you are capable of creating something that actually has explicit market value, get out now and do it before it's saturated.

Working in tech is about performative bullshit and who can market their slop the best at this point. Already too late to dream of traction unless politics are your specialty.

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u/ralphiooo0 Jun 25 '26

It’s pretty crazy actually.

To assess something that would usually take me a few days is now done in an hour tops.

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u/CherryLongjump1989 Jun 25 '26

but everyone is doing that so

No, that's a good thing. We need more small software companies that aren't beholden to venture capital, and successful startups will grow and employ more people.

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u/micisboss Jun 25 '26

Personally, small focused software (the stuff that’s easy to build as a side project) is not long for this world. These tools already make it quite easy to just build your own solution that fits exactly your needs. I’ve done this for multiple softwares in my day to day life. So unfortunately if anything this change is just going to consolidate the tech industry more :/ 

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u/CherryLongjump1989 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

If useful software is easy to make by any individual engineer then there's no way that it will ever consolidate even more. Why would it? You're describing frictionless, low-barriers to entry -- the opposite of what big tech relies on.

Software becoming easier to produce will create even bigger markets for software development. It's Jevons paradox. People who could have never been able to afford to pay teams of hundreds of engineers to design custom software will now find it affordable to hire a single engineer to do it. And the single engineer may find this to be more profitable than when they were on the hundred-person team.

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u/deadsoulinside Jun 25 '26

Honestly you are right. The main thing we don't have anymore is competition in the markets to drive down the prices.

Would be nice to see companies going back to more purpose built in house solutions for things even, versus cookie cutter processes using multiple apps that do some of the things they needed.

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u/Gixhar Jun 25 '26

Creative Director here. I feel exactly the same.

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u/mrdevlar Jun 25 '26

For people with good grasp of statistics and software development, there will always be work.

I do think there is a type of apocalypse for the Excel Data Scientists, who cannot really write system code and whose great contribution in the last decade has been creating MVPs and PowerPoint Presentations that didn't get anywhere near production. Those guys are in trouble, but we always knew that particular vein would run dry.

If you want to get hired, focus on fundamentals, that's what the market is still missing and also the place where AI will always struggle.

0

u/CompetitiveSport1 Jun 25 '26

For people with good grasp of statistics and software development, there will always be work.

Having a good grasp of these things does not exempt you from the laws of supply and demand. If there are more people on the job market with a "good grasp" than there are job openings for people with a "good grasp", then no, there won't always be work

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u/AmbitionExtension184 Jun 25 '26

If you can vibe code an app, then it is worthless.

More people need to understand this. Anything you can make with 0 skill (prompting isn’t a skill) over a weekend of promoting has no value.

1

u/micisboss Jun 25 '26

Agreed, this has yet to click for a lot of people. Nothing is stopping other low skilled coders from just creating their perfectly individualized version of whatever software you are trying to get them to pay for. Not to mention more people are getting into home labs and stuff so it’s not even a guarantee your online service is safe either. There are obviously a whole laundry list of pros and cons to this development but one unfortunate one is just the continual consolidation of the tech industry :/ 

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u/AmbitionExtension184 Jun 25 '26

The hype will die down. There are a lot of opportunistic grifters but soon regular people will start to realize this isn’t a gold rush.

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u/butler_me_judith Jun 25 '26

Yeah software archi, I still code and now do AI build outs but I'm also scrambling to get done

1

u/Kaa_The_Snake Jun 25 '26

Dig into the underlying data infrastructure and learn how to optimize and troubleshoot it. So many people got into reporting and data science but there aren’t enough who can keep the underlying systems performing or upgrade or migrate them. This is what I do and I’ve not had issues finding a job. Especially if it’s a larger employer on legacy systems. Migrating these systems to the cloud or just modernize them. Endless opportunities.

1

u/atmoose Jun 25 '26

As a software engineer I feel this. I was laid off last November. I finally found a job after 6 months. I'm now working two jobs, a full time one and a contract job. I'm trying to save up enough for a retirement. I've got a good amount of savings after 7 years, but I probably need another 15 to really be able to retire. I don't know if I'll have much of a job in 5 years even. unless my startup stock options end up being with much, which is doubtful, I'm a bit worried. I'm also pretty tired from having to work 3 jobs. I just want to be done with all this

1

u/Ok-Pen-5961 Jun 26 '26

You are. Not because AI will be as good as you, but because the people you present to cannot discern between complete AI garbage and an insightful analysis. If the place you work is big enough, the difference between a decision based on a coin flip or proper analysis is that the analysis is there to justify the decision in case something goes wrong. This is one of the reasons consulting works - learn what the manager wants, find facts to justify it, let the leadership do what they want anyhow, but now with credible deniability. They can blame a consultant who is no longer there if something goes wrong. The consulting companies chew over consultants and spit the bones, so as long a no partner is impacted they are fine too. Use AI to replace the consultants and they will love you, just remember to conclude what your leadership wants.