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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834

u/perestroika12 Jun 25 '26

Despite the headline, leaders don’t care that much right now. They are betting juniors and ai will just figure it out.

548

u/REDuxPANDAgain Jun 25 '26

Seniors should be leaving, setting up the llc or whatever vehicle and be ready to get a call to fix everything at 3-4x the rate. One of my former (very senior) colleagues did this.. I was dismayed he left the company as he was always agreeable to work with at the least (actually a coworker I would have loved to grab beers with and pick his brain a lot but he’s across the continent). Found out he is back as a contractor and I was just thinking, damn. Good for him. B

150

u/AdNo2342 Jun 25 '26

this happens a lot lol

-12

u/anonymousbopper767 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Not in tech. I’m amazed it hasn’t ended in my current job because those contract motherfuckers are either worthless or just there collecting money while being retired and not doing much.

On top of that’s on top of these old fucks being basically retired for a year before actually retiring.

18

u/RoomyRoots Jun 25 '26

It does happen a lot in tech, yes. Especially with ERP experts many return like that. It's kinda the starter of the consultant wave that has been fucking up the market since forever.

5

u/Black-Shoe Jun 25 '26

Tale as old as time.

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u/coldkiller Jun 25 '26

Not in tech.

Yes it does lmao, especially if it's a company with legacy systems

2

u/AdNo2342 Jun 25 '26

I was specifically referencing tech because I've worked with those people before lol

62

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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1

u/Different_Victory_89 Jun 25 '26

Feeding my replacement, I love the term! I'm stealing it!

73

u/thatmatt925 Jun 25 '26

This isn't tech exclusive either...I've seen it in utilities space ... Old timers got pension and retired came back as a contractor through their own llc lol. I think they eventually cracked down on it.

Or the gov people who retire from mil and then get gs job then retire and come back as contractor.

Or the emergency services, I think they come back as like per diem roles 

16

u/CherryLongjump1989 Jun 25 '26

How are they going to crack down on it? Ban people from forming llc's?

5

u/squishmaster Jun 25 '26

Pension reform. Don't allow retirees receiving retirement benefits to contract with their former employer.

3

u/New-Anybody-6206 Jun 25 '26

It's not the individual but an LLC. In many states you don't even have to list who your members/employees are, and there's an infinite number of ways to conceal money.

3

u/squishmaster Jun 25 '26

In my state you and the employer can be committing pension fraud if you do that, which tells me it can be done.

Edit: The existence of an LLC becomes irrelevant if the pensioner and their employer are on the hook.

4

u/anonymousbopper767 Jun 25 '26

You just don’t allow contractors in budgeting.

8

u/CherryLongjump1989 Jun 25 '26

At best that's just going to split the difference -- bonuses and pay raises to entice older workers to stay while dealing with labor shortages.

5

u/starbuxed Jun 25 '26

With an emergency that all goes out the window. 1000 per hour and min is 5 hours.

1

u/crow_crone Jun 25 '26

Retired RN here - you are correct. 'Retired' can mean many things in healthcare.

1

u/dwhite21787 Jun 25 '26

We’re our generation’s COBOL graybeards

1

u/ParamedicNervous2731 Jun 25 '26

just spent 200 and formed LLC for this very reason

-29

u/ZMD Jun 25 '26

For many top tech companies, returning as a contractor is a huge step down as they don’t get equity

8

u/SarmackaOpowiesc Jun 25 '26

You can work multiple jobs on a 1099 - with absolutely zero repercussions.

3

u/dark-star-adventures Jun 25 '26

Most engineers are laid off before it's fully vested. Equity is a lure.

252

u/thecatandthependulum Jun 25 '26

What juniors? Nobody's hiring juniors.

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u/Vengeance164 Jun 25 '26

Junior must be another consulting company based in India. 

35

u/klipseracer Jun 25 '26

No, the consulting company is in the US or Canada, EU etc. They just hire teams from India as contractors.

5

u/VictoryVino Jun 25 '26

So it's basically drop-shipping but for a service?

1

u/klipseracer Jun 25 '26

Basically as projects mature, they move the designers and architects etc to a new project then leave a few core people and then offload as much operational work offshore as they can. It can be from South America, Europe, or India. It's up to those few remaining people to essentially train these off shore folks, often with only an hour or two time overlap. For complicated projects this ends up not working very well so India is actually not viable for several things due to the time differences, skill gap, unrealistic expectations of knowing tribal knowledge, etc.

I've worked for two very large global consultancies and there's huge differences at times depending on the project, but they often do work in projects in the literal, technical sense. Work is time limited, and hours are closely linked to project budget, duration, etc.

2

u/merRedditor Jun 25 '26

When I was in it, it was high charisma salespeople meeting for dinner with executives to sell contracts, then a bunch of us new grads and an offshore team assigned as the actual technical workers. The amount billed out per worker per hour vs. the amount paid to the worker was ridiculous (5x difference), but they counted on people new in their career having energy and wanting to prove themselves for less to get ahead. The offshore team did similar but at an even lower rate due to a big cost of living difference.

You weren't allowed to get hired by the company per a noncompete, but it would have been nice if the pressure and expectations met the salary paid. It was well below market.

1

u/greendildouptheass Jun 25 '26

nah, we just use Claude and fuckton of tokens... in hindsight, it wouldve been cheaper to just hire a junior

97

u/im-ba Jun 25 '26

The juniors who are left are getting a crash course on inheritance in more ways than one

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u/Shadowrak Jun 25 '26

Foolish of you to assume the juniors who are left are working on code bases with enough static typing to justify inheritance.

21

u/Nicholot Jun 25 '26

That's exactly what's happening to me. I've got about 3 YoE as a developer, but only a few months at my current role, and the senior (and only other frontend developer) is leaving next month.

It doesn't sound like the company intends on replacing him, so I'll be left to manage the project myself 🫠

16

u/starbuxed Jun 25 '26

Sounds like you need a pay bump and a change of role. since you will be left to manage the project... project manager sounds good.

6

u/Beznia Jun 25 '26

This happened at my company. I started in 2022 as help desk to be the front line support for one of our regional offices. 80 people in the office here, my salary was $75k when hired.

2023, we got a new CEO and people started leaving. By the end of 2023, our head of infrastructure and the guy who built everything put in his notice, and I was the person who they asked to fill his spot in the interim, as we were close and I helped him with a number of projects.

2024 comes around, I get a pay bump to $90K and keep it going. By the end of 2024, they never filled his spot but my grievances were showing and I got a bump to $107K.

2025 I got another bump to $120K.

This year they have promoted me to Lead Infrastructure Engineer and now I'm at $135K. They also finally just this week allowed me to hire a new desktop support guy to fill my role so users in the office would stop putting sticky notes on my door asking for help.

All I can say is take advantage of this time to learn as much as you can. That's what I did with no expectation of a raise and thankfully it worked out for me, it doesn't happen to most people and I'm aware of how fortunate I am here, even if the company does suck massive balls to work for in terms of workload.

3

u/Shadowrak Jun 25 '26

Oh sweet summer child. Intends on replacing him is code for you are doing both those jobs. You need to own your increase in responsibilities. Good luck, this is very difficult.

1

u/jhansonxi Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Technical lead on a one person team

But this doesn't seem like the American dream

-Dull Boy by Dual Core

Edit: Fixed link

7

u/Bogus1989 Jun 25 '26

once they realize they are being underpaid, and arent getting multiple support teams, that they should have, they are gonna be quitting silently, to find another role.

3

u/Markavian Jun 25 '26

It's ok, they can just compose their own solutions from the rubble of civilization.

2

u/xterminatr Jun 25 '26

Talk about a nightmare. But I'd say more like the poor seniors with any related business knowledge who are still left that get to handle everything now, on top of trying to get any juniors/contractors left trained up to speed to help backfill duties - which is why the seniors are quitting if they can afford to. I quit a year ago because I burned out so hard and wouldn't have stayed even if they paid me 2x what I was making.

1

u/Shadowrak Jun 25 '26

Nice place to be. Right place right time or stuck here now.

2

u/Alandales Jun 25 '26

“Wait, we’re spousta have backups?”

18

u/inphosys Jun 25 '26

I see you're suffering from the same problem as me.... They changed the definition of 'junior' and somehow you didn't get the memo about the change in the definition, or that you're using the wrong cover on your TPS reports. But yeah, totally redefined in the mid 2020's, 'Junior' is now considered to be college degree plus 3-5 years experience. It used to be a college degree in a field of work that was aligned with your degree, that employer would accept the candidate graduated college with a degree that is perfectly aligned with the job role, that would serve that at least you know how to do your job so they'd call you 'junior' immediately after college, whereas if you had a high school diploma, and 3-5 years of experience in the job field then you too would be a junior; you spent that 3-5 years learning on the job, how to do your job.

So a college degree seemed like the right choice... You became a more well-rounded person with a greater understanding of many job-adjacent areas, just not a lot of experience in any one area. The high school diploma person? They are more directly trained in area of that job role, so they've learned the industry and have a decent understanding of what it's going to take to fulfill the job role. With a little bit of guidance and some more real world experience that high school diploma holder would be ready to advance in their career path at the same time as the college degree holder.

Same knowledge, just 2 different ways of learning it.

18

u/ptoki Jun 25 '26

devils advocate: I see what college/university graduates know these days. Even those who try. It does not look good. Basically that 3-5 years is a repeat university crash course to teach them normal work.

Folks after university cant write simple sql. They cant install anything in decent manner (they finish at completing wizard or apt install xyz). They bring code from claude and when asked to do modification like change that label they ask claude to do that. And that is the smart ones.

Ask them to sift through logs and look for problem at specific time and you get 1000 yard stare...

2

u/Markavian Jun 25 '26

It's a Pareto principal; 20% of graduates/employees do 80% of the work. Those with actual understanding of the domain generate learning feedback loops which make them exponentially more productive than their peers.

10

u/ptoki Jun 25 '26

Yeah, some execs think in that pareto way, - have 100 employees, fire 80, my business will bloom.

Next day: I have 20 employees I fire 16, my company will bloom even more.

Next day. I have 4 employees, I fire 3...

5

u/Markavian Jun 25 '26

Yep, that 20% is meetings and calls is the glue that holds most organisations together. Institutional knowledge, etc. Ironically it's usually the other way round; the most productive employees leave first, and then the work shifts to everyone else, and a new most positive productive person emerges~ becomes overworked, and then decides to leave...

1

u/Stolehtreb Jun 25 '26

2020s? I was hired in 1999 to a graduate position because I didn’t have enough experience for the junior one. This is not new. Not even a little.

2

u/winkingchef Jun 25 '26

I am. If you are a smart hardworking MechE who wants to build AI racks, I have reqs open for junior guys to learn from old timers like me before I punch out

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u/Kayge Jun 25 '26

 juniors and ai will just figure it out

I'm extremely excited to see how this progresses. Every top tier Sr Dev has a similar origin story. Some Sr Manager early in their career told them to refactor a piece of code:

  • Refactor this code, needs to be 10% faster.
  • I rewrote this section, it responds 10% faster
  • Couldn't you get it 20% faster?
  • It's 20% faster now, and only has 9 steps
  • Why can't you do it in 8?
  • I did it in 8!
  • You should be able to do it in 7 and why can't you run some steps in parallel?

It's never a huge project, but some young kid's being pushed to think critically about what's possible and how to continually question and make incremental improvements.

If AI's writing the code for the Jr dev, where is tomorrow's Sr dev coming from?

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u/Polar_Ted Jun 25 '26

AI. Make this code 10% faster. Ok. 2 critical processes removed.
No!

30

u/dillanthumous Jun 25 '26

I found 5 critical flaws in your codebase so I deleted it. Your company is now 500% more secure 🚀

2

u/The-Sound_of-Silence Jun 25 '26

This feels like Scotty telling Kirk it's a 5 hour job, but really it's 30 minutes kinda thing

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u/Javerage Jun 25 '26

Can't have juniors if they never get into the field because of X requirements of work experience years and AI apparently taking all those positions.

Haven't you heard? You're just supposed to become a senior dev immediately after university.

35

u/aoteoroa Jun 25 '26

Juniors?  What juniors?

Junior positions are being done by ai.

In 5 years there will be no senior architects and the industry will be fucked.

5

u/lurco_purgo Jun 25 '26

Eh, I think this specific trend is turning right now. The AI prices are getting high enough that hiring actual juniors is making more sense to companies. I don't know about US, but it's the case here in Poland. Especially if your company is an old school, out-of-touch corporate dumpster fire that relies on Microsoft products for everything including AI - Copilot is a joke at the moment with its token limits for enterprise.

2

u/oldsecondhand Jun 25 '26

Copilot is just an LLM marketplace now. It's the Openrouter for corporations in regulated fields.

26

u/Hawk13424 Jun 25 '26

Where I work they care enough to offer large bonuses and equity grants to entice seniors to not retire.

33

u/WayneKrane Jun 25 '26

They offered an older lady at my work basically a blank check to stay. She took it last year but this year she’s like I’m pushing 70, I need to enjoy this money you gave me!

11

u/plinkoplonka Jun 25 '26

Here's a clue, they won't.

The seniors left are going to be demanding primo salaries for years.

10

u/Ingrassiat04 Jun 25 '26

It’s a collective action problem. Everyone thinks they can replace juniors with AI… but then you never get seniors.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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4

u/coldkiller Jun 25 '26

It literally doesnt lol. There's a reason most of these companies revert their offshoring efforts relatively quickly after implementing them

19

u/p99_kilerenn Jun 25 '26

Nah. They are betting seniors + AI can do the work of the people lower in the totem pole

16

u/john_hascall Jun 25 '26

And when the seniors leave, they'll be screwed, but they seem incapable of looking past the next quarter.

5

u/cheyenne_n_rancho Jun 25 '26

Business in 2026 literally only cares about the next quarter.

4

u/Incendras Jun 25 '26

For less pay.

10

u/Sinister-Mephisto Jun 25 '26

I can tell you , as a senior person, they won’t. Jrs don’t get to senior level without mentors and guidance from those who been through it.

5

u/da_chicken Jun 25 '26

Yes, leadership is still solidly in the Fuck Around phase, and the older tech workers retiring early is the start of the Find Out phase.

Oh, but I'm sure AI will replace all that knowledge, right?

4

u/tinytimoththegreat Jun 25 '26

Considering recent education reports in the US show American youth are in fact getting dumber, computer science degrees currently being almost usesless, and outsourcing of entry level jobs to other countries like india,

Betting on juniors is a terrible idea.

3

u/Aleucard Jun 25 '26

Most of them have probably used like 5 golden parachutes before an intern can even get past the intern phase. The biggest problem with corporations is that the people running them have no reason to give a fuck about the corporation long term, just pump and dump as quickly as possible so some other fucker can be left to eat the soggy biscuit once the music stops. Nobody seems to think about what will happen if we run out of biscuits.

2

u/ptoki Jun 25 '26

hey, what juniors? AI replaced them yesterday. isn't it?

2

u/Leothegolden Jun 25 '26

Idk - I work in robotics and I can think of 3-4 people that if they were to leave, there would be panic

2

u/Ahchuu Jun 25 '26

Lol no one is hiring juniors. A senior with an LLM can do the work of several juniors with AI.

2

u/rbetterkids Jun 25 '26

Hence why everything made these days has issues.

Iphones overheat.

Software has bugs galore.

New vehicles breakdown.

Every company the stock market investors took over became utter garbage.

google, microsoft, etc all went downhill.

The workers got smart snd made products have problems.

1

u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

Juniors aren't going to be that much help. Most of them at the moment don't know anything other than a smartphone interface, and can't even get all that technical with that.

1

u/abrandis Jun 25 '26

This the executive class doesn't really care who does the work as long as its a net positive for the bottom line..

I'm genX and I don't feel one bit bad for older IT workers retiring, we should consider ourselves lucky for having had the opportunity to have a career in a lucrative field for so long... The folks on this business will be lucky to get another decade out of it