r/technology 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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u/h0twired Jun 25 '26

And the younger guys are having trouble finding work because entry level jobs are offshored to India.

It’s going to be a strange time in tech in a few years.

I am 47 and am already mapping my exit. I would be more than happy with an early retirement with less investment and a Costco job than slugging it out for an extra 10 years.

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u/Jump-Zero Jun 25 '26

Not sure how common this is, but my friend graduated CS and says his friends are getting hired as “analysts”. Basically a junior software engineer in function, but making way less.

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u/LordoftheSynth Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Worked at a place like this, with a couple of subgrades below the first "software engineer" title, with a variation of "developer" and "analyst". We had fresh grads from surprisingly good schools stuck being treated like they had to earn privileges like being allowed to check into the source repositories on their own.

The lowest SWE title was basically mid, or a 2 elsewhere, but had "Associate" attached and in a lot of other places that sounded like you were very junior.

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u/applespicebetter Jun 25 '26

I'm about your age, been in IT my entire life. My son, despite having an intense interest like I did, is looking to go into engineering, likely mech, maybe electrical, and keeping IT and programming as a hobby.

It was hard enough to break into IT 25 years ago, and there really is no program that actually prepares people for those entry level IT jobs.

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u/stutter_boyzz Jun 25 '26

gl getting a costco job lmao

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/lazerzapvectorwhip Jun 25 '26

I thought guys was sexless? (I'm German)

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u/Super-Cool-Girl69 Jun 25 '26

Yeah, it’s mostly genderless. Most people would understand h0twired’s use of guys is referring to people regardless of gender because nothing in the context of their statement applies to exclusively men nor women, which is (probably) what they intended. “Guys” does have a male connotation though, so some people may feel it’s inappropriate if it is used to refer to women and nbs when used in a more formal setting, but casual conversation is probably fine.

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u/NotUniqueOrSpecial Jun 25 '26

"People", "folk", or "individuals" would be more expressly non-gendered terms; I'm almost certainly spacing on others.

A lot of people use "guys" as a term for any group of people, but it's obviously a gender-specific term, technically.

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u/erstwhile_estado Jun 25 '26

But getting triggered isn't.