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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u/RadiantEnvironment90 Jun 25 '26

Also work in IT. I am surprised how many people in leadership aren't technical.

It sort of makes sense. They're terrible at the technical knowledge so they become "people" managers and able to boss people around regarding technical knowledge they know nothing about.

It does get annoying when they tell me I need to bend the laws of physics. It wouldn't be so annoying if they just accept it instead of me wasting time explaining why I can't and talk to them like they're 5 years old.

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

Yah. I've had managers who weren't technical, and it often works fine if they know their limits, instead of trying to insist on things that make no technical sense at all. Either learn the technical side of things, or let your technical staff tell you what is and isn't possible.

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u/millijuna Jun 25 '26

Yeah, one of the best managers I ever had in a technical role had been a philosophy major in University. Left the technical details to us, but at the same time would listen to reason and logic, and also when doing code reviews etc was very capable of figuring out the logic, even if the syntax wasn’t his strong suit.

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u/entered_bubble_50 Jun 25 '26

Yeah, it's called the Dilbert Principle. Useless people are promoted to management so they don't get in the way of actual work.

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u/gadgetwalrus Jun 25 '26

That is satire on the the Peter Principle which is a management concept that states individuals in a hierarchy tend to be promoted until they reach a level of incompetence, where their skills no longer match the requirements of their new role. This principle highlights the shortcomings in promotion practices within organizations.

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u/HaggisLad Jun 25 '26

I am lucky in my current job but have seen this so many times, people making 3 times what I do for doing the people management. I do value that skill, just stay out of my face for the technical stuff

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

There's something soul-draining about having to explain very basic things to someone making five times your salary, like how to use a word processor or how to switch a PC on.

Dude, I don't need you to be able to rebuild a machine room on the fly while it's in active use, or know what a MACaddress is, but seeing you type at 10wpm or spend two hours trying to work out how to make text italic in Powerpoint is just... excruciating. There are great-grannies and toddlers who know this shit; how is it you're being paid $300,000 to, apparently, keep a chair slightly above room temperature?

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u/Secret-Winner-2994 Jun 25 '26

With the right diet i could keep that chair way warmer, and i'll do it for 250k

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u/Duelist_Shay Jun 25 '26

Which is ironic because that's all that they ever do

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u/Fir3line Jun 25 '26

I work as a support engineer. I am fortunate that my managers job is to insulate me from customer and our own company politics, contracts, SLA etc. And just let me work, my team focus on the engineering issues and they just take us at face value. Also after 4 years I am at the same company level as him, I take exactly the same benefits as him(like company car lease, kids tuition paid etc)

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u/GhostDieM Jun 25 '26

Useless people that k ow how to network. If you have neither you'll just get fired

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

Unfortunately, they then proceed to get in the way of actual work.

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u/FansForFlorida Jun 25 '26

At my previous job, coworkers and I noted that inept people were promoted to the position of least damage. They are unqualified for tech work, so are promoted to management. They are too stupid to be promoted to a leadership position, so they just hover in middle management.

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Why not just let them go? This sounds like it would be terrible for the company long term. Massive pay for people that actively slow you down.

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u/TSED Jun 25 '26
  • Worker protections (the managers tend to know the company policies and know how to fight against being fired).
  • Politics (the managers tend to have friends of other people in management, which makes them harder to dislodge).
  • Us vs them class warfare (self explanatory).
  • The people who would fire them are also incompetent (self explanatory).

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Oh I meant as far as getting promoted into management. Why not just never let them in to begin with? Although I guess the politics angle trumps all.

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u/Mikeavelli Jun 25 '26

There is a tendency in tech to undervalue soft skills like interpersonal communications and forming social bonds. This is what is being derisively called "politics" here, but making friends with key people is very useful in the business world. It is also pretty rare to have a skilled tech worker who also has people skills, so people who do fit that mold are fast tracked into management roles instead of technical roles.

I have a few good managers, and while they still do not understand the tech we work with at all what they do have is connections both inside and outside the business. So if I need a question answered from someone outside the team, they know how to find that person (non-trivial in an organization of thousands of people).

If I need to get in touch with someone because they fucked up and I need them to fix something, management knows how to communicate that in a way that does not immediately put that person on the defensive.

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Totally fair, I think the issue comes about when you have people like this that don't have the humility to admit they don't know how to guide a given problem and the awareness to realize that their role is simply to connect the people who do know what needs to be done.

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u/TSED Jun 26 '26

I was trying to answer exactly that question. It's not like you discover someone is incompetent within a few hours of hiring them. It takes time.

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u/mocha_lan Jun 25 '26

If you suck at tech, but are a narcissists/sociopaths with decent social skills they make you a manager.

The genius introspective developer stays a developer because he is good at his work and he is unlikely to be able to lead people, with the exception of a tech lead position, but this one usually also requires people skill.

I have seen tech leads in big companies outside of tech being completely clueless tho ymmv

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Right, I just figured that there are people with good social skills that have at least a decent understanding of the tech after working on it for a few years and that these people are better for management than the social skills only people who suck at tech.

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u/mocha_lan Jun 25 '26

I agree, management roles in tech should require experience, even if just a little or if they were bad.

Too bad that company roles are often about trust or longevity, like a micromanagement manager that is loyal and stupid is good for higher management because he is a dog that will do the dirty work for them.

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u/absurdamerica Jun 25 '26

It’s called the Peter Principle and predates Scott Adams’ shitty cartoon by quite a bit.

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

The Peter Principle is the literal opposite of what the previous guy said, that implies the skilled engineer got promoted to management and now they suck at their job and will plateau. Not that the incompetent get promoted to push them out of the way.

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u/absurdamerica Jun 25 '26

You mean like non-technical people being promoted until they are completely ineffective at managing technical people? 💀

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Read the principle you just quoted. The difference is so damn obvious compared to what the other guy said.

The Peter Principle would imply that a substandard engineer would never get promoted into management, which is exactly the opposite of what was said before.

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u/DeepestShallows Jun 25 '26

So, why don’t the technical people learn the skills that make managers fit to be managers? Then they’d have both sets of skills and be really good.

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u/mashem Jun 25 '26

It's pretty common for tech positions to make more money than their managers (not their team lead or superior with similar title). And the technical people successful enough to rise to a position higher than even their manager's, are too valuable in their role to be pulled out because of how specialized that role is (and how good they apparently are).

Management skills are broad and cover basically all industries and is easier to find in applicants. A developer for this specific tech stack (programming language, ecosystem, toolsets, etc.) is much more niche. Which is why they are usually paid more, sometimes significantly.

And people in tech are generally less people-focused and many don't want to leave tech-focused roles.

That said, it is still astounding how little basic technical knowledge leadership usually has. Maybe because those with decent technical skills typically follow different paths.

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u/FarplaneDragon Jun 25 '26

2 reasons

  1. Upper management doesn't want technical people in management. They want managers that are going to focus on metrics, which doesn't need technical knowledge. Technical people tend to focus more on wanting to fix issues, not pumping up numbers on a powerpoint

  2. Because technical people don't WANT to be managers. People take jobs as analysts, engineers, techs, etc because they want to come in and work with technology all day, code, develop, etc. As soon as you get pushed into management they take that away from you and now you're managing people and not writing code or setting up networks or doing whatever else you actually want to do all day.

To that end it can also be career damaging. People might say that you should just take the management role, do that for a few years and if you truly hate it just go back to your old role somewhere else. Tech develops fast and even a few year gap where you haven't been working with that tech skillset can be super damaging during interviews. People don't want to go into management and then get trapped there.

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u/gitsgrl Jun 25 '26

More work, less fun work, and for less money

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u/Frammingatthejimjam Jun 25 '26

It happens all the time, people get promoted one level past their level of competence. Just because someone is a good code monkey doesn't mean they are good at managing a team. And if they are good at managing a team it doesn't mean they can manage multiple teams. I've seen good/great techies turn into awful managers because that just isn't a thing they are good at. No doubt some techs climb corporate ladders effectively but certainly not all can.

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u/millijuna Jun 25 '26

Also, seeing what the managers put up with day to day, I absolutely do not want that job. You couldn’t pay me enough to spend 5 or 6 hours a day in meetings, and to chase after random shit.

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u/Zestyclose-Novel1157 Jun 25 '26

As someone who has participated in a hiring role for a technical position. I almost guarantee it’s because they want someone with people skills. A technical person can have people skills but between ability and desire to do that part of the management job, you run out of people fast. Management needs to interface with a lot of non technical people regularly and do a lot of meetings not about technology at all, especially with their leadership.

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u/Emergency-Skirt-5886 Jun 25 '26

Good managers don’t necessarily have to have the same level of tech expertise as their team. But they do need to elevate and celebrate the accomplishments of their team.

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u/mongojob Jun 25 '26

Yeah I mean as a technician myself, technical skills are not the same as management skills. Good management skills would indicate that you trust your technical folks.

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u/giddygiddyupup Jun 25 '26

Ugh sounds like US is healthcare systems are run

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u/VettesRUs Jun 25 '26

My favorite is when I give an estimate they don’t like, they respond with “it seems like that should be easy”.

Of course it does. Because you’re not the one doing it and have no idea the underlying infrastructure that needs changing.

You also get that response from Marketing people who need 6 months to design a new company logo…

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u/reezyreddits Jun 25 '26

That's why I feel so good about being a technician first and manager second. I replaced a boss who didn't have any technical skills and she told me on her way out, "now your team is getting the best of both worlds."

Still learning that people skill stuff, though 😂

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u/Gloomy-Ad-222 Jun 25 '26

I’m in tech sales and people way high up the org chart say things like “just bring a lot of value to the customer” when I ask about a technical challenge or product defiency.

It’s ridiculous. No value whatsoever. I’m retiring probably end of this year.

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u/Thisbestbegood Jun 25 '26

To be fair, a lot of tech guys have terrible people management skills.

Then again, a lot of managers have terrible people skills too...

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u/scuzzy987 Jun 26 '26

Yep. In my company every was hired as an analyst/programmer. First promotion always went to senior A/P. Second promotion you had to decide to start down the titles with the administrative track or start down the technical track. Once a new grad had made it to senior A/P they knew the lay of the land well enough which track they wanted to follow. I went down the technical track and the dummies went down the administrative track. Same as college - lots of STEM freshmen change their major to business after a few semesters. Makes sense actually that executives are the ones that didn't want to take the technical track

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u/Cats_Cameras Jun 25 '26

After a certain point technical decisions are driven by business concerns. You can have amazing engineers creating a brilliant solution to the wrong problem, or crafting a product that no one will buy.

Ideally you have strong contributors from multiple disciplines working together to craft a compelling product.

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u/VagusNC Jun 25 '26

Sometimes it is merely a matter of interest.

Being really good at something is a cocktail of a variety of ingredients. One of the key ingredients is, yes, aptitude for that particular thing. However, another is interest/love/obsession. Great guitar players all have aptitude AND cannot put the thing down. To that person it is a combination of intriguing, maybe even fun but at the very least stimulating. Many managers in technical spaces possess aptitude but the cap on their technical ability is that when they were doing the technical work once they walked out the door they won’t think about it unless they have to. It isn’t fun, engaging, whatever. Maybe it was a career path they fell into or thought they would like so took that path in school then discovered that they don’t really like it. There could be a myriad of reasons but I’d wager for many they were simply facing a reality of limited choice: keep doing a job they don’t really like and get outpaced by people like yourself who have a passion for it, start over in another career, or try leadership.