
Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible? - jackalx
I&#x27;m in my mid 30s and has been working in the software industry for the past 16 years. I&#x27;m a Lead Engineer at the moment and I&#x27;ve tried jobs as architects previously and didn&#x27;t enjoy it. I still love writing code, learning new tech&#x2F;tooling&#x2F;stack and doing hands-on technical implementation. However, at some point it seems that everyone at my stage is moving into management or higher level positions doing project management, meetings, architectural discussions (mostly meetings), etc. which I really don&#x27;t enjoy doing. Has anyone here work as a technical guy until retirement and can share your experience if you have any regrets?<p>Thanks.
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hn_throwaway_99
First, note you're likely to get some survivorship bias in these responses -
older people who left the industry are less likely to comment on HN.

That said, as a developer in their mid-40s, here's my take:

1\. In general, mid-level engineering management jobs (which I consider
Manager to Senior Director level) pay significantly more _because they are
shittier jobs_. Sure, there is the rare soul that loves these kind of jobs,
but I think most Directors would freely admit they liked their day-to-day a
lot more when they were coding. I find that the type of folks who succeed in
these roles have basically stopped caring about work so much and are much more
invested in their family life. I.e. they don't "love" their job, but they do
well at it because they want to make a nice living for their family.

2\. I went the senior engineer -> architect -> director -> senior director
route, and honestly I _hated_ being a director/senior director. I don't mind
so much managing people, and I really enjoy mentoring, but at the
director/senior director level you're doing a ton of managing up, which I
hate, and there are a ton of logistical responsibilities at this level that I
find mind-numbingly boring.

3\. So I switched companies and am now a "principal engineer", which I love
and I think is my sweet spot. I don't have any official direct reports, but I
do a lot of mentoring and general "team management". Given my history, the
senior execs at my company appreciate some of my "management-level input", but
they know I'm most effective if I'm not involved in tweaking job-level band
discussions. To echo another commenter, I do just enough management-level
stuff to keep me involved at a high level, but I spend the majority of my time
writing code, doing code reviews, and working closely with product management
to give engineering input re: new features.

~~~
jlokier
In my head, "director" is right near the top of the organisation, just under
"shareholder", and above C-suite.

So I'm intrigued by the "ton of managing up". Who are you managing up so much
to?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
To clarify some of the other responses, there is confusion between someone on
the Board of Directors (often called a Director of the Company) vs. an
Engineering Director. In most medium-to-large software orgs, the manager tract
goes something like Manager->Senior Manager->Director->Senior
Director->VP->Senior VP->CTO. Obviously some of levels may not exist depending
on the size of the organization, but in general a Director and above manages
few ICs and instead manages managers.

------
rossdavidh
I _started_ working as a coder in my 30's, and I'm 52 now. I am still getting
inquiries from startups.

One thing that trips up some coders as they get older, is that on some level
they expect to be able to stop learning new stuff, and settle into the role of
grizzled veteran. While that is true in most fields, in software, it just
isn't. If you are retiring in 5 years, you'd better be learning some new stuff
now to be relevant/employable 2 years from now.

But, if you're willing to keep learning, then the fact that you have seen a
number of tech trends come and go does give you a perspective which is worth
something.

Lastly, you will probably make more money if you go into management or etc.
But it's not like you have to be homeless if you stay a coder, so for me
that's not much of a sacrifice.

~~~
jameshush
This is the important part. You _have_ to keep learning. I work with a
coworker who's in his 50's, he's flippin' GREAT. Super dependable, takes
responsibility, likes to come in an hour early, code, not really talk to
anyone and go home at 4. You can give him any project and he'll get it done,
with tests and documentation and a one command deploy script. If I ever
started a company I'd hire him in a heart beat.

I worked with a "grizzled veteran" at a previous job... He was difficult. Kept
talking about how he had a "classical" computer science education background
from Stanford. Over complicated everything. Never took responsibility. Never
wanted to learn anything new. Just a pain, we ended up working around him
whenever possible.

So if you really like doing what you're doing great! I'm actually going the
opposite route now. I'm 29 and actively trying to hop to sales because I know
I don't want to spend that much time coding anymore. Different strokes for
different folks. There's engineers at google making 300k and sales people
making 80k and vice versa.

~~~
tartoran
If you have the personality and ambition to be a salesperson you can make a
good career out of it. I sometimes thin what else I could do and still earn a
living and my introverted personality style gets me back to engineering. It’s
unfortunate because ther are a lot of skills to be learned outside of
programming.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I've worked with a few successful introverted salespeople. I'm not sure I'd
want to do it but they seemed to pull it off.

------
mattlondon
Although I am not near retirement, I've found there is a sort of sweet-spot to
be found doing "kinda" management stuff while still emphatically being a
hands-on full-time coder.

I.e. you can proactively do _just enough_ project management, meetings, and
architectural discussions so that people leave you alone the rest of the time
to code, but you get enough influence to get things largely how you want them
to be (i.e. no surprises/stupid decisions forced on you by a PHB).

It requires some drive & gumption to decide to do these things yourself and
then the requisite organisational & social skills to schedule the meetings
with people, make connections between teams, start the shared design-
doc/slides/whatever, generally get people together and "make things happen"
etc, but I've found that "the management" value this sort of mini-manager
thing hugely, with the bonus that you are not just a passive passenger on the
decisions being made about the work you do, but you are actively shaping it
because it is you who is out there driving the agenda by just enough.

I can easily see this sort of role being viable into retirement if I wanted -
people seem to really value an engineer who can do this sort of thing.

~~~
EsotericAlgo
I've found that showing any degree of drive and gumption in the undeserved
organizational tasks ends up eating more and more time as the expectations and
scope increase, rapidly pushing out the technical work.

Finding the "just enough" part is challenging, especially if you're in an
organization without a strong engineering culture where technical acumen is
undervalued.

~~~
rcurry
As I like to say - never let people know you’re good at something you don’t
want to do.

------
weef
I started coding at 22 years old out of college and am now 58. I've resisted
the pressures of becoming a manager my entire career and have had no regrets.
Recently I turned down yet another manager role for all the reasons you gave
and couldn't have been happier. Management at my place understands my career
plans and have been accommodating. I plan on retiring in 10 years but know a
lot can change between now and then so if my current job becomes unbearable,
I'll leave and take on freelance coding projects. I will never become a
manager.

------
BurningFrog
Turning 60 this year. Still working startups. Still enjoy building software,
and still better at it than most of the young people.

This path is surely not for everyone. But it's certainly available.

I never wanted management, and don't think I'd be good at it.

~~~
renewiltord
Still rock your khakis with a cuff and a crease?

~~~
BurningFrog
I'm either too old or too young for that reference.

~~~
renewiltord
Haha it's from the song Still D.R.E. where Dr Dre explains that he's still the
same, fame and time haven't changed him. He hasn't gotten soft and decadent.
He's still top of his game, still the same guy.

"Still puffing my leafs, still fuck with the beats, still not loving police".
"Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease".

The sound of your comment came off the same way.

~~~
BurningFrog
Ah. So I'm just too _white_ for the reference :)

~~~
burntoutfire
Rap in that era was made for white middleclass people, as it's they who could
afford to buy the most CDs.

~~~
wmeredith
Ha! Yes, most definitely an age thing. Not a race thing. I grew up very white
in the Midwest and this music was very much a part of the zeitgeist.

------
gorgoiler
In brief: there’s a good chance that age and experience will change you into
wanting a leadership role. Start laying the groundwork for that now, even if
you don’t think _The Change_ will ever come.

As much as I wanted it to last forever, I eventually lost interest in being an
individual contributor in favor of guiding others. My contribution was
assessed not just on my own output but also on the output of those to whom I
gave guidance.

Then I ditched tech completely and split my time between baking baguettes in
the country and working as CS teacher.

Life and priorities change. Some fit naturally into a well trodden career path
— such as going from an individual contributor to a manager. Some life and
mindset changes will require you to find fulfillment elsewhere though. Techie
to techie manager might not be enough change to sate you.

The most common pattern though, in my experience, is to switch to management
_because you want to_. To that extent, assume this _might_ happen to you too,
and lay some foundations now just in case.

------
jedberg
I worked with a guy in his 60s when I was in my 20s just starting out. He did
good work and was a fine coworker.

He also made the same amount as the guys who were senior engineers in their
30s. His salary growth basically plateaued in his 30s, after that it was just
COL adjustments.

He was perfectly fine with that though. He enjoyed being a coder, got paid
enough to support his lifestyle, and liked that he got to shut off at night,
since he had no career growth aspirations.

~~~
Aeolun
I don’t know, I just cannot see myself not being rewarded with any kind of
raise for the next 30 years as a good thing.

~~~
jedberg
Heh. I don't know how old you are, but it's pretty typical in all careers. At
some point you just hit the top of your skillset.

~~~
nnoitra
And to go above that? Grad school and Phd or just very specialized niche
knowledge or moving into finance/quant jobs?

~~~
jedberg
You can get a new skillset but that may not increase your pay, just your job
options, unless you learn a higher paying specialty (like AI or ML or
something).

Otherwise your options are manager or architect.

~~~
nnoitra
Do you need to get Msc to learn a AI/ML to get more monies?

------
JoeAltmaier
I've turned down management roles all my life. Am still very technical. But
now I own a consulting business and do less coding and more project scoping.
Still technical though!

Started in 1985 in Silicon Valley out of school.

------
pskinner
Try to target becoming a principal/staff engineer - aim towards knowledge of
all things code and attempt to show everybody the way forwards.

Architecture is fine, but most of the time its the implementation and
engineering details that prove out the architecture, and not vice versa.

Aim for perfection, as much as you can. There is always that middle ground,
try to understand it but always strive and drive your peers towards utter
perfection (as you understand it).

------
treespace89
47 here, coding professionally since I was 24. No management, and no plans for
it.

While ageism exists in some places, I don't find it to be an industry wide
problem.

At the end of the day programming is just coding the correct if/else and
working with other programs, and the OS. (Which is really just a program too)

Personally I love it. Building and extending these machines. Learning new ways
of doing things, coding for new platforms.

------
aerophilic
From experience working with folks in Aerospace Companies, yes it is possible.

The key part, and this is where it gets tricky is your cost vs value you
directly provide. This is why most of those that I saw this happen for never
got “high” ranking positions.

When you are an individual contributor, your value is directly a result of the
work you do, you don’t get “multiplication” factors by making other folks more
productive.

The effective consequence of this is that you are “capped” on how much you can
“charge” for what you can individually provide as value to them.

To make this concrete, for a particular task, the value to them may be X. Yes
you can do an amazing job and do the job as 5X, but they only needed X. So the
most they will want to give you is Z, where Z = X/Y, where Y is some factor >=
1 + a factor. Note the Z will have to account for your “total” cost, which is
salary + benefits + the overhead of having you in the company (managers, IT
costs, etc).

So as long as you can have X >>> Z, you will always have a job. The trick is
either making sure your knowledge gives a large X for your specific niche, or
your Z is relatively low.

Hopefully this helps...

~~~
travisjungroth
> When you are an individual contributor, your value is directly a result of
> the work you do, you don’t get “multiplication” factors by making other
> folks more productive.

Software seems pretty good at multiplying the productivity of other people.
It’s just less socially acceptable to take credit for that increase than it is
in management.

~~~
aerophilic
Absolutely! Software is a huge multiplication factor. No argument there!

However the point, which maybe I didn’t make clearly, is this: they _expect_ a
specific multiplication factor from a specific bit of code. This is the value
X they hope to achieve by employing you. If you can do X in less time/lower
overall cost then someone else, then that is worth paying more for. However,
that X benefit they are seeking is relatively fixed. As a consequence your
value is fixed.

With management, there is much more variation.

A _bad_ manager will make a team of 5 produce the value of a team of 3. A
great manager can take that same team and get a value of 8. This scales with
how many people you manage/lead. Assume management makes a 10% difference to
output capability. If you are leading/managing 100 people, the delta value is
10 whole people paychecks.

To bring this home: think how productive you were under a “bad” manager vs a
“good” manager. Whatever delta was there, you can multiple it by your normal
team size. That is the “value” a good manager unlocks.

~~~
travisjungroth
I still don’t get why you think that the budget for sharing productivity gains
is strictly more bounded for software engineers than managers.

I could flip your example around. McDonald’s hopes to achieve value X from
each of their managers and that’s what their willing to pay. But a software
engineer who can increase retention rates can noticeably increase the value of
the whole company. And that’s part of why one gets paid more than the other.

~~~
burntoutfire
Modern software engineer is in most cases just a bricklayer - he just realises
a vision of the business (product owner and his boss etc.). So, in your
example, it's not the software engineer who increased retention rates, but
rather the manager who thought of writing such improvement, and hired an
engineer who then implemented it.

In other words, the implementation is seen as a trivial part of the process,
while figuring out what exactly to implement is seen as the core of the value
creation.

------
twa927
> However, at some point it seems that everyone at my stage is moving into
> management or higher level positions doing project management, meetings,
> architectural discussions

This impression is mostly generated by your head, to be more specific - by the
social pressure to "make a career" and to regard technical skills as inferior
to management skills. I don't think it's real, I saw many old people working
as programmers, and there will be many more because there are more programmers
among the current 20-30 year-olds, compared to the older generations. Also
there's simply many more technical jobs available and there won't be enough
management positions available to allow the switch for everyone. And the
pandemic looks also like a quite big factor in reducing the number of
management jobs (it looks like you often can work as usual without all the
managers...).

------
OldHand2018
How do your retirement accounts look? Are you the kind of person that always
wants more money, or is that not a huge motivator?

If you choose to stay on this path, you'll likely make less money later in
life. Is that ok? You may also find yourself involuntarily pushed out. Is that
ok?

I'm in my early 40s, and think that the probability that my current dev job is
the last one I'll have is around 75%. I'm ok with that - I write code how I
want, I don't work more than I want, my retirement account already has enough
money in it, my kids have fully-funded college accounts, etc. I've been doing
various side-gigs for years and am thinking that I'll just continue doing that
forever, making low 5-figures money, plus the required IRS minimum
disbursement.

Does this sound like the kind of life you want?

~~~
snypox
This sounds nice. Since university is cost free where I live here I think I’ll
want to earn enough to be able to buy (or at least help buy) apartment(s) for
my future children.

------
3jckd
No, if you work in a software house; or I'd say, you have extremely low chance
there and anyone who made it, was an outlier.

Yes, if you work in a company that does some RnD and you have actual domain
knowledge and expertise as opposed to being a generic, even if experienced,
but nevertheless generic developer. I have many colleagues well into their 50s
and some even 60s that work at Intel, NVIDIA, Ericsson etc.. They are not a
rare sight over there.

------
acomjean
While at raytheon (my last job where people retired out of), many people
stayed coding till retirement. At the university I'm at now, the IT department
had many working till retirement.

Raytheon is not 'normal' company. And it gets risky when there are layoffs,
but even those I know who got let go during a couple rounds of layoffs were
able to find other work. I'd honestly rather code then manage people.

------
tchaffee
I went back to coding after going into IT management, then teaching English in
a foreign country, being an IT architect with loads of responsibility at a
company with massive IT infrastructure, owning my own web agency, and finally
being CTO at a few companies. I had zero problem finding work again and I
intend on retiring within the decade. With that said, there is ageism. It
wouldn't hurt to do what my friend did: he took advantage of high programmer
salaries and retired at 45. You can always work more after that if you want
and you should be able to make it another 15 years without encountering too
much ageism. Can I say I have zero regrets about moving out of management and
back into programming? I cannot. I enjoy both but for the past few years I've
been having a blast coding so that's where I stay unless that changes. If you
don't enjoy management, it should be a far easier decision. Just don't count
on working until 65. Lots have. But it's definitely far from guaranteed.

------
codewritinfool
Yes. I wrote my first code for hire at age 14, started professionally at age
22, and I'm 53 now.

Still innovating and contributing as a technical guy. I've made it clear I'm
not interested in management.

------
beardyw
My story: My very first job was as COBOL programmer aged 20. I was made team
leader after a couple of years and found it was a great job for me. You are
hands on but you get to be involved in more stuff. I stayed in that sort of
role for pretty much the rest of my career, sometimes with a team, sometimes
on a team. Out of 43 years I spent about 7 years in the middle away from
coding in management and sales. They were not my happiest time but I got paid
well and I am sitting in a house it helped buy. Make of that what you like.

My problem when in my 50s was putting up with how ridiculous some of the
people I worked with seemed to be. Shoehorning in the latest (now obsolete)
technology where it did not benefit the end result was common. In the end I
settled into being a Java full stack contractor, remote from internal
discussions, just getting on with doing a good job. I retired myself from that
at 63.

------
brentis
Great topic. The cognitive load of full stack development at > 45 to me seems
unbearable. I love building products, but after doing the basics for the
1000th time gets old. I would imagine the appreciable parallel being similar
to a backend dev having to do UI work.

At my age I no longer want to look at a monitor any more and want to think and
have others build products, so went i to product.

The pay question is interesting too. You need to work to have a couple million
in bank by 45 and the investments give you a lot of flexibility in not chasing
senior mgmt. Also stay healthy, employed, and dont get a divorce (1/2).

~~~
Thorentis
How on earth do you get a couple million in the bank by 45?

~~~
sebajuarez
how do you get to not divorce? :)

~~~
jacobtoronto
One spouse cannot control the decisions of the other. If one spouse is bound
and determined to leave the marriage, then I'm not sure there's much that can
be done. However, I know from experience that as long as both are willing to
try to save the marriage, there is hope, even with disagreements that seem
painful and impossible. Counseling can help. Maintaining a positive vision of
the future -- hope -- is motivating and can change one's perspective on the
spouse. I don't mean to diminish your concern -- I acknowledge it: marriage is
not easy! But I also believe there is a way to stay together in many
instances, and that doing so is worth the risk and the sacrifice.

------
tunesmith
I thought I could continue being an independent contractor/consultant that was
a senior voice for architectural decisions while also being team enhancement,
and that worked really well for years, up until I reached a certain level of
technical seniority, and then it just got kind of weird.

It was partly that I didn't want to advance my business into larger and larger
projects that would have required me to either travel a bunch or hire coders
under me, because I found the pocket I liked - a remote contractor/consultant
that architects and delivers. And it partly might have been the reality that
some of these technical skills are just becoming more commoditized.

But either way, for me it didn't really scale past a particular point. I ended
up having a metaphorical rolodex of past clients that were all interested in
hiring me as a hands-on-architect-level employee but wouldn't offer contracts,
and I eventually accepted an employment offer as my last contract dried up.

I started with php/java, and had previously spent significant energy learning
more functional/distributed-computing concepts and Scala/Akka, had a couple of
good contracts with them too, but those skills are withering a bit while my
current employer is paying me to bone up on React and Node of all things. At
least I can influence my team to adopt more FP concepts. I miss Akka.

So, I don't know. As you get older, you get more skilled and senior, but that
can top out (in terms of $$ benefit) long before retirement if you're not one
of the very rare superstars. And the benefits of being senior are not easily
measured and aren't really rewarded - for many hiring decisions, they're just
looking for a tech stack - who cares if you're twice as effective on average
if they can hire someone average for 80% of your salary? They don't have the
counterfactual, they'll never know, they think they saved money. And if you
look at entry-level salaries vs senior-level salaries, there's not a huge
spread there, not on average. I make maybe 2x-3x what entry level salaries are
now, and that's at the top of the salary band for senior level architects
where I'm at. And big companies will continue to look for ways to take chomps
out of the top end and tighten that range.

------
johnny_reilly
Put it this way: I intend to find out ;-)

------
joe202
I'm now old enough to retire if I wanted but intend to go on for another ~5y.
Worked at the first place for 26y (3/4 different employers, mostly takeovers).
When I got made redundant, I retrained as a teacher, which I stayed at for 5y.
Managed to find another dev. job which I've been at for 10y. Could go higher
and still be entirely technical but would be expected to mainly manage a few
levels up. Still have to learn new things and am happy to.

------
thirtythree
I'm interested in how you moved from architect back to engineer. That's the
path I want to take at the moment but I feel I've been out of the game too
long now.

------
katmatt
I studied computer science and got my first SW engineering job in 2001. After
3 years I became Head of Development/CTO of a small startup and still spent
70% of my working time with coding. After 3 years I stepped down and
afterwards had a few jobs with SW architect/lead engineer roles. I still code
a lot, but also mentor younger colleagues. I‘m now 46 years old and use
kubernetes, docker, TypeScript, AWS, GCP and nodejs every day. And my younger
colleagues see me as an inspiration, because my coding skills are still
amazing. And I help them on their Journey to become better SW engineers. I
challenge them and they challenge me.

And I was always curious and interested in new technologies, methodologies and
trends. And I think even outside of SW engineering it‘s becoming the new
normal to constantly learn and adapt to the ever changing job market.

So it‘s up to you and I don‘t believe the younger folks are better at learning
new tech. You just need a solid SW engineering background and need to invest
in keeping up to date.

------
ruffrey
I'm 34, mostly worked in R&D and startups, 10+ years as software dev. Last
company was founding CTO, and was grateful to tap a 57 year old former
coworker as first dev hire. He's still super sharp and has stayed up to date
with his skills. He wasn't always the fastest. But he made so many fewer bugs
and architecture mistakes that it didn't matter.

------
verdverm
My father recently retired after 40 years of staying a tech lead / dev and
repeatedly turning down other titles / roles.

Seems possible to me, it's very understandable to not want to climb the
corporate ladder, and I'd support any of my devs who feel the same as you.

------
formercoder
Depends on the company and your priorities. Do you want to maximize income?
Then make sure you work somewhere where ICs have a lot of advancement
potential built into the org. Also don’t think that this track avoids
politics, you still need to play the people game.

~~~
majormajor
> Depends on the company and your priorities. Do you want to maximize income?
> Then make sure you work somewhere where ICs have a lot of advancement
> potential built into the org. Also don’t think that this track avoids
> politics, you still need to play the people game.

This matches what I've seen. I'd add one thing to this, too: "working in a
technical role" at a lot of places actually _doesn 't_ involve a lot of hands-
on feature coding at higher levels, even if you aren't a manager. You're
planning the new stuff, you're doing R&D into new techs to see if the broader
org should adopt them, you're mentoring, you're mediating arguments between
other teams, you're talking to senior management and translating tech lingo
and providing early estimates, etc.

You aren't managing people, but it's a _very_ communication-heavy role.

If you don't do that, then yeah, I've seen people stay as just a "senior dev"
level coder, but there's less salary advancement at that role.

------
rwbhn
57 and been writing software almost my entire career. Brief foray into mgmt,
15 years ago. Saw the error of my ways and went back to straight dev work. See
no reason that will change.

So, yes. Just make sure companies you work for have a strong technical career
track.

------
filmgirlcw
I'm your age so I don’t have any direct experience — but I often waffle
between whether I want to be an IC or do more management myself, so I
understand your concerns. I’ve run across a number of ICs who have been at my
BigCo company for many, many years who all seem to be very happy where they're
at and what they are doing, so it’s definitely possible.

I think the challenge - and this isn’t unique to engineering — is how you
define/value your career progression and growth opportunities. At my company,
there are a small number of ICs that can have the impact/get the same pay as a
CVP or EVP, but the options are much more limited. And you know what, I think
that for many people, management or not, that’s OK. Many people I talk to are
happy to stay at the same level and do the same work for an extended period of
time.

I’m not like that. I’m highly ambitious and have an internal need to get to
the next stage/goal, and the truth is, that probably means I’ll need to assert
myself more to take on management — even tho I don’t enjoy the procedural
aspect of that — I love to mentor and I’m considered a leader on my team, but
I don’t currently have direct reports and honestly, I prefer that. I feel like
I can get more done when my time isn’t taken up with the administrative stuff.

For now, I still have a growth path that I can definitely continue for a few
more years. And if I’m honest, I don’t worry about being able to remain in
that sort of role for the rest of my career. For me, the bigger worry is when
that growth path dries up. When you’re high enough up the chain, most of
management really is delegation and decision making and setting the
tone/direction. The problem is that to get there you have to do middle
management, which is where most people get stuck.

Historically what I do when I feel like my growth options are expired are
switch teams/companies or even careers. I'm definitely open to that
continuing.

If the question is, “can I remain employed as an IC for another 30 years,”
then I think the answer is yes. If the question is, “will I have career
momentum over the next 30 years if I eschew management,” then I think the
answer is a lot more complicated. And again, a lot of people aren’t like me
and don’t have the same aspirations or needs.

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sebajuarez
I am 41 yo, I started working as a developer in BigCo´s when I was 20. I love
coding, but I made great progress on the management side, I ended up being the
CTO of a small startup.

Now I am back to only-coding, and I love it. I begun learning a lot of new
things and I will never stop putting some time on learning more about software
development.

Managing is hard, consumes a lot of energy. Maybe some time in the future I
will get back into managing, maybe the best solution would be a more
engineering role as mentioned in several comments here.

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dailygrind___
I have worked in finance for some years and have seen plenty of coders in
their 50s. As many said, it's not a path for everyone as you do need to keep
learning till you retire. I think that as remote work becomes more mainstream,
ageism will be less of an issue as you are hidden behind a screen most of the
time. People will learn more about who you are from your contributions rather
than your physical appearance. In this context, staying relevant is what
really matters.

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freewilly1040
Another comment mentioned survivorship bias, and in that spirit I would be
very interested to hear from people who wanted to stay on a technical route
but felt they had to leave it.

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mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
I retired at 51. It became very difficult in the later years, primarily
because of declining memory capacity. In software, you need to learn new
things all the time, about new technology, as well as information about your
local projects, which could be huge, some projects are millions of lines of
code and hundreds of services, you should remember all that. Only thanks to
timely Netflix investment, I was able to retire early and escape the
embarrassment.

------
quantified
Worked for a long time as a developer and architect (where architect still
codes, explores new tech, just thinks more about system issues). I won’t say
how many years but let’s just say “many”.

You don’t need to be promoted out of your interest zone or past your
competence level. I’d gently question the “everyone” in your stage, as there
are fewer jobs available at those higher rungs.

Only regret is that I didn’t find an opportunity that let me retire at 30. I
like making software and solving problems.

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rb808
I think its definitely possible, the problem is that after 10 years experience
you dont really get much better which caps your salary. My earnings peaked
when I was 35 and have gone sideways even shrunk since then. You also have to
keep learning - which is a bigger time sink than you think.

Looking back I'm happy but feel like going management route makes more sense
and I should have been braver. However there aren't so many management roles
either.

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psds2
I believe the best path forward for something like this is to become a
technologist in some specialty and then move in to advanced
engineering/technology exploration at a big company. Find the kind of place
with 7 CTOs and then get a role reporting to one of the CTOs managers. You
work on 3-5 year research projects and you can just decide ahead of time which
one will be your last.

------
crustycoder
36 years in and still learning new stuff and hacking.

------
1000100_1000101
Get a job at a place that values experience. Something safety critical. Until
about 2 years ago, our youngest team member was 40.

------
harikb
If you can picture yourself to be this guy, you have nothing to worry

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bvjb1H_j8D8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bvjb1H_j8D8)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=woCg2zaIVzQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=woCg2zaIVzQ)

------
jldugger
I mean, you can earn enough to retire in 10y, yes. But presumably you mean
'can I expect gainful employment for 30 years without a promotion into
management'.

Probably? There's a number of elder folks at work here in engineer roles, and
plenty of children in management roles. Seems fine?

------
chrisbennet
I went the direct consulting route. [1]

I get to work as a "coder" with a lot of autonomy and without having to do any
management type tasks. I attend very few meetings. I'm 0x3A years old and I
love still love coding.

[1] I work for the client directly, not for a job shop that hires me out.

------
mixmastamyk
It’s definitely possible, but you’ll find yourself swimming against
expectations more and more each year. Org culture and your own tolerance will
be the deciding factors.

Personally I had to take a govt contractor job recently as I’m unemployable at
lumbersexual shops.

------
weehack
I kind of envy you for being able to not get bored of essentially the same
grind over & over.

But then I think of the long days and nights you must still be having at least
occasionally and I would think that at some point, one could have a more
normal schedule.

------
dang
Here's an existence proof for you:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23366546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23366546)

Several actually, since there are others in the commments.

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mindfulgeek
My aunt was a coder her career and retired a few years ago. She lives
comfortably, travels and has plenty of retirement funds. I could never imagine
her a manager, and I never heard her ever say she'[d] choose another path.

edit: typo

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randallsquared
Yes, but you have to find the right positions. Where I currently work there
are manager and technical tracks for three or four employee levels (depending
on division) between leading a team and executive levels.

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triceratops
A high savings rate (>= 30% after taxes) will make it very feasible.

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purplezooey
Turning down management roles seems key, nobody wants to be middle management
but you're often ushered there by leadership then RIFd when things turn sour.
Seen it happen to a few.

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zerr
I've personally met a very few people who actually made such switch. The rest
(a vast majority), in their 40s and 50s are still hands-on devs.

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justinzollars
You make your own future. Doesn't matter what everyone else does, what the
norm is.

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sjg007
Yes.

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artsyca
The only way out of this industry is to eat a poisoned apple.

~~~
artsyca
In case you don't know what I'm talking about

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing)

