
Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50? - tomstuart
http://www.yosefk.com/blog/do-you-really-want-to-be-making-this-much-money-when-youre-50.html
======
kfcm
The author is a bit naive in his cheerleading, extrapolating his situation in
his location to a nation-wide situation. That is just simply not the case.

As a business-owner in my mid-40's, I travel around quite a bit. There are
locations where the employment picture is similar to what the author
describes. But what he describes is far from the norm in the places I travel
to, or from what I hear from friends and old coworkers during lunches. Ageism,
low-salaries, "sweatshop"-like/highly-political work environments, lack of
diversity in companies/economic sectors, lack of interesting problems to
solve. All are observations of mine, as well as old friends' concerns voiced
softly after looking over their shoulder during lunches over the past year or
two.

Very good IT people (programmers/developers, DBAs, infrastructure, the whole
gamut) wanting to leave their current job, but wondering where to go, because
their friends in other "just as bad" companies are looking too. Discovering
they can still get interviews--but maybe not the job--after age 35; and
discovering the difficulty in even getting interviews after age 40. Watching
their companies hire either H-1Bs for 40-50% of what they're paid, or college
interns (or even recent grads for intern salaries) for even less.

Yeah, people would like to be making this much money in technology when their
50. But in most places, it's a pipe-dream.

~~~
rayiner
The ageism I saw is why I decided I didn't want to be in software development
for the long term and left the field.

I personally think the mentality is stupid and probably quite inefficient. In
my field, law, they don't even let you into the courtroom until you're 5+
years in. Practicing law is an art and people with 20 years of experience are
just better at it than people starting out. I never understood why so many
people think software development is any different. Companies don't lay off
their lawyers and hire fresh graduates when some new major new law goes into
effect, so why do people lay off their software developers and hire fresh
graduates when some major new technology becomes popular?

~~~
nathan_long
I wouldn't argue for ageism, but I would say programming is different from law
because technology changes much faster than law. There aren't giant paradigm
shifts in law every 10 years.

A new technology may in fact be much more productive to work with than an old
one. Does someone with COBOL experience have an advantage or a disadvantage in
learning Python vs someone who is just starting? Which is larger, the amount
of useful knowledge they bring along, or the amount they have to discard?

There are sage old programmers that I look up to. But there are also a lot who
just burned out and quit, tired of the new technology treadmill. I'm not sure
which I'll become.

~~~
rayiner
The volume of small, incremental, changes in law is higher. Let me put it this
way. The Dodd-Frank regulations that have come out so far in the last two
years is probably the same number of pages, printed 50 lines per page, as the
C++ source for Oracle's Hotspot JVM. And it's only 30% done. And there is no
ChangeLog.

The pace of paradigm shifts is indeed much faster in technology, but I
disagree there are major paradigm shifts in technology every 10 years. There
are major developments within specific scientific domains like AI, image
recognition, etc, but in software engineering itself there is little new under
the sun. There is nothing in Javascript that wasn't done better in Smalltalk
30 years ago. CoffeeScript, C#, Lua, Ruby, etc? Derivative stuff that any
Lisp-er plucked out of 1985 could pick up in a week or two.

~~~
mitjak
I feel like a lot of what you're talking about is applicable to languages and
technologies in general. Advantageous technological knowledge seems to be more
about frameworks and domain-specific experience more than anything else;
something that a Lisp-er from the 1980's will have quite a steep learning
curve ahead for.

Not disagreeing with your point. Just pointing out something that has been
bothering me a bit about the fragmented platform market.

------
padobson
Money is about being good at something. I know of lawyers that barely scrape
by on insurance law suits because all they know how to do is prey on the fear
and pain of injured people. Such lawyers have to buy $500 suits and drive BMWs
and belong to country clubs to stay presentable, and thus have to scrape by on
80-100k a year.

Similarly, I know carpenters and plumbers who will get the job done - and make
a lot more than the aforementioned lawyers. These pros can demand hourly rates
of anywhere from $60-$80, but more often will make $250-$500/hr by quoting a
job price and doing it quickly. And it's no problem for them to drive to all
their appointments in their 1997 Ford E series wearing flannel and jeans.

I could also introduce you to janitors that make six figures a year because
they know how to penetrate insurance bureaucracies and get black mold cleanup
jobs.

If money is your aim, pick a job out of a hat and be excellent at it - and not
just the actual execution, but the promotion, estimation, and pricing of your
talent too. If you can get into the 25th percentile of solving problems in
your expertise, you'll be well compensated for it no matter what it is.

~~~
bjourne
Hogwash. For every skilled craftsman you can find, I can find ten other idiots
making ten times as much money thanks to being born in the right family.
Skilled developers recognize that rockstar developers can be ten times as
productive as average ones. I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten
times the average salary or even double the average.

Stock brokers are regularly getting beaten by monkeys when it comes to betting
on the stock market, yet they are among the top earners in society. It's just
insane to suggest that salaries are fair or that skill is in any way
correlated to income.

Unless you believe that making lots of money proves that you are good at what
you are doing, which makes the whole argument a tautology.

Edit: Also, the best work I've done is all open source. It isn't all very good
stuff (far from it!), but it certainly is both more valuable and better than
the corporate code I write for a living. Then there is <http://www.ohloh.net/>
that tries to estimate the labour costs of various open source projects.
People have plowed thousands of hours of unpaid work into some of the highest
regarded software projects on earth just for fun. They will never get properly
compensated for their work. "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his work." is the famous slogan of Socialism, but it certainly
isn't how the world currently operates.

~~~
rayiner
To be fair, compensation in banking is very related to performance. Investment
bankers get paid on the size of their deals, traders get paid based on how
much they make, money managers get paid based on how much they bring in. The
majority of people get pushed out within a few years if they aren't top
performers.

The key thing to realize is that value to the customer isn't part of the
performance equation. It doesn't matter if a hedge fund manager is beating the
market. His performance involves how many people he brings in the door willing
to pay the fund's management fees. That's the metric he's judged on.

Which brings me to your point--it's not that pay isn't correlated with skill.
It's that the skill it's universally correlated with is salesmanship.

~~~
dhugiaskmak

        compensation in banking is very related to performance
    

The last four or five are conclusive proof that this is not even remotely
true.

~~~
rayiner
Those bankers that helped caused the collapse were making money hand over
first for their companies, and even with the reduced profitability during the
recession the banks came out way ahead.

------
tatsuke95
> _"The fact is that your material well-being is rarely in jeopardy because of
> a missed deadline, so your reaction is fully up to you._ "

Much of what the author says is true, currently. This is a fantastic market
for programmers, and anyone being born into this era is lucky.

But the forces of supply and demand will sort this market out in the future,
to which the author seems ignorant. Name another profession that requires
"Little or no education", and "no physical effort" (not to mention the ease of
globalizing coding) that has sustained the kind of market pressure where
agents are required to fend off recruiters, or kids right out of school can
demand six figure salaries and four weeks of holidays right off the bat.

America (and the world) will churn out programmers until being a programmer is
a marginal decision, equal among many occupations. It will lose its luster; it
has already happened to lawyers. So planning on having a blase attitude
towards deadlines and stress-free work in this field at 50 (assuming you're
~30 now) is a tad naive. I believe this will be an _extremely_ competitive
field in 20 years.

~~~
_yosefk
Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? The demand has been strong for
a decade and a half; it seems like a lot of time.

(I'm not sure I have an explanation myself, really; perhaps it's something
innate in people and perhaps it's something about education, but the fact
remains that the world still hasn't churned out enough programmers even though
the incentives have been there for a long time. One possible explanation is
that much of the software implements bureaucratic processes and there's always
more demand for this sort of processes - so demand will outstrip supply no
matter what happens at the supply side.)

~~~
plinkplonk
"Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? "

Visas.

Most programming work (of the type talked about in the OP) originates in the
USA, and most companies, even startups, need employees to come in the door
everyday. (not taking on the question of whether this is ideal or not, that is
the just the way it is, right now) .

Imagine (as a thought experiment) a scenario where a smart kid who lives in
India or Ukraine or Africa is just able to get on a plane and land in SF for
an interview or a job irrespective of whether he has the right degree,
paperwork etc and without jumping through hoops at the consulate and rolling
the dice.

The (edit: thanks @daladd for correction) supply would go way up and hence
average salary would go down (which is why large companies are trying for more
H1 Bs - they like easier availability of devs and lower salaries)

Or imagine the border with Mexico being completely officially open. See what
happens to the dishwasher/fruit picker payment structure.

~~~
pyre

      > The demand (and hence average salary) in SF for
      > programmers would go way down
    

Wouldn't this be detrimental to the SF area, considering as the high cost of
living? I realize that cost of living will probably lower to meet what people
can afford, but not without growing (or shrinking) pains, I imagine.

~~~
hindsightbias
Detrimental for whom?

The changes to the cost of living are primarily a function of the now
thousands of google and apple commuters. Not that that is stopping them from
complaining when they wonder why moving up to a 2BR costs $4k/month now.

~~~
pyre
The growing pains associated with pay not meeting (or barely meeting) the cost
of living.

------
dmethvin
I'm one of those guys programming in my 50s. Technically my jobs involve
project management and consulting as well but I still love programming the
most.

Saying that programming "requires little or no education" is from the
perspective of either a naturally smart person or the Dunning–Kruger effect.
Like any profession, there are some self-motivated people who can do the job
effectively without formal education. Yet it saves time to have everyone on
the same page with knowledge of basic algorithms, terminology, and problem-
solving methods.

If money is your motivator for programming in your 20s, the odds are that you
will find some other way to make more money and not last until you're 50. At
least I hope so.

~~~
cynicalkane
One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective.
Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software
engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it.

~~~
colinb
I think one of the problems with software engineering is that [almost] no one
knows anything about it.

I've been a working programmer [or software engineer if I've just met you at a
party and I think you're cute] for long enough to work on >5 multi-billion
dollar projects. Of these, one was delivered on time and according to spec.
That company went down the toilet within four years.

I've read fairly widely in the software engineering literature starting with
Weinberg and Brooks in university, and chasing my share of papers, 'blogs and
web pages since then. One of the most positive things that has happened to the
field is the recent discovery that the only thing at the end of the
methodology rainbow would appear to be consultants [wearing suits with slits
for the dorsal fins [h.t. Mr Stross]] and stacks of unread Learn Florble-
Oriented Development in 21 days.

I know I can build complex systems. I know I can sometimes build simple
systems [much much harder.] I don't know how to reliably schedule a project to
build a new thing. I think anyone who thinks they do know this is delusional
or lying.

And in the end, I think it probably doesn't matter. The truth of the software
engineering crisis, is that it never existed. And it's possible that software
engineering never existed either. We program. We do it because we like it and
it pays. The folks who do it only because it pays usually end up in management
fucking things up by assuming they can motivate people always and only with
money.

[oh, on a tangent I've also been a manager. I wasn't all that good at it. The
team I managed delivered good stuff, some of it on schedule, but the company
still went belly-up. And I learned that I don't enjoy management, and would
rather have less money and more fun - take from that what you will]

~~~
skrebbel
A multi-billion dollar project.

I can't really imagine that. Are those ever executed by a single company all
on its own? Are they software-only? Do they exist outside NASA?

~~~
EwanG
I think timescale may be applicable here. Some key programs for large
companies will spend several million a year for several years - particularly
if you are taking your Mainframe applications and trying to restructure them
to have more easily changed business rules and a new infrastructure.

That said, I also suspect he may have been exaggerating for effect :-)

~~~
teach
I have a friend who works for Northrop Grumman, and he just completed a $500
million project he described as "relatively small".

------
calinet6
"Programmers who can program at all - as in, print out a binary tree
correctly"

Strikingly succinct and useful benchmark, just sort of thrown in there like it
was jam on toast.

There are some tidbits of wisdom in this article, but overall it boils down to
a life that has lost all meaning and passion and has succumbed to the lowest
common denominator: money. True, maybe, but sad, really.

~~~
dpark
Many people spend years or decades moving from job to job and from career to
career looking for happiness. Most of them don't find it until they learn that
your job just isn't what makes you happy. "Do something you love" is a myth.

Jobs are jobs because they involve a lot of crap people don't want to do. No
one's going to find personal meaning by writing specs, or by cutting a
beautiful design down to an ugly minimum to fit into time constraints, or by
maintaining some poorly-written internal tool. But these are all things
programmers will do, at some of the best jobs in the industry. Every job has a
large chunk of "this sucks" work. If it's kept to a minimum, you're doing far
better than most people.

~~~
Karunamon
>"Do something you love" is a myth.

As someone who is currently working his dream job, this statement couldn't be
further from the truth.

~~~
dpark
A dream job is still a _job_. There are still parts that are tedious, and
frustrating (if you're not encountering anything frustrating, you're not doing
anything important), and annoying. That's why they pay you. And that's why "do
what you love" is a myth. You can't always do what you love. Sometimes you
have to do things you do not love, and just be happy that part of the time you
get to do what you enjoy.

Far too many people chase a "dream job" not understanding that every job will
have parts they simply will not love. And instead of accepting that this is
reality, they fixate on the problems and fall prey to "the grass is greener"
thinking. I'm sure Elon Musk loves his job (indeed he has many people's "dream
job"), but I bet 90% of it is tedious bullshit.

~~~
georgemcbay
Your argument is so weird to me. Not because I think you're wrong about every
job having a bunch of tasks that are tedious and annoying, but because the
same thing is true of every single thing we do in life. Jobs aren't unique in
this manner, the same thing is true of any creative hobby, relationships, etc.

"Far too many people chase a "dream job" not understanding that every job will
have parts they simply will not love."

I don't think that is true, I think most people realize any jobs just like
anything at all in life, won't be 100% fun stuff. It is just such an obvious
common sense thing that they don't bother talking about it.

~~~
dpark
> _I don't think that is true, I think most people realize any jobs just like
> anything at all in life, won't be 100% fun stuff. It is just such an obvious
> common sense thing that they don't bother talking about it._

I disagree. People who are _happy_ with their jobs realize this. People who
switch aimlessly between jobs and careers definitely do _not_ seem to realize
it. They get fed up with dealing with people, or a crappy co-worker, or
whatever else they don't like about their current job and leave, assuming that
somewhere is a job that doesn't have to deal shitty thing "X", not admitting
that most jobs will have shitty thing "X", and the ones that don't will have
shitty thing "Y" instead.

On top of this, we get sentiments like the one from calinet6, telling people
that if they simply accept that they need to work for a living, then their
lives must sad. "Oh, you work as a programmer for money; how sad for you."
Yes, how sad that someone can make a good living in a good industry.

How sad instead that so many people look for their life's meaning at work and
never find it.

------
niels
I'm a software developer (MS Comp. Sci.) in my late thirties. I've always had
the impression that software development was really well paid. But lately many
of my friends (doctors, lawyers, MBAs) has started to make way more than I can
get as a regular employee. And for the doctors it's all part of their standard
salaries. They don't need to demonstrate any particular high level of
competence. And from here on their salary will increase until retirement,
while I expect mine to flatten or decrease. I love programming and didn't
choose it for the money, but my view on software as a high paying job has
changed. Of course everything is relative.

~~~
creamyhorror
This is interesting. I've heard mentions of very large numbers for bankers,
lawyers, doctors as they move up the career ladder, but normally involving
starting their own businesses or being made partner. Do they really outearn
developers significantly, even as employees? Maybe I should've stuck to trying
to get into finance...although once the entrepreneurship bug bites, it isn't
quite so easy.

I'm in a country where the wage difference between the protected professions
and the rest is pretty large, and programmers are pretty much commodity
employees with little advancement opportunities. The only way to break out
seems to be entrepreneurship, but the local market isn't big enough to support
big or even medium exits. I guess that's why so many people try to get into
medical and law school or into i-banks.

------
VexXtreme
I agree with many of the things written in the original post. But I definitely
disagree with the notion that the barrier to entry in this profession is low
and that any Joe Sixpack can start programming for a living because it's
supposedly easy.

I can vividly remember my days in back in college where a lot of fellow
students in my CS classes had substantial problems writing even the simplest
of programs and understanding basic statements and data structures. A lot of
them couldn't even write simple programs which would take user input, do
something with it and give some output, let alone come up with more
complicated solutions and architectures for real world problems.

This field is not for everyone and I believe that is often not obvious to many
of us because we take our ability to turn mental constructs into code for
granted. A lot of people just don't have the mental facilities to do it. I'm
not saying this to sound elitist, but it's the way it is.

~~~
akurilin
I think it's getting progressively easier. I think that back in the day before
the Internet, perhaps in the mainframe days, you had to be a true wizard and
know your domain extremely well to make anything happen. Think K&R kind of
attitude and skill level.

Nowadays anybody with sufficiently good Googling skills can put something
together by stitching pieces of Stack Overflow code. You don't need a
specialist to make it happen, just about anybody will do. Perhaps you
shouldn't leave mission-critical aspects of development to those people, but
you can get away with most of the other work.

Was it Mark Suster who said that most companies out there do not fail because
of bad technology?

------
unsigner
To the pedant brigade: ease up. It's "little to now education" compared to
medicine or law, where you have to toil in years in a very rigid pipeline of
exams, internships and certifications. There's plenty of _learning_ in
programming, but you can do with little _education_.

------
kennethologist
Best quote I've read/heard all month "...but passion burns out, whereas greed
is sustainable." I identified with the author and it's one of the major
reasons I didn't pursue other career paths even though I could have (Lawyer,
Doctor etc.) Thanks for this article.

~~~
raganwald
I came here to say that this is the _most misleading_ quote I've read
recently. If you're avaricious, of course you think that passion burns out,
because _your passion is for money_. All of your other interests have been
fleeting fancies, but you mistook them for "passions."

At the risk of introducing a Scotsman to the discussion, I suggest that
passion is the only sustainable thing. If you sustain an interest in money for
your whole life but not an interest in programming, or art, or writing, or
Ultimate Frisbee, those other things aren't passions, they're interests or
hobbies.

Greed is pretty much the definition of a passion for money. If you identify
with this quote, I suggest that you modify it slightly to read, "For the
greedy, a passion for making money is the only sustainable thing, all other
interests burn out."

------
ChuckMcM
I think this is a bit cynical (and dangerous) but agree with the premise that
currently the number of programming opportunities continues to exceed the
number of programmers. However there are signs that this is changing.

I do know a programmer who became an IP attorney (doing well at it too) and a
couple of programmers who have gone off to do entirely different things (one
is a guide in Africa, another drives a tugboat around Puget Sound for fun and
profit). I also know some who are not working at their first choice of job,
rather they are working at jobs they would not have taken if they had a
choice.

It is this last bit that suggests we are at the beginning of the end for the
programming shortage.

NB: I think it is hilarious that the first comment is from a user named Bogdan
but I suspect that is just me.

~~~
pfedor
_However there are signs that this is changing._

I've been hearing this for fifteen years now, which is about as long as I've
been paying attention. For the first five years I was maybe even a little
concerned. (In the nineties programmers were going to become obsolete because
OOP worked and all code was about to become highly reusable so there wouldn't
be any need to write new code. Yes, people were saying this in earnest.)

~~~
ChuckMcM
I hear you, I don't think the change is being wrought by any magic bullet
where programs write themselves, what I'm seeing is that more folks are going
into programming than durable programming jobs are being created. (I use the
word durable because there are lots of short term requirements.)

So this is how I look at the health of the market:

1) Does any programmer have their choice of jobs? (which is to say bargaining
power when changing jobs)

2) What is the median unemployment time for programmers?

3) How are the first two mediated by contract vs full time work?

4) What are the median salaries?

What I've been seeing since the more recent depression is that unemployment
median is staying fairly low but that is being achieved by an increase in the
number of folks doing contracting work. Full time work (and that includes
health benefits which become significantly more expensive for the 'over 50'
programmer as a contractor) is getting harder to find.

As with most markets it is more clear on the 'mediocre' programmers (where
mediocre is a function of code productivity) Another thing I'm seeing is
salary erosion, which is to say that engineers taking lower salaries at large
companies to stay employed. That also indicates a switch in the 'bargaining
power' of companies looking for programmers vs the available programmers.

The sequence I've seen a number of times now with acquaintances are flat to
negative salary growth when leaving one job and moving to the next. Some folks
spent a year or two consulting looking for that position that would be a net
gain on their salary growth.

From an economist's point of view if prices are flat to trending down it
signals a shift in power from the seller to the buyer.

Those are the signs I'm seeing, would love to hear other's experiences on
whether or not they think the market is saturating or not.

------
bjansn
I've seen all kind of different programmers. The ones that are not in it for
the money and the ones that hate their job but won't switch because it has a
good pay. It reminded me of this animated movie about 'what motivates us'
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc> The essence: don't underpay and
don't overpay.

More and more programmers are looking for good company cultures with a good
(but not highest pay). Money will make your life easier but won't make you
happy.

~~~
TeeWEE
Hooray. That is exactly what drives me too. The culture, the people, the
actual work is more important.

Working for a huge amount of money in a corporate machinery is a brain killer.

~~~
bjansn
Yes! But make enough money so you don't have to worry leaving the lifestyle
you'd want.

------
anovikov
I know a programmer who became a lawyer (in Netherlands). It lifted his hourly
rate 10x (50->500 EUR/hour), and while not all time is paid, and he isn't
working full time having a lot of time to spare, he's getting like 2x than
before.

~~~
_yosefk
That's rather nice indeed; I think the mean earnings for lawyers aren't that
high and there's quite a lot of variance, not?

(Unfortunately, this is a theoretical discussion for me, since I'd make a
lousy lawyer.)

~~~
pfedor
The starting salary distribution for a lawyer is an interesting graph:
<http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib>

Basically, after graduating from a law school you either get hired by a good
law firm or not. In the former case, which happens to some 20% of graduates,
your starting salary will be $160k. In the latter case your salary will be
dictated by an unexciting distribution with the peak around $50k.

------
lutusp
Just a few comments on a well-written article that makes some good points:

> No health or legal risks

On the contrary -- the health risk arises primarily because of the sedentary
lifestyle. It's hard to imagine anything so hard on one's health and longevity
prospects as sitting and typing all day.

As to legal risks, they're certainly on the upswing, as people who can't
program try to steal the work of those who can, and as people try to take
generic methods, known to all, and turn them into private property.

Apart from those quibbles, a nice article.

~~~
_yosefk
I think programming and exercising is healthier than, say, moving.

As to legal risks - it's not the programmer who's facing them, it's his
employer (which is the same thing for the self-employed programmers, but
they're few). A programmer will not be personally sued for any sort of "IP
infringement".

~~~
lutusp
> As to legal risks - it's not the programmer who's facing them, it's his
> employer

I didn't consider this angle, because I've always been my own boss. I've never
written programs for anyone else, which means I took home the money, not the
grief.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lutus>

But as time passes, I see more and more cases where someone tries to patent
something that should never be patented, which might eventually prevent people
from writing programs at all.

------
gardarh
It's posts like these that get me as a programmer worried. Arrogance tends to
lead to bad things and the world can change at a pace greater than one can
imagine (a good way for me to understand how swiftly things change is to ask
myself: Could I have foreseen x years ago what I am be doing today? for me,
using the relatively low value of x=5 the answer is a definitive no. And I
think that's a good thing).

Be humble if people are willing to pay you more money than others for what you
do - it might change incredibly fast. The more generic assumption of the post
is that people are willing to pay good money for skills that are relatively
rare... well, make sure to keep your skill set up to date.

~~~
_yosefk
Don't get me wrong - I'm rather paranoid, and I'm not sure at all that this
will last. All I'm saying is, the alternatives I know about aren't necessarily
better, and if one talks about quitting the field because it's not enjoyable
(without mentioning money), then my question - from an angle not unlike yours,
I think - my question is, so what's your alternative way to make money.

------
DennisP
Also, in what other job can you build your own little slaves to do some of
your work for you? You don't even have to tell anyone.

~~~
Evbn
Farming :-)

~~~
randomdata
Farming is undergoing a similar talent crunch right now. If you are in the
right parts of the world and have a little skill behind your name, you can
easily make $50/hr as a farmhand.

Food and tech is where investors are piling all their money right now. As both
a software developer and farmer, I do fear what will happen when investments
start going elsewhere.

~~~
veb
I don't know what to make of this. In New Zealand, a farm hand will probably
earn a bit more than someone working at McDonalds, and they'll work a lot more
too.

~~~
randomdata
I cannot speak to the economics of New Zealand specifically, but there is a
huge difference between a skilled farmhand and a farmhand. I referred to the
former in my earlier post.

A skilled farmhand is someone who has, well, skills. They probably have a
commercial drivers licence, background in mechanical work or dealing with
animals, and have spent a lot of time operating heavy equipment. Those kind of
people are rare, but can be paid well when you find them.

Someone without skills on the farm will probably be paid as you describe no
matter where the location.

------
pirateking
I am grateful that I am able to make a lot of money doing something that is
fun for me anyways, programming computers. However, a fool and his gold are
soon parted. There are some programs best left unwritten, for any amount of
money. And some programs worth no money, yet most valuable.

The freedom from work as we know it, is the dream that technology is meant to
bring... to _everyone_. When I am 50, I hope that how much money I am making
will be largely irrelevant due to advances in technology and society.

------
hyko
>" _No health (...) risks_ "

I'd like to see some research to back up this claim, but I'm not aware of any
studies into occupational health for programmers. Does anyone know of any?

~~~
usaar333
Can't think of any offhand, but I anecdotally, tendonitis is a huge risk for
programmers.

While you can't claim "no health risks", they are pretty low as far as jobs
are concerned.

------
koide
If what's described is true:

a) Tons of money to be made b) Tons of unmet demand

Why the outsourcing market isn't growing as much as it should? There are
plenty of places with more than capable programmers which are usually paid in
peanuts not only when compared with SV, but when compared to people in the
same country.

That smells like a niche waiting to be disrupted. He who solves the trust and
quality perception and control issues, will become very rich.

~~~
mtrimpe
The problem with outsourcing is not 'quality perception,' it's the actual
quality.

The good programmers around the world command good salaries, whether out-
sourced or not.

In the end it doesn't matter whether you're in India or the the US; there are
just not that many great programmers around.

~~~
koide
That's why I said quality perception _and control_. This is, making sure you
are producing what's needed.

As to the rest, I'm baffled. How can you even think it doesn't matter where
you are?

Different cultures value differently different jobs. For example, I know of
places where programmers are not valued much and it doesn't matter how good
you are, you'll not earn more than a corporate salesman.

Maybe it doesn't matter for the top 0.5% who end up going to work for Google
or Facebook anyway. But there are lots of jobs for merely above average
programmers, which are very well compensated in the US, but not at all well
elsewhere.

~~~
veemjeem
disrupting culture sounds hard. Software isn't a field students in china work
towards because there just isn't as many jobs there as other fields. The pay
is fairly mediocre so top students from universities aren't exactly dying to
get into that field. It may take at least a generation or two to convince the
masses that software engineering is just a good of a job as chemical
engineering.

~~~
koide
The point is you don't need to disrupt that culture. That culture is in fact
what would permit the idea to work. There are badly paid good programmers
already in China and elsewhere.

If you can manage to produce quality work and convince people to hire you
consistently (big if, I know) in the high paying market, you can leverage the
existing programming population oferring wages a lot higher.

------
henrik_w
One of the biggest reason there aren't that many 50-year-old programmers is
that a lot of programmers move to other roles in the same company, like line
manager, project manager, product manager or various sales roles.

~~~
sturadnidge
Agreed - the emergence of career progression (ie monetary progression) based
on technical qualities rather than managerial ones is only a fairly recent
phenomenon... at least, in all the companies I have worked for (large
enterprise).

It's not surprising many former programmers of that vintage are in the
managerial ranks now. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I'm not sure.

~~~
henrik_w
I think it's mostly a good thing. Having worked yourself as a programmer makes
you a better manager of programmers in my experience.

------
TeeWEE
If you're into programmer and not in it for the passion there is a high chance
that you're a mediocre programmer.

But indeed that doesnt matter. Because the demand is high.

But for me, this is what drives me: working with an excellent team on a
product/service that is heavily used and comes with technical challenges.

If managers, business and bad programmers interfere with this, i'd rather stop
and get a decent job.

The money is not the main driver.

~~~
readme
Judging by OP's blog, I'd say he's passionate. Look at his other articles.

He says he's "in it for the money" because he's honest. No one working to earn
a living is _not_ in it for the money, and if they tell you otherwise they're
delusional. I think the measure should be "Would you still program if this
wasn't your job?" and if the answer is yes, then the passion is there.

I really hate it when people decry the importance of money, because money is
basically our unit of human sustenance. It is what we trade for food, shelter,
and clothing.

~~~
TeeWEE
Off course everybody needs money to survive. But when choosing a profession,
some people choose to be an attorney because they can get a big salery.

However I choose computer science because of the passion. I also had a passion
for making music. But the passion and the money are the drivers. But the
_main_ driver is not the money.

~~~
veemjeem
I guess that could still depend -- suppose the individual in question made
lots of money by selling a software product, and develops a passion for it due
to the payout. Does it matter if he was initially passionate, or only after
making the money?

A friend of mine hated piano as a child, only after many forced hours of
practice (from his tiger mom) he became really good and started to win state
championships for his ability. After a few more years, he developed a passion
for it and played piano for fun. He never liked piano to begin with, but when
he became good at it, he developed that passion.

So I'd argue that a bad programmer, after making some decent money, can become
passionate at it when the initial driver started as money.

~~~
strengthftw
Do you by chance read Cal Newport's blog? or have read his recent book "So
Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You
Love"

~~~
veemjeem
nope, did he form the same opinion as mine?

~~~
strengthftw
yup

------
krzyk
"Little or no required education" really? Sitting at the cashier requires
little or no education, but doing programming requires much more education
(either on your own or someone has to teach you). From my perspective a lot
people I know aren't capable of programming just as they are unable to solve
mathematical problems (and a lot of people can't even do basic math when
buying at grocery store).

Not to mention that here where I work you are tested for your knowledge and
problem solving skills - so although there is a high demand there are still
very few that are hired.

BTW. About 15 years ago I heard that it's not a good choice to go and study
computer science because there are a lot of others that do it and the market
will be saturated. And we know how it is saturated right now (it isn't). There
are more and more "places" where software wasn't needed before (e.g. cars,
TVs) and now it is required - demand for programmers increases.

------
kayoone
You dont necessarily need FORMAL education, but you have to learn alot to be a
good programmer. Its alot about training, experience and talent...

------
UK-AL
Basic Economics states that with a low barrier to entry and large salary means
it won't be for very long. Wish we would professionalise. In the UK now there
are software dev jobs being advertised for minimum wage.

~~~
ericb
I think the barrier to entry to be "good" is fairly high, it just isn't
artificial, like most barriers. There is no certification, money, or time
barrier artificially constraining supply.

You need persistence, logical (not magical) thinking, willingness to learn a
tremendous amount of material, and the ability to envision abstraction in
order to become a programmer. These skills co-occur in only a limited portion
of the population and of that, only a subset would be willing to live the
programmer lifestyle (indoor, bad for extroverts, sedentary, not so high-
status as being a Dr.)

------
xaxzaz
I've often times felt guilty that this is almost exactly the reason why I
program. I like programming but I also like the salary and benefits. I can
then use my 5-9 time to do all the other things I like: cooking, working-out,
hiking.

That said, I recently founded a startup, where the work is more stressful and
the pay is less and I'm hoping for it all to be worth it financially in a few
years. This is often not the traditional "Why I founded a company" story you
read about hear on HN, but I wonder how common (or misguided) it is.

~~~
aiurtourist
If financial independence is your only goal, you've stared a startup for the
wrong reason.

------
ivany
One reason I'm not confident that the supply problem will be solved anytime
soon:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/col...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/college-
has-been-oversold.html)

Given that college has been incredibly (over)promoted over the past 20 years
and that CS jobs have become more lucrative if anything, the conclusion I drew
from this is that there just aren't very many engineers on the margin.

------
OldSchool
Nice to hear such an optimistic viewpoint. I find some comfortable truths in
this essay, but he kind of glosses over some major things.

The moving targets that are the latest fads in languages (every six years a
new "generation" does the same old thing their way) and shifts in market
demand certainly create an environment requiring constant learning. Unless
you're in business for yourself and taking on more risk and stress, your
earnings will top out in the low six-figures so you have to value daily
comfort and health insurance over any grand ambition or ability to disappear
for months at a time. Outsourcing and immigrants willing to work longer hours
for less money are a constant macro threat to this comfort zone too.

To say that it requires almost no education isn't true. An engineering or
computer science degree surely makes it easier to get a job. Whether that
training makes a difference at work if you started coding at age 9 anyway is
debatable but a degree gets you recognition as a professional and shows that
you have deep cross-training in math and physics.

I do agree coding non-mission critical applications is pretty low stress and
for the most part you have a chance at a decent quality of life.

------
winter_blue
I have a suspicion (albeit a light one), that programming in itself will
become a commodity skill, like "good writing" (something you _have_ to know to
score well on the SAT/GRE).

It would become a necessary skill that simply everyone in a wide variety of
fields (doctors, accountants, etc) where programming is the slightest bit
helpful would have.

In such an age and era, will programmers get paid anything close to what they
get paid today?

~~~
geon
You seem to have "good writing". Could you write a novel, with a captivating,
nonobvious plot, interesting characters and a twist ending?

You probably can score ok in a math SAT. Can you visualize the mathematics of
a quaternion, or formulate the equation for an n-sided betzier patch?

The work a linguistic/novelist/journalist or a mathematican is not on the
highscool level. Neither is the work of a programmer.

I do believe basic programming should be taught, just like basic math and
writing skills. But that has absolutely nothing to do with proffessional
programming.

------
opminion
_passion burns out, whereas greed is sustainable_

This blog entry seems to have been written so that it can end up with this
sentence and not read cynical.

------
ixacto
Either the system is broken, or some people are just _gasp_ not motivated as
much by money. There are quite a few internships in programming (just check
out glassdoor) that pay about as much as a tenure-track professor, and these
days with all the shenanigans in academia I would be hesitant to make a
judgement on which will provide better job security...

So the economy rewards someone building facebook or groupon more than someone
with a PHD and multiple post-docs doing basic research, and while the
developers for said companies do add a tremendous amount of value, which is
reflected in their sallary -- IMO it is more likely that DARPA or a similar
government body is more likely to develop the next step in innovation. Siri
was originally a government project, that was then commercialized from CALO.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO> Same goes for the internet.

------
hakaaak
Good post. I've been doing this for many years now though and I've been burnt
out after maybe the first 4-5 on coding, but that is still what I do. It
really is about the money though. Early on I had the idea that I would become
an architect get all of the certifications (back when that meant something),
work my way up management and have a house at the beach, at the lake, and in
the mountains. Ha. Yeah, I should have known. Right now I'm hoping that
telecommuting becomes the norm. I love working from home, but I don't think I
could make what I'm making now as a contractor doing Rails development, which
is now primarily what I do. As long as I continue to be employed, I guess that
is the main thing. And I guess that is the point of the post.

------
j_jochem
This is a nice response to the other blog post. It is amazing how privileged
your life gets when you can do black magic with code that most people don't
even dream of ever being able to understand.

However, I disagree with this statement: "So I'm not planning to quit
programming, not because it's such a great source of joy by itself, but
because it looks so good compared to just about anything else."

Well, I wouldn't want to miss the high I get from being in the zone for four
hours straight either. I wonder if the author implies that programming is no
longer fun to him or if its just not the deciding factor. To me, the fun in
coding is really a big part of my overall happiness and so contributes a large
part of the decision to stay in the field.

~~~
_yosefk
It's a lot of fun, but not the deciding factor. I have a great gig now, but it
won't necessarily last, and I won't necessarily be able to get a similar job
(it's in hardware architecture and software tools and there are likely to be
less jobs in these things over time, though not necessarily). I'm not sure the
typical programming job is that much fun for me, but it's decent enough and
the question always is what you'd do if you decided to leave the field.

------
gogetter
I did not even get past the first 100 lines before I want to give this blog
post a score off the charts. We need more people programming, lots more, with
the honesty and humility of the author. Thank you for saying what you said.

yosefk.com +10000

------
ghostoffuture
Perhaps I can add my experience in this. I was very good at programming in
college. I was one of those guys that left the labs under the hatefull gaze of
the entire lab section having finished his assignment early. And boy I loved
it too. I was so happy having finished a large programming project or a large
engineering design assignment. After getting an interesting assignment I would
literally skip on the way back home daydreaming about how I will write it. I
was not at the best university, mostly because I was an immigrant so I was not
able to get good grades/sat scores, but it was a very decent state school.

But while in college I saw that most powerful people in america were lawyers
of some kind. These were the days of the Clintons, btw. Then I got into my
stupid head that perhaps I should go to law school. You know in order to join
the power elite and make a difference and all that.

By that time my english was very good, and being naturally intelligent (I will
not bore you with false modesty), I got into some of the very best law schools
in America. I chose one and did very well there and got jobs at some very
prestigous top law firms. Basically, for a while I had the promise of a career
that most lawyers would dream of.

But now this is all in shambles and I am thinking of getting back into
engineering or something more closely related to technology.

Oscar Wilde said something very wise (paraphrasing): "I used to have the life
of my dreams and I was happy; now I have the life of everybody else's dreams
and it is incredibly tiresome"

So my advice is if you are one of those natural programmers by all means do
it, and do not ever think about what other people say about "what would you be
doing when you are 50." Yosef (the author of this article) is one of those
people, and to him the answer is very simple and very happy: "programming".

You see this question of "can you see yourself as a programmer when you are
50" does not have much to do with ageism or the labor market but about
people's inner feelings and desires. Some people are horrified to see
themselves as programmers when they are 50, not because of the market but
because they secretly loathe it. And to see themselves doing it when they are
50 seems like a life sentence. For others, it is the most natural thing in the
world.

I remember when I was a lawyer I once had an especially good stretch. Some of
our top clients complimented my work. This is a big deal because those clients
spent crazy money on fees and it is very rare for anyone to complement a
lawyer's work. I thought to myself "wow keep going and you will be a partner
in no time". Then I thought about life as a lawyer, doing the same thing over
and over again, for the rest of my life and it was the most depressing thing
ever. It was horrifying and the thought about multi-million dollar salaries
did not help (although now in my much more perilous situation those salaries
sure seem nice). I got into a serious depression and that badly affected my
work thereafter.

So my advice is, if you are good at programming, if you are one of those few
for whom this stuff just clicks, go for it and do not listen what anyone says
about markets, or ageism etc. Note that those that are really good at
programming are very few. Even among programmers, I would say that those to
whom programming is annoying and a little scary greatly outnumber the ones
that have real talent for it.

So people will generally give you many reasons to move away from it, but those
are their reasons, not yours. If you are part of this select group just count
your blessings. And here are some of these blessings:

1\. You know how rare it is to have a passion and talent for something, and at
the same time have that something be valuable and useful. Think of all the
brilliant and passionate people that are into disciplines where only a few
thousand people in the world get a decent income. Think of all dancers,
screenwrights, directors, painters, poets, chess players, etc.

2\. You have a wonderful differentiator of skill and ability: things either
work or not. When I was a lawyer I had to compete with so many hacks. When I
would stay up nights writing complex documents, trying to phrase every single
word just the right way, when I would stress out for hours about a particular
phrasing or argument, they would slap something together quickly and with no
second thought. And their work would look like mine to the client. The
consequences of bad legal work are uncertain and tend to be much delayed.

3\. Your craft requires very little investment. Again, you have no idea how
lucky that is. Even startups that require capital, get it mostly for salaries.
There is no expensive equipment to purchase, etc. Marx thought so much about
how to connect workers to their means of production, and in the end came up
with a theory that turned out into a complete disaster and caused untold
tradegy. If he only knew that some day there would be a sub $500 means of
production that can create wealth worth millions he would not go into silly
plans about dictatorship of the proletariat.

There is more but I have rambled enough. Heed my advice. If you are one of the
lucky ones, ignore what the less lucky ones are saying and do not squander
your good fortune.

~~~
gruseom
This sort of intelligent reflection on personal experience makes for valuable
comments.

Particularly good: "You see this question of 'can you see yourself as a
programmer when you are 50' does not have much to do with ageism or the labor
market but about people's inner feelings and desires. Some people are
horrified to see themselves as programmers when they are 50, not because of
the market but because they secretly loathe it."

I hope you do get back into engineering, and write about it.

~~~
ghostoffuture
Thanks for the encouragement.

------
grecy
Why are all these posts talking about 50?

Retirement in Canada just got pushed to 67, and I think most people expect it
will go out to 69 before we actually get to retire (I'm 30 now).

All these titles should say " _Do you really want to be doing this at 66_ "

~~~
randomdata
Given the article, the additional income over of a programmer over the average
income earner should be, if saved carefully, enough money to cover the years
between 50 and 69 to retire, if you so desire.

------
clueless123
You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. Being good at the
job or the market demand or the right size of a company are small variables
against your ability to negotiate the rate you want.

------
MaggieL
If this fellow truly has no passion for his craft, I hope he can find the
energy to constantly update his skills when he's 50.

I started in FORTRAN in 1968. Today I'm working in Java and MongoDB and
studying Scala and Go.

~~~
eugenejen
If you have followed his blog posts for a long time. He is very crafty in all
low level programming that most of us are incapable of. And he also wrote his
reflection on C++ programming language in C++ Frequently Questioned Answers.

Also I like this post from him a lot. He just likes to say things more
frankly.

<http://www.yosefk.com/blog/work-on-unimportant-problems.html>

------
Tycho
Pretty much.

There's also tremendous scope for working from home, or from wherever you
want. I can imagine it getting to the stage where job ads for developers will
advertise perks like 'work from the beach!'

I'm not a full-time developer (though my work involves programming), but I
know what I want to be doing in my 30s, 40s... Not just because I like it but
because it gives you so much freedom in terms of lifestyle.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I've done programming, functional management and product management. Today,
I'm back to programming for exactly this reason. I work remotely, can take 20
minutes to run my kids somewhere or just to sit and listen to the latest
problem at school that day. Given how little time I have left with my kids as
kids (and how much I wasted chasing a "career"), this alone is worth as much
as my salary.

------
wtvanhest
Is anyone concerned that over the next 10+ years after many people realize how
lucrative the work is that supply will catch up with demand?

~~~
nostrademons
It's happening already - a lot of my liberal-arts friends are retraining as
programmers - but the thing is that it takes 10 years to develop expertise in
a skill. So the market for _good_ programmers will remain untouched for the
foreseeable future, and that should give the alert ones plenty of time to
skate to a different point in the value chain if market conditions start
changing.

------
shmerl
_> Give me a profession remotely close to programming in the following ways:
Little or no required education..._

 _> Programming is money for nothing._

This is not called programming. It's called monkey job. Programming requires
education (i.e. being a knowledgeable professional in computing, software
engineering and so on) and it's not money for nothing by any means.

~~~
akurilin
Agreed. You can do a lot in programming without much knowledge, but a lot of
the really good opportunities and interesting work are reserved to those who
have superior domain expertise.

------
mcantor
Passion only burns out if you consistently fail to pace yourself, or if it
wasn't really innate passion in the first place.

------
adelevie
> I haven't met programmers who became lawyers.

For what it's worth, I'm a programmer in the middle of law school.

~~~
Evbn
Many do, such as Google's Dan Berlin and huge chunks of the IP law field.

~~~
drags
And in constitutional law, Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy
(<http://www.volokh.com/>).

------
blackhole
If money is your primary motivation for any long term choices, you are doing
something wrong.

------
akadien
Honestly, I don't want to read articles about "doing x when you're 50" when
I'm 50.

------
fanbango
You won't have to worry about that. They'll be hiring 23 year old Stanford
kids who don't have a family and who can pull all nighters. They won't be
hiring you.

------
lkrubner
Computer programming jobs in the USA have been in decline since 1990.

Stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (USA):

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/c...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/computer-programmers.htm)

2010 Median Pay $71,380 per year $34.32 per hour

Number of Jobs, 2010 363,100

Job Outlook, 2010-20 12% (About as fast as average)

Especially worth a look:

<http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-fall/>

"Over and over, Americans are told that education is the key to their job
future. The more education you have, the better your shot at getting a job
that pays middle-income wages to take care of your family. If we as a nation
are better educated, the theory goes, we’ll be able to compete more
effectively in the global economy, which in turn will generate more good jobs
for everyone.

But some major flaws in this theory are playing out today in a field that was
once thought to have the brightest future — information technology...

...In its 1990 Occupational Outlook Handbook, the U.S. Department of Labor was
especially bullish: “The need for programmers will increase as businesses,
government, schools and scientific organizations seek new applications for
computers and improvements to the software already in use [and] further
automation . . . will drive the growth of programmer employment.” The report
predicted that the greatest demand would be for programmers with four years of
college who would earn above-average salaries.

In 2000, the Labor Department predicted America would have 839,000 computer
programming jobs by 2008. The department warned of competition from
"programming businesses overseas where much routine work can be outsourced at
a lower cost," but was nonetheless confident that "jobs for both systems and
applications programmers should be plentiful." Things didn't quite work out
that way. The number of programming jobs has fallen steadily, in part because
of outsourcing.

When Labor made these projections in 1990, there were 565,000 computer
programmers. With computer usage expanding, the department predicted that
“employment of programmers is expected to grow much faster than the average
for all occupations through the year 2005 . . .”

It didn’t. Employment fluctuated in the years following the report, then
settled into a slow downward pattern after 2000. By 2002, the number of
programmers had slipped to 499,000. That was down 12 percent–not up–from 1990.
Nonetheless, the Labor Department was still optimistic that the field would
create jobs–not at the robust rate the agency had predicted, but at least at
the same rate as the economy as a whole.

Wrong again. By 2006, with the actual number of programming jobs continuing to
decline, even that illusion couldn’t be maintained. With the number of jobs
falling to 435,000, or 130,000 fewer than in 1990, Labor finally acknowledged
that jobs in computer programming were “expected to decline slowly.” "

~~~
solarmist
Programmer is a distinct job from software developer.

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/s...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/software-developers.htm)

2010 Median Pay $90,530 per year $43.52 per hour

Number of Jobs, 2010 913,100

Job Outlook, 2010-20 30% (Much faster than average)

Employment Change, 2010-20 270,900

