[SeekAndFind]

The original article starts with this question:

Which of the following describes careers in software engineering?

A. Intellectually stimulating and gratifying.

B. Excellent pay for new bachelor’s degree grads.

C. A career dead-end.

The correct answer (with a “your mileage may vary” disclaimer) is: D. All of the above.

READ THE PROVIDED LINK TO KNOW WHY.

[Bryanw92]

If you plan on developing cutting edge games until you are 65, this article is probably true. If you move on to more mature pursuits as you age, you can keep up with the younglings.

But, the money part is very true. Software development is not a high-paying job anymore unless you are a “rock star” game developer. But, the same skills and talents can lead into system administration or information security and you’ll be able to find decent work for life...as long as you keep those skills and technologies current. Get stagnant and you become a “Netware guru in a MS Server world”. Been there. Did that. :(

[DaveyB]

Software Engineers Will Work One Day for English Majors who natively speak Spanish or Hindi

English majors who natively speak English will still be asking "would you like fries with that".

[ckilmer]

These days you can’t really stay in middle management in your 50’s and its getting very hard to stay in middle management in your 40’s. You have to move up or out to form your own business.

[the invisib1e hand]

yawn. the quantnet people are a good bunch. FE is a fad.

[Mr. K]

Written by someone with no experience in the industry.
I write software for a living, and have been doing it for over 25 years- so I know a little about this.

If you want a young college grad designing your embedded systems controllers for your hardware inside an F-15 or a railroad signalling system or some battleship hardware then be prepared to watch a lot of expensive hardware crash and burn and melt

I used to worry all the time that younger and less expensive kids fresh out of school would replace me, but then I get hired all the time now to fix their mistakes, often having to re-write their stuff from scratch...

You don’t know what experience is until you get some.

I am working on some software right now that had a young kid wth 5 years experience as the ‘system architect’ (the lead designer) Once I figure out what they WANTED to do I will be able to fix it all. It is a mess, and it is what the government is paying $millions for, to sort out the foreclosure mess.

It all looks like it was written by a beginner.

[Snickering Hound]

More like the English major will be taking their order.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

There are two main reasons for this: 1. older employees may no longer be up-to-date with the latest technologies 2. they're too expensive.

Whose fault is that? Keep your skills up to date, keep yourself relevant, combine that with your experience and (2) will often more than take care of itself. There's a critical lack of experienced talent in mobile enterprise application development, for example (I've been interviewing candidates for most of the year). The laws of supply and demand are still alive and well, and salaries are good even for Silicon Valley. But not many developers with enterprise back-end and middle-ware experience have even bothered to become familiar with mobile application platforms or development.

Putting in the effort to stay current when our jobs are secure can spare a lot of anguish when our jobs stop being secure, and will always keep open the possibility of working for ourselves with skills that are in demand.

[tbw2]

The only reason software engineers are considered overpriced past 40 is the outsourcing of coding work. Yet the debugging is often an American pursuit, given the mediocre quality of international coders.

[SuziQ]

Youngest is a Comp. Sci. major, looking at Software Engineering. I’ll have to send him a link to the article, then let him read these comments when he gets home for the summer.

[Lazamataz]

To summarize the article: Although entry level software engineering jobs are extremely attractive for young graduating college students, their employability often starts to decline at age 35. There are two main reasons for this: 1. older employees may no longer be up-to-date with the latest technologies 2. they're too expensive. Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. Moving into management roles can allay this problem, but these jobs are limited.

I encourage everyone to believe this nonsense. I am well over 40 years old, but I get about 6 to 12 emails a week from recruiters BEGGING me to at least TALK to them.

I am utterly, madly employable.

I stay current, of course.

But, everyone: Please believe this article. The fewer people in the field, the more $ can command!

[huskerjim]

Ping for later. Great discussion.