That’s true. There is more competition. After feeling stuck at one job because the number of openings for my specialty then was slim, I’ve been paranoid every since then. There are so many job openings for your standard “full stack developer” roles that I’ve been able to get another, better paying job within two or three weeks every time I have tried over the past ten years.
Staying at a job too long meant that I was also so underpaid, and ill equipped that I might as well have been just starting my career in my mid 30s. A high level entry job that I got as a C# developer was more than I was making after working for 10 years.
It was fine being a commodity developer when even your standard full stack developer was making $45K more than I was making when I started my transition and the salaries were rising. I moved up the rank as a “full stack” developer and got to the other side as a dev team lead/architect after switching companies 4 times.
Last year, I looked at the market and realized two things - Enterprise developers are an interchangeable commodity and are ripe for outsourcing and that even if I just picked up skills to fill in some gaps that I had from jumping jobs so often (mostly front end cool kids frameworks), I still couldn’t command a higher salary.
My “specialty” is coming at infrastructure and specifically AWS from a developer,software architect Devops perspective. Most “AWS Architects” come from a Netops background and that’s all they know. They end up costing companies more than they would spend on prem or at a colo because they just do a lift and shift and neither the netops, devops, or the developers do anything different. They just replace their on prem VMs with a bunch of more costly EC2 instances.
Back on topic: yes you can successfully be a developer in your 40s if you keep your skills relevant but after a certain point, your skillset as a developer isn’t worth enough to a company to keep up with your increasing salary demands. If you are okay with your salary stagnating or even becoming lower as your skillset is commoditized, they can go with that.
Otherwise, you have to figure out how your skillset can be multiplied - the easiest way to do that is to become a team lead, mentor, or just the “adult supervision” that can be the first among equals.
(Side note: the previous post with “thier” and “but twiddlers” is what happens when I post sleepy).
Staying at a job too long meant that I was also so underpaid, and ill equipped that I might as well have been just starting my career in my mid 30s. A high level entry job that I got as a C# developer was more than I was making after working for 10 years.
It was fine being a commodity developer when even your standard full stack developer was making $45K more than I was making when I started my transition and the salaries were rising. I moved up the rank as a “full stack” developer and got to the other side as a dev team lead/architect after switching companies 4 times.
Last year, I looked at the market and realized two things - Enterprise developers are an interchangeable commodity and are ripe for outsourcing and that even if I just picked up skills to fill in some gaps that I had from jumping jobs so often (mostly front end cool kids frameworks), I still couldn’t command a higher salary.
My “specialty” is coming at infrastructure and specifically AWS from a developer,software architect Devops perspective. Most “AWS Architects” come from a Netops background and that’s all they know. They end up costing companies more than they would spend on prem or at a colo because they just do a lift and shift and neither the netops, devops, or the developers do anything different. They just replace their on prem VMs with a bunch of more costly EC2 instances.
Back on topic: yes you can successfully be a developer in your 40s if you keep your skills relevant but after a certain point, your skillset as a developer isn’t worth enough to a company to keep up with your increasing salary demands. If you are okay with your salary stagnating or even becoming lower as your skillset is commoditized, they can go with that.
Otherwise, you have to figure out how your skillset can be multiplied - the easiest way to do that is to become a team lead, mentor, or just the “adult supervision” that can be the first among equals.
(Side note: the previous post with “thier” and “but twiddlers” is what happens when I post sleepy).