Where have all the 40 year old coders gone?

≡

In 2002, I started programming at MSFT with lots of other 20 year old. I don’t recall the age distributions, but maybe 90% of the programmers I knew where under 40. In 2020, at 41, I’m no longer a programmer, and the majority of programmers are younger then me. This begs the question, where do all the programmers go as they get older. I’m very curious about the answer here are some of my theories….

TODO: Picture of pyramid of age distributions

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#developer-profile-age

BIG DISCLAIMER

These are some half baked ideas, looking forwad to discussing with others to building better hypothesis.

Hypothesis

Exponential growth of programmers

From clean craftsmanship:

“People look at the number of young people in programming and conclude that it’s a young person’s profession. They ask, “Where are all the old people?” We’re all still here! We haven’t gone anywhere. There just weren’t that many of us to begin with. The problem is that there aren’t enough of us old guys to teach the new programmers coming in. For every programmer with 30 years’ experience, there are 63 programmers who need to learn something from her (or him), 32 of whom are brand new.”

Won the lottery and cashed out

The software industry has minted many millionaires. I’ve met lots of engineers who were able to retire.

Moved to management

Some folks have moved to management, but that can’t be all of them, as management is a tree with fanout of 1:10, so that could at most account for 1 in 10.

Switched to other industries

I don’t see a lot of this in my peer group, curious.

Is age discrimination a thing?

Many people have told me there is, I can honestly say, having performed 100s of interviews in my career, I have never seen anything that looked like age discrimination.

Negative Frame of Minds

While I haven’t seen age discrimination due to age, I’ve seen some attributes that tend to be attributed to older folks.

I don’t care about this new stuff, it’s all BS, I’m just gonna do what I want

Who moved my cheese?

I just want to coast till I have enough to retire

Age Based Advantages

  1. Discipline
  2. Emotional Stability
  3. Tolernace
  4. Not my first rodeo
  5. Having done it before.
  6. Intrinsic motivation
  7. Clarity of purpose

Age Based Cognative Declines

I don’t know when it kicks in, but I think the science is clear, and I certainly have seen a reduction in some of my cognative processes. Using a computer model:

  1. Smaller working set - Can only keep so much in my head at once.
  2. Smaller input set - Can only process so much information at once.
  3. Lower peak load - Can’t push for 110% for as long.
  4. Worse Memory - I must write down everything or I’ll lose it.