Can you stay technical?

[expat]

Question is , how long is it feasible to carry on in a purely tech role and when you are 40+, what are the chances of ending up on the scrapheap?

Opinions please?

I'm 55 and I'm boogered if I'm going to start managing people or projects now. You do have to become "senior" at what you do, though. Then it does get less technically interesting, but it does pay more. And you can't do this anywhere else without managing people.

[hyperD]

Would they be happy with a senile pervert who occasionally pee in his pants?

Elasto-Inconti-Panties: fantastic for when you piss yourself laughing at a piece of newbie code or when you want to enhance that Yo Sushi! experience by not being bothered to leave that beer-on-tap optimisation by going to the gents.

[sasguru]

You suffer indeed of a prolonged juvenile syndrome.

In this country, it's called a SOH.

[BlasterBates]

This does not mean he will get paid the same.

You're quite right, he's on considerably more than the juniors.

[Francko]

Well I got employed, didn't I? So the answer is:

Yes. Next ....

You suffer indeed of a prolonged juvenile syndrome.

[sasguru]

Would they be happy with a senile pervert who occasionally pee in his pants?

Well I got employed, didn't I? So the answer is:

Yes. Next ....

[Francko]

The thing is to work in an area which is very critical, like, for example, a stock exchange, or a Nuclear reactor, the last thing they would want on the team is a young bod experimenting with the latest .NET libraries.

Would they be happy with a senile pervert who occasionally pee in his pants?

[AtW]

Plenty of oldies here where I work, we have a 60 year old programmer, he's just started to learn Java.

This does not mean he will get paid the same.

Ageism in IT is fact of life - young fools with no exp on their CVs are ready for anything just to get experience, so the industry takes them and uses them for cheap price, but with long hours, then goes for new ones as every year someone graduates again: 300,000+ in case of India.

Plan B is the only way. If you want to be old and earn good money in IT then you need to be a well known or very niche person or be threaded.

[BlasterBates]

Plenty of oldies here where I work, we have a 60 year old programmer, he's just started to learn Java.

The thing is to work in an area which is very critical, like, for example, a stock exchange, or a Nuclear reactor, the last thing they would want on the team is a young bod experimenting with the latest .NET libraries.

In fact we had a vist from the "big head" who told us to stop behaving like a typical "client-server" development team (in spite of the fact there's code freezes and heaps of regression testing) and get to be more like the mainframe dinosaurs they used to have "downtown".

[t0bytoo]

I'm in the same boat. Sending out CVs for developer roles and getting told "this might be a bit junior for you".

Problem is that I like the junior jobs. Headphones on, fingers at keyboard, no endless meetings.

But it does seem that we are expected to move up illusionary ladders at some point. I'd favour running an independent consultancy over project management contracting.

[sunnysan]

Early 30's, 7 - 10 years in IT , half of that contracting should set the scene for my current predicament.

I am not really keen to go into PM or any other kind of permy manager role and it will be difficult to switch from tech contract to PM contract

The slight bit of job satisafaction that I get from this trappingly lucrative exisitance is actually programming and development but there is a growing rumble in my head that this cannot carry on forever and that I will untimately need to

a) Move into a more managerial role
b) Set up my own "consultancy" if the right opportunity presents itself

Question is , how long is it feasible to carry on in a purely tech role and when you are 40+, what are the chances of ending up on the scrapheap?

Opinions please?