by debesyla on 2/22/25, 11:55 AM with 181 comments
by rnd_dude428673 on 2/22/25, 2:12 PM
I have been fortunate and successful and managed my finances. I don't even have to work if I don't want to anymore. I do it to keep my brain challenged.
But if I was stuck in a boring mundane programming job for a mega corp then I would retire in a second. I've never stayed at a company once it's grown too big. Middle management kills creativity and sucks the life out of your soul.
by karmakaze on 2/22/25, 7:53 PM
> It's about the constant evolutionary changes that occur in the language definition, the compiler, the libraries, the application framework, and the underlying operating system, that all snowball together and keep you in maintenance mode instead of making real improvements.
This paints a very different picture of software than how I perceive it. Most backend work is basically making plumbing and applying domain logic from one consistent persisted (or in-memory) state to another. My understanding of operating systems, programming languages, and databases hasn't changed for the most part in decades, only additional details being filled-in as I encounter them. I learned far more early in my career doing embedded C programming as a co-op, then later C++ multi-threaded programming for OS/2 and Windows NT, and lastly using a number of SQL databases. Programming languages, frameworks, and APIs were the least of my concerns like using some other plumber's toolbox while fixing a leak.
by prhn on 2/22/25, 1:57 PM
Great art is always made under great constraints. Software is no different.
It's always the weaker engineers that are constantly complaining about the things listed in this article. Complaining about all the "stupid code" and "stupid decisions" that were made before they arrived.
There is no realistic scenario where you can spend infinite time developing the perfect solution. And I say infinite because there is no amount of time that will allow you to achieve perfection. Perfection does not exist.
It's true in art, and it's true in engineering.
by afpx on 2/22/25, 2:13 PM
Back in 1991 when I started my computer science degree, I just wanted to create new things - I liked to reverse engineer, take things apart, hack code and build stuff that never existed before. My friends were going into chemical engineering because the average salary was like $45k / year whereas programming was something like $38k / year. They thought I was short-sighted because I didn't go for the money. But, it didn't daunt me that I got paid less. I thought it was awesome that someone would even pay me to do the type of work I was doing. I earned $33k in my first year. In contrast, I had a friend who managed a Barnes and Noble and was making 45k, but I didn't care.
The early years were pretty awesome. In the 90s it was exhilarating to be working with your brainy hacker friends late into the evening. No chaos or rush - we'd release every 3 months on a regular schedule. We had tons of slack time to just play around. After work, we'd go out and have beers and talk philosophy and art and culture (It was during this era that Paul Graham wrote Hackers & Painters). But, then the salaries started going up, and up, and up. I knew the field wasn't sustainable when my salary greatly exceed my chemical engineer friends. It was sometime in the mid 00s that I realized I needed to make an exit plan. While my collegues were out there buying giant houses and fancy cars, I doubled down on the minimalist lifestyle and dumped everything into investments.
By 2010 I was making 30% more than my boss, and I could see the discontent. I was making more than some of the executives. The expectations became super high, and I could see the end was nigh. The field became flooded with people who didn't care about anything but the money. It diluted the creativity and energy. The status-seekers viewed programmers as blue collar, and they weren't going to let blue collar guys make more than them without some punishment. The consultants made fortunes teaching the 'boss class' how to turn programming into a factory. Programmers weren't allowed to create anymore - we would get a 'Program Manager' who would give us a 'backlog'. It was super demotivating and not fun anymore.
by fjfaase on 2/22/25, 2:10 PM
by blindriver on 2/22/25, 2:03 PM
This past weekend I’ve been coding a couple of side projects that has been using OpenAI to classify a bunch of things and I’m still having a ton of fun.
by JohnDeHope on 2/22/25, 2:00 PM
by linotype on 2/22/25, 1:53 PM
by louthy on 2/22/25, 2:06 PM
I’m 49 and just sold the first company I founded. I’m already building my next idea (although this time without financial constraint) and continue to work on my open-source projects.
I started coding as a hobby when I was 10 years old. I still love being a maker and the process of making. Now that I’m financially free and working on my own ideas, for my own reasons, it feels just like it did when I was 10 years old.
I’ll stop when I’m dead.
by neilv on 2/22/25, 8:59 PM
If you're not up to it, or it's something you don't want to do, or you're just going through a low period, then that's OK, speak for yourself.
But this piece is being read by a lot of still-in-school and barely-out-of-school aspiring founders. And you're feeding ageism, to their detriment, and to the detriment of everywhere they'll work.
It's not unusual for teenagers with no real world experience to think they have all the answers, that their parents and adults aren't as smart or capable as them, etc. Fortunately, they grow out of it...
Unless a startup incubator, that historically favors impressionable young boys, hands them a bunch of money, and tells them they are the best people to do a startup. And when said impressionable young boys are exposed to ever so slightly outside that messaging bubble, they see articles like this.
And so the illegal, yet nigh-institutionalized, ageism persists.
Sometimes, when I see one of these articles, I think at least it's a blessing that we're not seeing more self-appointed representatives of other groups who are discriminated against in employment, volunteering themselves, to go out of their way, to feed that, and screw over everyone else.
by jfengel on 2/22/25, 2:04 PM
I feel incredibly lucky that I get paid quite well to do something that is reasonably fun. Which gets me through the days that really suck, like meetings.
I would love to find a way to retire and keep programming for something more useful. Do any charities need programming work? I ponder teaching sometimes, but I am not great with kids.
by wruza on 2/22/25, 2:25 PM
by AndrewDucker on 2/22/25, 2:01 PM
Most of the things described there the inevitable results of using tools. The times it goes well and the tools work perfectly are great, but less interesting and memorable than the times you find bugs in them.
But if they're keeping you in the office until 2am then the problem isn't computers, the problem is terrible management.
by dang on 2/22/25, 7:42 PM
Do You Want to Be Doing This When You're 50? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33185945 - Oct 2022 (6 comments)
Do You Want to Be Doing This When You're 50? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19924589 - May 2019 (8 comments)
Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611337 - Oct 2012 (242 comments)
by randcraw on 2/22/25, 8:56 PM
I suppose I should have expected this in a fortune 100 IT shop. For 15 of my 20 years in R&D, our mission was to deliver the goods and let the laughably misdirected IT fashion of the day be damned. But since covid, IT's love for processes surrounding the delivery of software products has trumped all else. How insanely BORING. And I work in AI. These should be the BEST of times.
I prepared for this day for decades, by taking a bunch of AI and computer vision classes part-time and adopting a variety of AI tools and libs. But until covid, we only danced along the fringes of building smart software without quite immersing in it. Then with AI's maturation during covid (and esp since), after 60 years of gestation, AI's day to bear fruit is nigh. But rather than embrace the dizzying possibilities of how AI could reinvent R&D from first principles, I find we're supposed to be happy just turning the crank -- adopting someone else's turnkey AI system to perform the same old task and with the same old objectives, hoping only to be a bit 'better'. Blah.
It's time to shed this old skin and let myself evolve. Adieu corporate America.
by ergonaught on 2/22/25, 8:47 PM
It’s my desire to be exploited by uncaring corporate greed that has starkly diminished over the years.
Maybe that’s what the author meant about “large scale, high stress”.
by softwaredoug on 2/22/25, 1:52 PM
by david-gpu on 2/22/25, 2:29 PM
People smarter than me simply find a reasonable work life balance and prioritize time for their loved ones and their hobbies. Those people do fine in their fifties and beyond.
Some people can't imagine doing anything other than working -- those people struggle once the cruel reality of aging finally forces them to retire.
by advael on 2/22/25, 3:37 PM
I have no reason at this stage to believe that this will get better instead of worse
by jp57 on 2/22/25, 2:31 PM
My experience has been that as I get more senior, the frustrations that the OP complains about are less and less a part of my day-to-day, and when they do pop up, I find that my accumulated experience usually helps me to solve them quickly.
What's interesting to me is that when I was in my late 20s I went through a "what do I want to be doing in my 50s" exercise. I decided to get a PhD, did some interesting research, published some papers, did a postdoc, but ultimately ended up back as a dev at 40. I don't regret any of it.
by boguscoder on 2/22/25, 5:22 PM
by shermantanktop on 2/22/25, 5:22 PM
Aging ain’t easy. Feeling like your past life choices have limited your current options is almost inevitable.
But this is a well-paid field with interesting problems every day, unsolved challenges, and lots of young talent keeping things fresh. And if you have a few gray hairs you have options to mentor others or speak to management with some gravitas and credibility.
And tbh if you are a full time dev in your 50s at this point you should be able to do a good chunk of your job on autopilot. That leaves some time for you to direct your energies to your own interests. Situations vary, of course.
by marssaxman on 2/22/25, 7:30 PM
I am fortunate enough not to have to deal with much of the kind of frothy, api-plugging work the author describes. I can see why that would get old. Big corporations are soul-crushing, and I will not work for them anymore if I can help it. Fortunately for me, there seems to be no shortage of lively young startups with interesting problems to solve.
If I could no longer find small, friendly teams willing to hire me to do interesting work at a reasonable, sustainable pace, I might well look for a different career. As it stands, I enjoy this sort of work and hope to continue doing it as long as I am capable.
by starchild3001 on 2/23/25, 1:48 AM
The biggest thing holding me back is the fear of becoming utterly useless. I can just picture myself endlessly scrolling the internet, basically waiting for the day to end (besides, obviously, getting more exercise and generally being healthier, those are the positives).
Working in a megacorp can be great. I greatly enjoy my current job, but I just wish it had more breaks in it (ideally, guilt free).
by rco8786 on 2/22/25, 2:35 PM
The magic for me has never really stopped. Throughout my career I've attempted jumps into other roles like product and management, but I just keep coming back. I still play with new languages and libraries in my free time, building toy projects with no intention to "ship" them...just for fun. Like an artist might doodle in a sketchbook.
I really, really hope I'm still doing this when I'm 50, and well beyond.
by rurban on 2/22/25, 2:24 PM
My colleague is 72.
by JohnBooty on 2/22/25, 4:37 PM
My thinking is greatly informed by friends who have made noble career choices that boil down to stuff like "helping kids." They are just as burnt out, if not moreso, in their careers.
To be honest, I am kind of over coding. I had reached mission-critical burnout a few years ago but was "rescued" by actually finding an interesting and supportive startup.
But I'm not convinced there are any careers out there that would be pay the bills and be more rewarding.
by wucaworld on 2/22/25, 1:57 PM
Why does something new have to be invented or api need to be deprecated? Do we take into consideration all the things that will break? The docs, the online examples, do we give sufficient context as to why something is a solution or works-for-me and move on? Tech like docker and Java were supposed to simplify but did they actually fulfill their mission? I think I will write a book on this one day.
I moved to management but my heart is still in the code. And it weeps.
by agumonkey on 2/22/25, 1:44 PM
by stego-tech on 2/22/25, 2:15 PM
This question helped guide my career path from Help Desk, to Administrator, currently into Senior Engineering, and presently pursuing upward growth into Architecture. The question forced me to consider progression and growth, and what I want it to look like.
And so by the time I’m 50, or 60 with how slowly upward positions become available? I’d like to be a one-man show at a small firm, with a varied workload keeping me challenged and motivated yet under my direct control. Or maybe as an executive or leader at a mid-sized firm, mentoring younger colleagues into their own career paths and taking the role of a Captain rather than a deckhand.
But no matter what, I’ll still be the first to roll up their sleeves, dump the title, and help out in a crisis, because I love it. Just, y’know, not all the time.
by kleiba on 2/22/25, 5:19 PM
by garbawarb on 2/22/25, 4:31 PM
I'm 29, I've been an engineer for 6 years and have ended up with a high income and a lot of cash in the bank (not retirement-level, but more than 98% of people my age). Yet I've realized that the main reason I've chosen this career is because it provides the fastest path to wealth. If I were choosing a career purely based on what I wanted to do it would be something in the arts, likely film or music, but the arts are a famously difficult way to make any stable income. Same for starting my own company in the tech space, I think I'd enjoy running a company more than being an engineer. It's hard to walk away from a high, stable income since I'm not from a wealthy family. Lately I've been doing some soul searching and a part of me wants to quit and start fresh doing my own thing.
by georgemcbay on 2/22/25, 3:58 PM
I learned how to code on a Commodore 64 in the 1980s, first MS BASIC then 6502/6510 assembly language. My first professional jobs were C programming for now ancient Unix systems like SunOS and AIX, then I did a lot of Win32 programming, embedded systems, C++, Java, some Go and eventually switched to mobile devices, Android primarily.
My paying job is still writing code and I still love doing it. I never went the "FAANG" route, preferring smaller lifestyle-type startups to larger extreme growth ones. This route is/was certainly less lucrative but also far less stress and better work/life balance.
In addition to still coding as the "day job" I still write hobby code on the side, over the past few months I've discovered the joys of Kotlin Multiplatform and shipped a somewhat niche app (a PvP game tracker for the videogame Destiny 2) on Android, iOS and Windows with an audience closing in on 1,000 users (890 more precisely) based off of just organic word of mouth (its just a free & ad-free for-fun app so no reason to push it with actual marketing).
So yeah, I'm glad I am still doing this when I'm past 50.
by SillyUsername on 2/22/25, 1:59 PM
If you're a person who gave up adapting and learning - "it's a young man's game" - then perhaps the OP has a point for his case, I've seen it often enough.
The 90s had COBOL programmers were out of work, the 2000s had VB6 programmers out of work, and my old bread and butter Java, is being abandoned in AI in favour of Python and TS.
But I love the fact AI is coming for my job, in fact I'm retraining for it, I learnt TS about 10 years ago, I can write C, and my Python 3 is passable.
It keeps me on my toes always, and imho as long as anybody, young or old trains on the frontier/edge you'll never be out of work. The minute you give up that edge... well.
by ctrlp on 2/22/25, 3:46 PM
Sometimes you can just look around and the answer is staring you in the face everywhere you turn. It's not just "ageism" in tech that makes it skew young. Young programmers have more capacity for long, deep coding sessions, yes, but also for the long, tedious marches through APIs and stack traces and documentation and standard libraries, carefully orchestrated rollback procedures, all-nighters, pager-duties, etc... the "mundane" stuff, but also the "fun" stuff like designing new languages, green field projects, learning new tech stacks, etc...
Of course there are exceptions, but in the case, the exceptions prove the rule. I see a time when I'm happily puttering around as a hobbyist programmer.
by gcanyon on 2/22/25, 2:37 PM
1. I still work in tech 2. I work at a startup 3. I write code daily as part of my job as a product manager 4. I love what I do and don't want to stop
Just yesterday, I had to match one set of urls to another set of urls by domain name, which involved:
1. Stripping down various badly-formed urls to just their main domain -- Claude and ChatGPT both proved incapable of creating regex to do this; my code wasn't perfect either, but it was closer than they came.
2. Finding all cases where a domain from set A was a substring of a domain from set B, or vice versa.
3. Outputting various bits of related information for further assessment.
by rsynnott on 2/22/25, 3:36 PM
This seems more like a ‘their job’ problem than a programming problem per se.
by yakshaving_jgt on 2/22/25, 12:05 PM
by decasia on 2/22/25, 1:58 PM
(Obviously, the job evolves a lot over time and will keep doing that, but it isn't always starting absolutely from scratch every time either.)
by snozolli on 2/22/25, 4:42 PM
Solving problems with software is gratifying. Corporate BS isn't.
by unzadunza on 2/22/25, 1:46 PM
by dunham on 2/22/25, 3:34 PM
We had one where a long comment in a PNG caused quadratic slowdown. I decompiled the library and fixed the issue (appending strings a char at a time and not reusing the stringbuilder).
And then a colleague pointed out that simply recompiling the decompiled file also fixed the issue. After digging in the JIT compiler source, I learned that it had code to handle this issue, but it was tuned to the exact output of a modern compiler.
by karmakaze on 2/22/25, 7:27 PM
What's different in my experience, is that my this is still technically interesting and far preferable to not this. An IC role (including staff level) is largely dictated by technical concerns of correctness, efficiency, and comprehensible structure--all things I enjoy making. When I encounter folks who used to be like me but moved on to non-hands-on roles, they lose their technical depth and can't evaluate things first-hand, having to delegate technical issues and making best guesses based on who/what to trust without full understanding themselves. That's not a position I want to be in.
There's truth in "trying to come up with a working solution in a problem domain that you don't fully understand..." but I don't agree with "...and don't have time to understand." When in a new area, I'll make a partial solution that's "the simplest thing that could work" and make iterative refinements as I understand more and more. I occasionally do extended deep work at odd hours, but that's by choice since working from home. I never feel like I have to work at 2am, except for the rare times that I'm on-call for my area and get paged.
I've never come up with an answer to "What would I prefer to be doing instead?" Working at a small, stable company with a good product would be nice but doesn't pay nearly as well. My advice would be to try a number of different companies until you find one that suits you, or try to put yourself in a position at a company that fits you. I've done both and satisfied with my results. At a large company with good engineering culture, you can move between domains to keep things fresh if you get too settled-in and bored.
OTOH the author may be well suited to using AI tools to automate "skimming great oceans of APIs" to make their work more fun and cut and paste from generated solutions. They'll still need to have some picture of the current situation, where to go, and evaluating the steps taken to get there.
by praptak on 2/22/25, 2:11 PM
I am not doing it at my current job and nobody's complaining.
by istillwritecode on 2/22/25, 10:15 PM
by Sxubas on 2/22/25, 2:21 PM
by bufordtwain on 2/22/25, 6:29 PM
by AnimalMuppet on 2/22/25, 3:42 PM
by gedy on 2/22/25, 2:08 PM
As someone who is not a status-seeking individual, I don't need to "see and be seen", and it pays well.
by mmaunder on 2/22/25, 4:29 PM
by rx4g on 2/22/25, 2:19 PM
I feel fortunate. I get to solve puzzles with a lot of my time.
by bbu on 2/22/25, 9:15 PM
by dwheeler on 2/22/25, 2:15 PM
by scinse on 2/22/25, 6:29 PM
by bowsamic on 2/22/25, 1:54 PM
I think I’d be fired if I made a habit of this
by embit on 2/22/25, 2:19 PM
by lawgimenez on 2/22/25, 2:06 PM
by rx4g on 2/22/25, 2:10 PM
I feel fortunate. I get to solve puzzles with most of my time.
by anonzzzies on 2/22/25, 2:11 PM
by jrochkind1 on 2/22/25, 4:07 PM
Perhaps trying to pick jobs that are not awful and which I find rewarding, which aren't necessarily the most lucrative ones as the occupation has become increasingly lucrative, is why I can't retire at 50 like some of you though!
by adamredwoods on 2/23/25, 2:43 AM
But that's the key, in my opinion, are sustainable jobs: a job that one can find agreeable, low-stress, for long-term ebb and flow challenges, and it pays slightly above one's family needs, to allow savings for the inevitable. Does capitalism allow for such things or does capitalism by it's nature, want this to be rare?
by rekabis on 2/26/25, 8:12 PM
Having gone to the website with a full-fat desktop browser… colour me f**king impressed. Fast, responsive, almost instantaneous… exactly what a website should be.
But for the life of me, I can’t tell if he’s got a public repo for that script. Has anyone else stumbled across it?
by billy99k on 2/22/25, 4:14 PM
I see the daily work of my manager and I think I would hate it: drowning in useless meetings and keeping upper-level management happy with their ridiculous requests.
With all of my combined work, I make more than him with less bullshit.
by theandrewbailey on 2/22/25, 2:16 PM
Not that the material is out of date.
by hnthrowaway0315 on 2/22/25, 2:01 PM
My side projects? Yeah I guess so. Not as sure as I was 5 years ago, but I need to do something when I'm older, no?
by gootz on 2/22/25, 1:56 PM