Ask HN: Software development after 40, how do you keep the fire?

1. These days I care a lot more about what the software is for, what makes it useful. So I don't need to get excited about trendy technology, I get excited about e.g. building a completely new kind of gene sequencing device that will help disease research and diagnosis. (Write about this here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/07/do-something-useful/)

2. Teaching is great, because it means all those failures weren't for nothing. Someone else can learn from them (I write a weekly newsletter of my mistakes and how to avoid them - https://codewithoutrules.com/softwareclown/), and I can learn from them (https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/10/lone-and-level-sands...).

3. At this point you can hopefully get better sense of _why_ project fails, and avoid things that are likely to fail, or try to prevent them from failing. So hopefully % of failures goes down.

You might have to fight every bit of the way, but with experience you can save this kind of group from itself, or at least help them have a plan B that works when plan A fails.

This is NOT normal and should not be accepted as such.

I'm 63 and have been programming professionally for 40 years. I'm currently working on several projects that are as complex as anything I've ever done. I honestly feel that that I get better every year, build stuff I never imagined a few years ago. I know this is subjective, but I feel like my brain is faster, I have more stamina, and better memory than ever. I still do newspaper jumbles and crossword puzzles without a pencil and plan to continue that way indefinitely.

Unless you're managing a serious medical condition, I suggest you do something differently: eating, exercise, lifestyle, medical care, something.

To you kids out there (under 50), do not despair. The best could be yet to come if you make it that way.

First, at 50 my brain has not 'slowed down'. Nor has my zeal for new tech, learning or stamina.

Made it big? Not sure what you mean by that, but I've had a very rewarding career (almost 20Y in the same place) that has provided me consistently with challenge and success.

Last thought, I'm part of a team of devs in our early fifties. I feel like with our experience, maturity and honed skills we could wipe the floor with a team in their twenties if we wanted. Might just be us. Just MHO though.

I've learned to appreciate having boring stuff to do on the job, so that I can keep food and a roof and still have stamina left over for the fun stuff I do at home. Recently I've taken up retroprogramming for Windows 3.1. It's fascinating to rediscover those 16-bit programming paradigms from days of old, and learn things about the platform that I missed on my first go around.

* Do meaningful work, whatever that means to you. Maybe it's picking a domain that helps people or society, or maybe it's some other criterion. Ask yourself what meaningful work is to you.

* Be mindful about your craftsmanship and always work to improve it. Try to write solid, expressive, readable code that works, and be critical about your own code. Read other people's code closely and see what you can learn from it. Explore new technologies, not just for "variety" but for what you can learn from what led to their development and how they were implemented.

* Engage in mentorship of younger developers. Mentorship can really do a lot to renew your love of coding. If your employer doesn't have an established mentorship program try to help set one up. If that doesn't work, there are coding bootcamps that will let you work as little as an hour a week mentoring new developers as a consultant.

* Try to be that person within your organization that others want to come to with their thorny technical problems. Listen deeply and respond compassionately.

* Work on side projects. They don't have to change the world or "go somewhere". A side project can remind you why you love programming when the daily becomes a grind.

I disagree. I have always worked for reliable steady paychecks, not equity. I have a decent set of projects under my belt, with some small exits, so while not quite wealthy enough to retire, I'm doing fine.

As far as the question of staying motivated, that does change. I don't care so much about code these days. But I do get motivated when I see younger team members with growing skills. I get motivated by helping the teams succeed. And while I agree that I am far more critical of ideas and projects, that is all the more motivating when I find one that I do believe in. And the aforementioned steady checks over 20+ years let me take time off between projects to find something I can believe in.

In short, if your only measure of success is a big exit, then I can understand the struggle. But there are more meanings of success than that.

Of course there are some new project here and there, but in the end it’s mostly CRUD and not that interesting.

So to answer your question, I don’t keep the fire, I do my job.

(Sorry if I sounded a bit dramatic. I love my actual life, we all just moved to Ireland after 3.5 years in the Caribbean. I guess my « fire » is more oriented on the personal life that professional one)

I find it unlikely a programmer, no matter how good, would make it big. There are exceptions, sure, but globally programmer is not a highly paid professional like a surgeon, for example.

I don't think there is nothing wrong with a steady paycheck and doing a job that engages ones mental faculties.

I'm soon 40. I enjoy puzzles, delivering value to demanding end users and getting feedback from my work. It's really nice when a feature you've implemented gets good feedback and customers discuss about it publicly.

So, I suppose in 'boring' tasks I'm motivated by delivering end user value for demanding professionals and the occasional math puzzler or investigating new algorithm or technology is just sugaring on top.

It helps me understand that although there are certain states of life people tend towards, aging isn't as harsh for everyone.

When I was 25, I thought that people who were 50 were ancient. But I play with a blues band and the drummer is 73 and still gets under houses to do plumbing.

My friends in their 80s who are still working are often slow... we all become geriatric at some point if we live long enough.

But I've also met people in their 50s who are really, really old. And I mostly date women in their 40s, and one of the most interesting things has been how old some people in their 40s are and how young some people in their 50s are.

A second thing that has helped me is that I keep playing with new stuff, just for fun. I keep taking up new instruments (I've been spending a lot of time playing banjo and piano, but this year I built a modular synthesizer and have been enjoying that way of making noise quite a bit). I keep learning new technical skills and because of the business I am in I can have my boss sell projects that allow me to practice the ones I think will be more profitable. And all that has taught me how much we can actually learn if we're just spending a 20-30 minutes a day on a specific practice, over the course of years.

So, I just turned 40 a couple of months ago, I sent my kid off to list first day as a high school senior. And I've got enough time to do about 3 more careers in my life. I've been a university professor, a semi-professional musician, and right now I'm a pretty good programmer and all-around IT worker.

Knowing all those people older than me, I'm able to see how much longer I might be here. I stopped drinking, got down to a very healthy weight, took up exercises that are fun (a lot of yoga, mountain biking, and hiking). I've gotten a lot picker about how I have romantic relationships. I travel more to visit my friends who have their kids tying them to a locale.

And knowing how much progress we can make by constant, slow study has made me super excited about learning general things. I read a lot of philosophy and history, but I also do a lot of playing with technology.

I started learning math again, because I feel like that will be important for understanding the various kinds of statistics I'll have to do to work with statistical tools like machine learning. CRUD apps have paid my bills for a long time, but I don't know how much longer I'll get a thrill out of building them.

So that's what I do. I'm not worried about making it big as a musician or a programmer because I like the process and I can get enough remuneration from it to keep everything going as long as I feel like living.

And I suspect that I am actually a lot quicker witted, can pay attention longer, and have a better memory now that I occasionally fast, am not drinking every day. I suspect that a lot of my friends in their 40s aren't "slower", they just have kids and are dealing with it by drinking, like I did in my 20s. And I do know that we age, but I also know that how we age isn't the same for everyone... with good luck, we have a whole lot of time to learn and play with interesting ideas.

I suggest going to a smaller place where you'll have a bigger impact and, hopefully, good coworkers.

1) Young programmers are eager to try new things

2) As you get older, you figure out what works. This is good and bad. It's good, because you don't waste time implementing things which won't work. It's bad because you may not be willing to try something new that may be superior.

If I managed a team, I would prefer to have both perspectives.

- I need a physical outlet: I practice Jiu Jitsu now 2-3x per week and this has literally re-lit the burners on many aspects of my life, career included. Much more energy and stress tolerance when I thought I would be more exhausted -total opposite.

- Family time is most important at this age: Making sure things are all good at home lets me relax and focus at work. Employer should get this or I am in the wrong place.

- Rest / diet: I recently switched over from eating to whatever was at hand (literally), to eating what was healthy and worth putting in my body.

I feel all of the above have led to my having more energy / stamina to do tough projects and get over the unexpected hiccups.

Also - I started listening to this podcast by a former navy seal Cmdr: If nothing else, it checks you from saying "my life is stressful" when you hear an Army Aviator who spent 6 years in a North Vietnamese prison camp talk about his experience:

http://jockopodcast.com/2017/02/22/63-through-the-valley-my-...

Sometimes quitting is the answer...

As far as my "working life", I try to keep myself challenged by seeking out interesting projects. Generally this means changing employers every couple of years, but this gets more difficult the more 'senior' (and expensive) you become. I really would like to settle in at a company that can keep me challenged and growing, but most employers put zero effort into developing and retaining their software engineers (too easy to find new ones, I guess).

For example, my current employer (less than a year) has me doing legacy software maintenance (not the type of work I was promised when hired), which is doing nothing for my career (probably causing active harm) and is boring as hell (no architecture/design/SE work, no challenging CS problems, no leadership responsibility) - it's the kind of work I'd expect to be doing in my 60s when I'm coasting into retirement (assuming I can stand it even then). So I'm interviewing again. I hate interviewing.

I enjoy writing software, but the interview process is crap. Its either waste a whole weekend building some mini app, or some random algorithmic questions which are hit or miss whether I get them right or not. Hardly anyone is interested in looking at code that I have already written. So I am maintaining other peoples balls of mud as its what pays moderately well.

Now in the early 30s I am finally starting a career in software development. I am still excited to learn new things all the time, and I really enjoy the process. Just wondering what will be different if I started a software job 8 years ago instead of now, moneywise or not...