I'm taking the unusual stance to progress my home life and not so muchy career. I have never had a senior position although I know in my mind that I am exactly that, but today I say the state of JavaScript survey and this got me thinking, I'm 32 I'm in the prime of my career apparently, why do we Suddenly all drop off a cliff at 40?
Is it the lack of data skewing results or is there something more?
Top comments (34)
Hi there coders. I am age 68 and still learning. I played around with React last year and went Serverless too. Now that I am retired I have more time to spend on coding and writing some Dev.to articles. It is so important for older people to keep exercising the brain.
find out more about me at
howtolearnjava.com
or do a Google search on Rick Delpo
Happy Coding!!
And now I know what I am going to do when I am your age, thank you for the hope ๐
Really inspiring, thank you
Actually the star comment of this entire post
hey THANKS so much, see below for my other comment about the many benefits of aging that u can all look forward to.
Other replies here are speaking to a lot of potential sample bias in this specific chart โ but it's an interesting topic either way!
This is the dream isn't it? Today's world provides a lot of potential flexibility in one's career in software. It doesn't always play out that way, but it's there if you're privileged enough to reach for it. Work satisfaction is your own to achieve.
I think a lot of people are happiest when they're able to settle into highly achievable tasks which they don't have to stretch too hard to accomplish. I think there's a lot of human nature and social pressures that inhibit this, but if it's right for you, plateauing in a career as a tech individual contributor is pretty awesome. You need to keep up your skills as to not regress, but if you can do solid work for your level and get paid appropriately for those contributions, you don't need to keep leveling up and risk burning out on the career treadmill.
The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
Yes exactly, right now I'm standing still or perhaps I'm taking a break from leveling up, career mindfulness I suppose, I have built greater confidence and people skills in this time of plateau. Perhaps that's the illusion, maybe I'm still growing from the inside.
This topic of age in tech is critically important, and something we all need to explore. The big question I think about alot, can I make it to retirement / will life throw a new virus our way and change everything again ๐คทโโ๏ธ what will I do when I grow up ๐
Perhaps as we get older, we decline to answer surveys more.
Oh yes definitely! They don't need to know my age, not even I need or want to know my age!
In addition to the many problems inherent to an internet survey (self-selecting bias etc) Iโll also add that if the amount of programmers double every 5 years (thatโs according to one estimate by Robert Martin) then there is guaranteed to be many, many more young people than older.
That statistic came to my mind, too. And it matches Adam's survey pretty good... even better if we say 6 years instead of 5 years:
Of course it stops at the 24-34 graph, because many developers are still in training or studying at a younger age.
This year I have met so many more women in tech and particularly leaders too, very exciting to see this!
Exponential growth of programmers? Thats unexpected but I suppose there is a lot of tech to make!
Where is the data coming from (any URL would be nice)?
Please pay attention to: Amount of answers, where this has been asked (different target groups!) and finally do not forget, that at least 24.2% did not even answer this.
I can see your point perhaps this isn't a good study, still maybe there should be a study for age In programming, I would love to see the stats!
Her you go my friend
2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/demograph...
Life happens. Marriage, kids, housework, house loans, car loans, personal illness, family illness etc. 30+ also happens to be a checkpoint where people think about whether that's what they wanna do/can do for 1/3/5/10 more years.
I'm at 30 that's probably why this post exists. Seems to have exploded, all those do factor in to it. If I had a choice I would build things out of wood and get an amazing workshop started. But I have a family like you said, sort of locked in now and I am happy with that too
I'm in the middle of the 4.7%. My personal feeling is that this graph is spreading out slowly to the right as time goes by. Around the millenium, programming, especially front-end stuff, was popular with younger people. Now those people are older and some have dropped out.
If this is a specifically Javascript chart, then I wonder what it's like for software in general?
Probably many have switched languages not always career, I have never met an ex-programmer
I think the main reason the graph is skewed is because of the age of the language. As javascript is not that old (20 some years?) it is not that strange to not have that many 40+ people doing javascript. Most of the people probably stick with the language they start with, any 50 year old will have made a switch to javascript, either switching languages or switching careers. My guess is most people stick in their domain. Probably after 20 years if javascript is still popular then this graph will look more evenly distributed.
I didn't get this survey this year :)
personally, as i got older i simply got less interested in answering those surveys, i... don't... care. I think a lot of graying-hair soldiers out there share the sentiment.
Apparently I have grey hairs or so I'm told ๐
Nate you make an interesting point, I do wonder if there will be a strange lack of people doing other jobs and we may one day all leave to become hairdressers and sea captains however, until that day I'm fine with being a youngish older developer
I can see Crockford at the end in the .2% as well, that will be me one day ๐ or perhaps I'll do more gardening instead
You might like to explain what that graph is? Holds no meaning without solid annotation.
Woops I did the alt text but forgot the sighted people, IL fix that
That's better. Personally I think you should link to it:
2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/demograph...
(not mandatory as I found it based on the legend you added, thanks!), but I'd tidy the legend a little. It is "fewer" not "less" JavaScript developers, but more importantly it's not actually "as time goes on" because the graph doesn't show that, what it shows is the age of respondents, and so the graph is in fact "Graph from the state of JavaScript survey, the results showing a steady drop in the number of JavaScript developers over 34 years of age".
But now that I know what it is, this is an entirely voluntary survey and so you can't draw and firm conclusions from this. You might conclude that younger people like competing surveys more than older people. In fact that's the stronger hypothesis, because the big hump is 24-34 and the average age for first child is 33 for Australian men:
mccrindle.com.au/insights/blogarch...
And for women it's lower but they probably remain a minority among JS developers (alas).
And surprise surprise that is about that boundary, what? So the big hump is pre children and mortgages, and after people (on average) are suddenly snowed down with children and mortgages so committed day jobs, and children and home maintenance after and maybe, just maybe, one of the things that drops off their horizon is the frilly bits, like completing surveys or blogging or whatever ...?
In fact in some of the hobby like activities I've dealt with over the years have a very clear middle gap around then, are either popular with young or old or young and old but often that 30s and 40s family phase is well under represented.
And JavaScript hasn't been around long enough to expect a huge contingent of over 50s IMHO.
In short, why would you draw any firm conclusions that apply to you and your path from a graph like this with this data source?
Your talking to a man who stopped working as a developer (I am a consultant) because of emerging AI ๐. I am quite impulsive sometimes, sometimes that's a good thing sometimes that's a bad thing but my path is my path and I have made the right decisions for me, I'm sure of that, I'm actually happy now.
... Sorry I lost my train of thought I'm so busy today! โ๏ธ
Is it because we all get rich and retire?
Yes
One of the benefits of aging is that we are all the wiser and become 'go to' persons in the workplace. Our name actually becomes a household word. Many people know u but u don't know them. (this was the weirdest one). We are one of a kind, a big fish in a small pond, a role model. I miss all these things being retired.
No dropping off for me unless I do it myself. There's way too much demand. Age is a state of mind.
How to stop ageing: forget your age. I am glad, stick around, it looks like you have many contributions and posts still to go ๐