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Discussion on: Forty and still a dev?

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Jayme Edwards 🍃💻

I’m 43, still code, and have been for 23 years now. I’m consistently the top developer on teams, but I don’t sell myself that way. I sell myself as a team player with deep agile and architecture capabilities. 12 years of my experience have been as a consultant of some sort.

Being an experienced software developer is great! If you keep your skills up, you can show companies a level of professionalism and skill they’ll never get from someone under 10 years or so of experience. The challenge is finding companies that don’t buy the hype that changing technology makes skills irrelevant.

Are there developers who can code circles around me in react? Totally! And I’d love to learn from them and be on a team with them. But I see people continue to make mistakes with design that are timeless. Wisdom isn’t exactly recognized in our field. It’s just part of our culture that values youth above all else.

YMMV