DEV Community

Discussion on: Where are the old developers?

Collapse
 
ssmusoke profile image
Stephen Senkomago Musoke

To answer this I will use myself as an example: I am in my 40's and I seem to be one of the oldest developers around - we are very few. About 6 years ago I took a detour into management for 3 years - totally hated burnt out, and returned to active development.

However I am clearly defining my role, as a bridge between technology and business (in this case health program implementation), and I enjoy it very much, since it provides great leverage for my experience and skillset.

The key challenges are the fast moving technology (especially the Javascript world), with a short lifespan 18 months and lots of churn which I am struggling to pickup and also understand their place in the world, since the systems I work with tend to have a lifespan of 5 - 7 years in production.

The older devs are there - hidden in management, team leads and supporting business goals. There are few who stay actively coding due to a shortage of support systems to keep them there and leverage their experience and skillsets