HACKER Q&A
📣 alifaziz

40 years old full time dev day job, how it's going?


Curious, how's the life of devs who is above 40 years old these days. What's your story, what keeps you motivated & inspired, what's your role & responsbility surrounded by younger coders.

Hoping to hear some real career path examples.

Thanks.

  👤 gregjor Accepted Answer ✓
Way above 40 —- I started programming as a job 40 years ago. Now I freelance, busier than ever. I don’t usually work surrounded by younger programmers. I lead and mentor a small number of younger programmers but generally they have a decade or more experience.

I mainly do web app development (I would call myself “full stack” if that meant anything, I do front/back/database) and a lot of system admin, mainly cloud deployments these days. I don’t jump on the fad bandwagons but I do keep up with new things.

I stay motivated getting paid well. Sometimes I find the work interesting and fun, though rarely especially challenging. I like working with people and helping businesses solve real problems (as opposed to “tech” problems created by programmers).

👤 tomthumb
48 year old. Still coding every day! Use C and C++ in my job. Generally kernel mode stuff. Have done good work in Golang and Microservices too!