At what age is “too old” to work in tech as a software engineer?

The third year of medical school is often the lowest point of morale in medical training, even worse than the long hours of internship/residency because at least in residency you are a necessary and productive team member. Being a third year medical student sent to various services as the least useful person on the floor is no-one’s calling. Life gets better in medicine as you have more of a respected role to play later of one sort or another, but there are plenty of minefields later on too. One helpful approach can be finding attendings who seem happy and asking yourself if you could follow a similar route.

It might be tempting but unfruitful to abandon medicine and dive into into programming. Unlike people switching track from physics or math grad school, you won’t be able to leverage much medicine into software engineering. Especially if, as you say, you haven’t coded anything in years, then maybe software isn’t a quite a daily calling for you either. On the other hand, there may be no better time in recent decades than now to go into programming in general for the hyper-dedicated souls among us, regardless of age.

My thought on this are kind of scattered so I won't try to write cohesive paragraphs:

- (Man, the title and the text are asking completely different questions.)

- Whatever you do, finish your medical degree and start your career in medicine.

- Lots of doctors hate their jobs, so do lots of software developers. A lot of the advice you'll hear will be biographical.

- The age thing itself isn't a problem; starting at 28, switching career tracks and getting your first job in the field can be difficult though.

- Once you start your career in medicine, you're set. Yes, you'll still need to work hard and you'll have challenges like everyone else and bla-bla-bla... but the career stability is hard to find elsewhere. Software is on the other end of the spectrum where people change companies and problem domains every few years and your job prospects are a lot more dependent on the state of the financial markets or the current trends in tech.

- You haven't done either job, so be careful when you say "this is for me and this isn't". Sure, you've been exposed to both fields in some ways but still you can be totally wrong in your judgment here.

- Giving up medicine looks like a one way door. It's a difficult decision to reverse later on if you figure out that you've made a mistake. On the other hand, if you work in medicine for a while and it really isn't for you, you can still give software a try.

- Medical doctors are paid better on average. But both fields are paid well so this maybe shouldn't be your biggest consideration. There's also a certain social perception / status that comes with being a doctor vs being a software developer. Some people care about that, others don't. Figure out whether you care about it.

- Something you like doing as a hobby or at university, can be something you hate when it becomes part of your job.

- You can always do software on the side, you can't practice medicine on the side.

- Once you finish your medical education, you have the option to look for jobs that combine medicine and software.

- You're even saying that you like medicine. Looking for "your calling" can be a trap. Liking what you do is great. Maybe you can find your calling, or maybe you're massively sabotaging your life to look for something that doesn't exist. (I don't know)

- Seriously, don't drop out of your medical degree.

Finish your medical degree and residency. Absolutely.

The rationale is that there are several positive outcomes

a) you might actually like being a doc

b) there are more high-end openings for doctors who understand software than software beginners. Those are essentially the two software options you have.

I worry about this myself. I sought out my first “software engineer” job at 36. At some startups where I interviewed, I was already a decade older than anyone else in the room.

I ended up taking a job with a FANG company that skews slightly older than most startups, but even here I’m on the wrong side of the Bell curve. I can run circles around most of my younger coworkers so I never feel like my job is in jeopardy. But I’m often the oldest individual contributor on any given project and I have to wonder, where have all the older software engineers in Silicon Valley gone? Did they retire early, and was it their own choice? Will I be served up as Soylent Green in the cafeteria next year?

I moved into software engineering from a different engineering discipline where most of my coworkers were in their forties and fifties, and some were older than that. I doubled my pay, but now I work on the SF peninsula where I can’t afford a house, and I probably cut my remaining working years in half. All in all, it seems like it may have been a questionable choice in the long run.

Engineers working in programming-adjacent industries (rather than Silicon Valley web tech) such as telecommunications, defense, aerospace/satellites, medical technology, etc., tend to earn less but have much longer careers in my experience (and often work on more interesting problems IMO). You may be able to leverage your medical degree, after your residency, to work in an area with more specialization and less churn.

I'm 45, no CS degree, work for a non-startup, and have no reason to believe I won't be writing code in 10 years so I'm fully on Team Programmer. That said, it sounds like you may be painted into a bit of a corner financially. In your situation I would program recreationally (you don't need to formally expand on your CS minor - plenty of good courses online if you need to go deeper). I'd grow in my primary career, and start looking to opportunities to leverage the two fields (for example, build a SaaS app that targets something in your specialty)

Stay with medicine.

You're not too old though, ageism is real in every industry but you're always going to be competing with people who started coding as a child etc, but the only 'competition' that ever matters is with yourself.

And keeping coding as a hobby keeps the passion, you may like it now but when you're a cog in a wheel at grinding out nothing relevant it'll destroy you mentally and grind you down, it'll destroy whatever passion you have.

Medicine also gives you an advantage, you'll be able to spot opportunities to automate systems and processes with your coding ability.

Just my 2C.

To see clearly through this, first ask yourself: "why is ageism rife in software?"

Because, once this very simple question is asked, you pause to consider the reality of software development as a profession, whereby an awful lot of developer roles are meant as cogs. No offense specifically to software developers, it's true for practically any other commodity corporate job, with the caveat that most commodity jobs pay less. Being easily-replaceable by design is the problem.

But this is where you, as a medical student, have an edge. Because if you stick it out in your current career path, you're building domain expertise. If you build tech skills along with domain knowledge, you're golden. It's incredibly hard to replace.

Whether you choose to go to MedTech, to build your own thing, or to transfer these skills into adjacent territory (consulting, investment banking) - all of these options crop up on the back of having an intersection of technical skills with domain expertise.

For context, I've done the exact opposite. I started with CS - entering the market after the bust. You could see very clearly exactly what happens when the money hose shuts, and it didn't look pretty at all for older employees. (Or even, not so old. Less demand meant it became much harder to get a good job.)

I didn't want that sort of life, and didn't enjoy coding all that much at the time. Nowadays, I've got my own company, with its own tech (built with a co-founder), in a specialized domain. My only regret is that I waited so many years until I got back to coding. But coding also became a lot more fun (way more than it ever was back then). Mostly because it became a means to an end.

It really depends, there is agism in tech, people don't want to admit it's there. I also see many people in their 30's and 40's refuse to change and keep up.

Then again, work on an mainframe, know Cobol, you can be 60, 70, 80 and it's fine. Those are in demand jobs and have no true aging out anymore.

But, stuck just doing PHP and LAMP stacks, I can see that dying and being reborn again. PHP is great, though.

Then there's the career movement to management and such, which doesn't require you knowing how to code per se.

--

Do you even enjoy CS? Coding? Tech in general? If you don't, you probably will have this same dilemma in a few years "I like x, but I really don't feel it's my calling."

Do you know what you want? Do you really want to be employable at 40?

Why not retired?

- Chasing money or a career that pays well doesn't really bold out well for fulfilment. Sure you'll get your money, and a cushion but you'll look back at it as time wasted. But you already do have a CS degree. So might as well use it, right?

-- I like tech, I foresee myself always having a tech centric career, I use tech to allocate and organize my life and resources and I would never see myself as being to old at ever using tech for that goal or leveraging tech for work. Would I be designing hardware? No. Would I be designing fancy new algo's? No. Would I poorly be implementing encryption schemes, probably. Would I be head deep in excel and dashboards? Yes.

Live life and enjoy, 28 is still young.

There's no such thing as too old.

Convincing other people of that fact gets harder and harder the older you get.

I don't know what to tell you, it's a high-risk change you are contemplating. You can strike out on your own, but that is another set of risks to navigate.

You're not at all too old to switch your career. In fact there is no such thing, but given that you have invested a lot of time and presumably money into your medical education do not throw that away. Finish your education, make some money, and if you're in a financially stable situation try to look for some programming opportunities.

As far as the ageism within 'tech culture' goes that has been brought up in a few posts, you don't need to work in the startup sector to work as a software engineer. Almost every large industry today hires software engineers, and most of them do not share this bizarre obsession with youth that you have in the valley. Maybe not the perfect site to point it out but Paul Graham says a lot of silly things, that only apply to a very small, geographically limited group of people.

> "as Paul Graham most famously said not to hire engineers over 30."

Did he? I'm very skeptical of that since I read every single one of his essays and followed his talks. They were one of the reasons I decided to transition into software in my early 30s.

Firstly Supply and demand of Software Engineers dictate a lot right now. In my market (East Coast of Australia) people aren't being as picky. Wages are shooting up, and they are willing to accept candidates that lack more of their desired traits. These cycles though will go through ebbs and flows and you may end up with a glut of talent and people will be picky on whatever criteria they want right about the time your entering the market (like it was for me in 2001).

Second is only a small percentage of roles are hired by Paul Graham and silicon valley as a whole. The young engineer thing is frequently looked as a positive because your more likely to have people that live an unhealthy work-life balance dedicated to the cause. Most people over 30 end up with a life they can't abandon to work 12 hours a day / 7 days a week. Larger companies tend to have processes where age doesn't come into play, and a better work/life balance (assuming you can tolerate the bureaucracy).

Third if you can use your medical domain knowledge in an SE role, that is likely a bigger perk then any age related negative.

Age is somewhat tied to role. The problem your going to have after 40 - 50 is doubts if you don't already have history with the work / technology. This is a bias against ability to learn. This can be countered with good and relevant certifications and having a broad technical knowledge. Generally when you get a role you will know some of the technologies, be familiar with a few and have to learn others. If you specialise on something in demand, people won't care about your age, they just want to knowledge. Frequently technical specialists I've worked with are 50-60 years old.

Where the negativity at older developers comes from is the requirement for developers to be constantly moving forward learning about new technologies. If your not moving forward, your falling behind. Older starters in SE often have trouble keeping up with this aspect of the industry. This is why frequently university / college education isn't very useful in the real world. The industry has moved on, and you need to learn the new stuff in your junior roles.

Finally development support roles are frequently not viewed with the same lens, and often favour more "mature" people. Testing, Project Management, BA, Sales / Presales Engineering, Support Engineering and Development management all surround the development process and will often involve dipping in to code (depending on organisation / role). You may find while you love Software Engineering, the actual coding is less interesting then the whole creation process.

The thing to understand about tech vs medicine jobs is how experience works and is valued.

In tech, there are really no programming jobs that require more than say 5, 7, or a maximum of 10 years of experience in whatever language / specific skills they are asking for. They do not exist. If people get to 40, and have 15 years doing the same thing (say Java, or C++), they are not bringing anything extra to the table, and an employer will prefer someone who is minimally qualified with, say, 5 years of experience, who will demand less salary, and potentially last longer with the company and have the potential to move into management.

The area where experience is valued is in management, team leadership, architecture, etc - but many developers shy away from that, and then assume that ageism is at play.

Medicine, law, etc are the exact opposite - 5 years is just getting started, and by the time you get to 20 years, there are lots of options for teaching, becoming a professor, owning a practice, doing research, etc - the experience compounds in a way that it doesn't with tech (mainly due to the constant churn of languages, frameworks, fads, etc).

You basically have to pick between spending 5 years doing software “residency” and finishing the MD. Your drive in either will partially determine success. I agree with other commenters that you should find a way to do both, because realistically, I think you are facing a “grass is greener” situation and your drive may deflate when you realize that.

Also, at the end of the day, additional loans will impact your happiness over your career. Being poor is not fun.

Eh, why not? You don’t seem like too serious of a person anyway. You just made it all the way to 28 pursuing medicine and didn’t realize the commitment necessary for it until a decade in. Okay, fine, mistakes happens. Sure, waltz into software development too, get you a bootcamp seat, take some Courseras. You’ll face the same level of competition in this field too, everyone’s jacked up on Adderral, just like in med school. It’s not a cake walk anywhere you go.

But you don’t seem serious, so this is about as serious as an answer I’m willing to give. There’s 100 other egotistical people swapping over to this profession mid career too, it’s just as cut throat. Trust me on this. Ageism is the last of your concerns. There’s probably someone older than you that’ll wipe the floor with you if you think this is an easy way out.

You’ll be back here in two years lamenting about how hard Leetcode is.

> I do have a lurking fear there is some truth to that, and that I'll never fit in at this stage in my life.

Eh, I'm in my early 40s FWIW and I don't worry about these things. I meet people of all ages and walks of life who are working in software. However, if you are wanting to work for some flashy start-up or some hipster design shop, then I suppose I can see how that might skew your outlook...but that's not exclusive to only the software world.

Also, keep in mind that the 20, 30 year olds of today will become 40, 50+ year olds soon (time flies!). Since you are 28 now, by the time you reach your 40s, there will be even more middle-age engineers and greybeards running around.

> if I am going to be discriminated against just because of my age then I don't think it is worth it.

...another thing to keep in mind is that age discrimination is illegal, even in the US.

Like others have said, I'd consider the route of doing both if you can. Medicine as the day job and CS in your spare time, over time you'll carve out a niche at the intersection of both. Both industries are obviously not going away anytime soon, so actually you'll be in a strong position.

If it's of use, I'm older than you, and studying CS in my spare time and my day job is not writing code. I'm starting to carve out a niche for myself, plus I simply enjoy building things with code.

I'd be cautious of the advice of 'doing what your heart wants', I think much better advice is do what is at the cross section of what you are good at, what people are willing to pay your for, and if possible what you enjoy.

In my company we recently hired a 45yo and he did work a lot more than me a 30yo. We are also hiring a 55yo. It will depend if you fit the job and how motivated are you

As older I get I feel I have to work harder to keep myself motivated and keep looking for the right position/area to work in. It is very easy to just get comfortable, get stale, feel everything like it is moving too fast, and loose interest

In general I think it is true that there is some discrimination, not in all companies. But because there are so many opportunities you might just have to look a bit more

And you can definitely have the upper hand for mixed jobs: biology specialist for data analysis; automated testing for a medical app; consultant on ML training for disease detection. And probably most health related companies

1. Finish your MD, having that alone will open doors for you. 3rd year sucks but 4th isn’t hard, it’s a 1 year moat/time suck. Just finish.

2. Don’t shit the bed on your STEP 2 - Keep your doors open.

3. Consider doing 1 year of prelim in medicine or surgery if you don’t want to do a full residency. With 1 year of experience you’ll likely find out a lot of problems in healthcare that have tech solutions. Right now as a MS you don’t really know the problems and can’t create something to solve them. And a 1 year prelim allows you to work in emergency clinics as an MD if money gets tight in your other career.

Several years into my aerospace engineering degree (age 21) I realized I had little interest in my chosen discipline (I'm 54 now). I was spending much of my free time on the computer and when I started to flounder someone I loved and respected pointed out the obvious, and I changed majors.

Admittedly it would be harder for you. But I would point out that CS has the most value when paired with real knowledge in another discipline. At Texas A & M in the 80's, CS was one of the only disciplines to have a minor - I assume because they, too, realized it needed good pairing. I got my CS degree in 2 years by doubling up the required classes (and by already having sufficient electives).

My first job further makes this point. I was fortunate to sneak into Steve Jobs NeXT Computer. I was surprised that CS majors were actually in the minority. The head of software at NeXT (and Apple before), Bud Tribble, was a former MD (his wiki is sparse, unfortunately - otherwise might have helped). My best friend in engineering was a biology major.

A final source of inspiration might be the "Sunscreen Song (everybody's free)" with the lyrics, "The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't".

I think there is time for you, and if you focus on embracing your gained education instead of replacing it, you could have a very interesting career.

As for young engineers, they are overrated. I was terrible (though prolific) at 30. At NeXT I had several mentors in their 40s and 50s. For most of us proficiency has to be earned. I feel like I'm finally there (with maybe 5-10 years to spare). Ageism does exist though - I do think it's hard to change jobs at this age. Mostly because I think hiring managers are confused when interviewing people with more years and experience than themselves.

Having said all that, I do feel like a long career focused on engineering has been a little dehumanizing. I sometimes wonder if I had satisfied my logical brain with something like a medical career, maybe I would feel a stronger connection to my fellow humans. But there again, maybe you can find a great balance by straddling the fence.

In any case, good luck!

There's a lot one can do with medical-domain knowledge that's not doable by those without field-based training. This can include collaborating with developers as you can speak their language to some degree if you have done that kind of work.

But in general, people aren't too old if they can competently do the work they're asked to do. Design, develop, debug, test. Whether or not this is buried by ageism is another matter. But then, one could say that age is irrelevant when dealing with those who can't deliver.

Why not both? There's a board certification in clinical informatics where the current opportunities are endless. My partner is over 40, board certified in CI and anesthesia, and makes damn good money. There are plenty of opportunities for people who enjoy problem solving in both medicine and tech — plus, there's a whole lot less ageism.

I've worked with a number of technically-minded MDs in product design consulting in the medical space. A couple of interesting diagnostic products come to mind. They had enough of a foot in both spaces to come up with some really interesting ideas - Doesn't have to be one or the other.

For starters, this is not an easy position to be in. I'm posting this from a throw-away account so I can be maximally honest and transparent about my own choices. Please note that everyone's advice to others is often the advice _they_ wish they had been given, so take it with a grain of salt.

First, I have changed my career many times -- from a neurobiology PhD student to an electrical engineer to an AI startup CEO back to an applied math / ml postdoc and now a professor who works on bio-adjacent things. I'm pretty old for my field, and just getting started. There's a little bit of age discrimination (young hotshots are rewarded, which has a compounding effect) but it's thus far been ok. I have happily helped place students older than you, after a CS masters program, in successful tech-company-style jobs. So it is possible. I've also considered getting EMT training so I can better understand the technical challenges and market opportunities present in the emergency care space. So I might be envious of your position.

And medicine is hard. Incredibly hard, for-bullshit-reasons hard. MR had a nice piece https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/wh... "What's wrong with physicians?" in which a commenter talks about all the ways in which medicine is difficult, as a field. This often isn't fully appreciated by skeptics.

But there are _so many_ options for someone who both knows medicine and knows how to code. I've had friends in your position finish their MD and instead of doing a residence, go work at a medtech startup, or go get a CS masters and then do a medtech startup themselves, or go work on hard ML-and-AI style problems at a big tech company. It's all possible, and your domain knowledge is incredibly useful.

HN tends to have a _lot_ of autodidactic people who have self-taught themselves a lot, and there's sometimes (not always!) a tendency to discourage or disparage domain expertise. We see this in a lot of tensorbro-trying-to-reinvent-radiology startups. Your knowledge is valuable. You can know where the problems are. You can know what the state-of-the-art solutions are. You can know how to fix them, and what opportunities exist.

So if you still like medicine, as a domain, or have any interest in developing that part of your skills, I highly encourage you to explore how you can use your CS skills in that context. It's going to be valuable for a long time.

One of the biggest challenges facing American medicine is going to be how to deliver more care with less labor. We forget that doctors in the US are very well-compensated (especially specialists) and that we have an oncoming wave of retirees that are going to massively strain the medical system. Thus there's tremendous interest in using technology to help make medicine more efficient. This is a massive market opportunity.

I'll give you an analogy: when people think of "automation", they often think of analogs to Amazon's (vaporware) drone delivery. Or even Amazon's kiva warehouse robots. Or Amazon's (not ideal) recommendation system. They forget the tremendous impact that basic automation like the checkout scanner had on retail.

Much of modern medicine is still in need of its automated checkout counter. We want AI radiologists and robot doctors, but we still can't get people to take their pills on time. So much of electronic medical record data is still complete and total crap. So much care is unnecessarily delivered in extremely expensive hospitals.

In short, if you can try out your coding skills a bit (consider a summer internship, or talking to people in the CS department who are collaborating with doctors, or the like) then I think you're going to have tremendous opportunities, regardless of age.

Finally, finishing med school shows that, as Joel famously said, you're both smart _and_ get things done.

Around 40 to 50 in my personal experience. I don't believe the industry will ever get less ageist, please suggest me what other roles I can pivot to. I plan to stay an IC for a good 2 decades more maybe but after that I will do something else one way or another.

I am 66 I have 8 years of Python,PyTorch, sci-kit learn and TensorFlow Experience I have 7 years of C# .Net Standard 2.x, and 4.x I still get contracts, and upwork, but very few interviews for full time work Most Full Time work escapes me

Beware of HN bias. Lots of people here work at FAANG or hot startups in Silicon Valley, but these people are the exception. Most devs work on doing business software and business software development is just a repetitive low tier office job.

Where did Paul say that? this feels like the opposite of what he would say.

if your still waiting for a stack of magtapes, you, or the employer is too old.

beyond that, if you are one of the ancients, you can be indispensible, when an infrastructure must be redeployed, or code must be ported.

Do you have an email address to message at?

I've done both. Got a BS in Mathematics followed by an MS in computer Science on an NSF fellowship. I worked a total of 6 years in tech following undergrad before starting medical school.

Now I'm finishing a residency in Ophthalmology. There's no answer to your question and it's honestly a really hard call that depends mostly on you. Here are some bullet points.

1. When I compare myself to the salaries my peer group have made over the last 7 years, there's no question that medicine was a losing financial proposition by comparison. At this stage it's not clear whether that would be true for you. There was a post two days ago by a hardware guy who transitioned to software and has saved 2.6 million - he's a year older than me and pulling a salary that's comparable to mine after residence but without all the lost income and sacrifice.

2. I love to operate and the effect I can have on individual people's lives is unparalleled. My best days in medicine are as good or better than my best days in tech. However, my worst days in medicine are...really bad. Overall, waking up and going to work everyday was much easier as an engineer. This is mostly driven by the amount of busy work that's built into clinical medicine. Constantly clicking through boxes, documenting defensively so you're not worried about getting sued. I'd estimate over 80% of my time at work is of this type.

3. The things you're hearing about corporatization and loss of physician autonomy are not overblown. Physicians are treated as replaceable widgets to be squeezed for every dollar. Waking up and having to see 40, 50, 60 patients a day in clinic is miserable. I'm introverted by nature but I am a competent actor so my patients like me. I sincerely enjoy the interactions, but it can be draining in a way that engineering was not. I didn't think hard enough about this when choosing a specialty. The trend of replacing physicians with not-as-good but good enough "providers" to lower costs isn't going away.

4. Don't underestimate the drudgery of software engineering. I don't have a ton of experience in this capacity, but maintaining a well-curated code base is about 20% problem solving and "Aha!" moments and 80% scut work. Sitting in a room all day looking at a computer screen is not right for some people.

5. This is closer to the answer to your original question. You're focused on age but...I think you need to be honest with yourself about you potential to succeed in a tech career. The field has exploded over the last couple of years and there are tons of people without a lot of natural affinity sort of grinding through a CS degree to get a job, but I suspect that the people who are getting FAANG positions are the 'naturals.' I suspect that most of the people on hacker news took the AIMEE or did USMO in high school, grew up building things, took graduate math/CS/physics classes as an undergraduate etc. This is very different from medicine where an average intelligence and a LOT of work can put you in the top of your class. If you aren't a 'natural' I'd say the answer to your question is a clear NO.

Conversely, if you feel like a fundamental part of your nature is not being fulfilled then I'd suggest you seriously consider just finishing the MD, getting through some kind of cushy intern year (i.e. a transitional year) and then trying to reboot your skills.

6. There's a LOT of variability in you day-to-day in medicine, have you looked at Radiology, Pathology or Occupational Medicine --> Bioinformatics (fellowship). These are mostly no-patient-contact specialties that have a lot of opportunities for innovation and tech.

As for the people who are suggesting you find some kind of job at the intersection of tech and medicine...I'm open to suggestions. I haven't found a lot of great opportunities but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

There's no specific cut-off point. But it is beyond dispute that ageism is very real (if perhaps overstated as a career obstacle).

The thing is, it's a nuanced issue (and rather different from other discriminatory -isms). What it comes down to is the fact that most mid- or senior-level SWE work (in the usual sense of "senior" these days) is pretty menial -- in that your day-to-day existence usually boils down to "Go do this feature here, clean up that mess there, maybe architect a little box there, please, while the adults chart the company's direction and make the big bucks, or at least enjoy an uptick in status."

One way or another you will definitely want to "graduate" from this box, ideally around age 40 or so. This doesn't mean you'll have to stop coding. But you should ask yourself, intently, where you want to be in 10-15 years time[1]. This might be Staff or Principal Engineer (at a company where this title actually means something), which is definitely different from the mid-career role. Or analogously, becoming a consultant (with public presence, articles published and so forth). Or becoming a founder or starting a company. Or moving to a totally different profession you've always loved (teaching or running a restaurant say... or running off and joining a band).

Or... telling the world to fuck itself, and more specifically, the perceived imperative to shape our lives around the meritocratic ideal. And just stay in the mid-career SWE role for as long as you want to keep working. Which in my view is perfectly fine - provided you're willing to accept the ceiling in terms of salary level (and status) that comes with it. You'll still be doing better financially (and with far less stress) than most academics, public school teachers, and a whole lot of other valuable and socially useful people.

But to get back to the original subject: this is exactly where (a good chunk of) the "ageism" in the industry comes from. It's not that they see 40+ types as out of date, too slow, or too inflexible, or just too uncool to "have a beer with" (though some of course do). But rather it's an unspoken feeling they have (perhaps not even consciously recognized) that says: "Shouldn't this person have moved on to something bigger and better by now? Do I want to be doing this stuff for another 20 years? Hell no!"

So yeah, one way or another, ageism is definitely a thing. It's not a hard cliff though, by any stretch. And at the end of the day it all depends on how you play it. If you play it right, your age can even work to your advantage.

Many people have told me "do what your heart wants" but they don't wake up with my debt.

I agree that "do what your love" is mostly crap. A better question to ask yourself is: What kind of work can I see myself living with / not burning out on beyond age X (assuming I'm not fully independent financially by then)? Which is of course adjacent to the question of work that "love" but is really more one of work you at least like and which is sustainable for you in terms of overall working conditions.

[1] Yes, exactly like the BS interview question (expressed usually in terms of 5 years of course). Which is actually a really good question to be asking one's self, now and then. The reason it becomes BS in the interviewing context is that you're never allowed to give an honest answer.

Flagged for ageism.

This will probably be an unpopular take, but 28 (your exact age) is "too old" to work in tech as a software engineer. Evidently, if it wasn't too old to work in tech, you wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. You even said that Paul Graham said not to hire engineers over 30. That gives you what? 2 years max to find a job, get settled in, and make a career out of it? Pshh. You'd obviously be behind others who started right out of college, as you mentioned.

This post sounds to me like sympathy-baiting. As if you want others to assuage your doubts. You won't get that from me. If you're willing to listen to Paul Graham, you should also be willing to listen to me - another stranger whom you've never met. So let me bite the bullet and be the first one here to discriminate against you just because of your age. YOU'RE TOO OLD! Hate to break it to you, but you will never be able to make a living doing programming as a software engineer. Just give it up right here and now.