Old-School Developers Are Vanishing from Tech – The Reason Will SHOCK You!

The tech market is experiencing a quiet exodus of older software application designers, and the numbers reveal an unpleasant pattern. Once considered among the most safe and secure and rewarding occupations, software application engineering now appears to have an integrated expiration date. Research studies reveal that 7 out of 10 software designers are under the age of 35, while experts over 45 represent less than 6% of the labor force.

For designers in their 40s and 50s, the job market is becoming significantly unforgiving. Surveys reveal that tech workers over 40 take an average of three months longer to find brand-new employment, and more than 40% remain jobless for over 90 days. Even when they do safe and secure work, almost all earn considerably less than previously with only 10% matching their previous wages.
The reasons are complex but rooted in both culture and economics.

Employers argue that senior designers anticipate greater pay, while start-ups prefer more youthful hires who are less expensive, more versatile, and ready to work longer hours. But beneath these arguments lies an indisputable reality: age discrimination is real in tech. Market leaders like Mark Zuckerberg have enhanced the concept that "youths are simply smarter," and business cultures frequently prefer youth-driven characteristics.

As a result, lots of older developers are pressed out of technical roles and into management or out of the industry totally. The repercussions are clear: for lots of, software application advancement is no longer a long-lasting career, however a profession that becomes increasingly unsustainable with age.

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Comments

32 responses to “Old-School Developers Are Vanishing from Tech – The Reason Will SHOCK You!”

  1. @jeffwong1310 Avatar
    @jeffwong1310

    Mark Z actually means “Young people are cheaper to hire”.

  2. @elksalmon84 Avatar
    @elksalmon84

    The problem with most new coders (i wouldn’t call them developers and surely wouldn’t call them software engineers) is that they lack technical knowledge, technical way of thinking, technical culture and experience. Older devs are geeks, who had experience with computers since early childhood.Most yound coders have never seen a computer in their life. They don’t know how it’s working. Remember that day in life of tweitter programmer video. Yeah, that’s typical. They got few months of courses and then screaming – i’m a junior dev! No, to be a junior you need at least 10 years of experience. Results are deleterious. Everything they making and remaking is significantly worse in functionality, quality, capability, accessibility, usability and stability. And Microsoft is a prime example of that.

    1. @yuvrajsingh15823 Avatar
      @yuvrajsingh15823

      I think you have knowledge of what actually means to be developers.
      Is the there any method of guide you would suggest for who want to br real developer, with having to put the effort. New graduate.

    2. @drchamp1902 Avatar
      @drchamp1902

      Agreed, most devs these days don’t seem to understand how memory works and how to use it properly in their software. The good old days of colleges teaching assembly are gone I think

  3. @RogerMKE Avatar
    @RogerMKE

    I retired earlier this year from software development, and personally never had the issues mentioned in this video. For me, the trick was to always keep my skills up to date and maintain good relationships with the managers whose budgets were funding me. Experience has value, but sometimes you need to show people.

    1. @bmc868 Avatar
      @bmc868

      Yes be a good buddy with the boss that’s better than an MIT degree….

  4. @alexandernesteruk5158 Avatar
    @alexandernesteruk5158

    I am a 30 years old .NET developer and I work for a startup in the UK. Average age of devs in our team is about 47

    1. @oldgraycoder Avatar
      @oldgraycoder

      62 and still at it. No one knows or wants to know the older systems. I keep up enough to convert as well. So far AI hasn’t helped with that.

    2. @markbogan7869 Avatar
      @markbogan7869

      In truth, experience is what makes for solid code that actually works. Youth and energy is important, but that young engineer has to work all of those long extra hours because they lack the experience their seniors have attained through decades of trial and error. In the end businesses get what they pay for and what they deserve; code that breaks (ala Microsoft, purveyors of broken crap with the willingness to cram it down everyone’s throats), Apps that just totally suck (aka Instagram, when you absolutely need to not be able to locate a feature that you stumbled on by accident yesterday), and there’s always those big teck losers that repeat their old features over and over while getting worse with each iteration because they can’t figure out where they fit in (dada Intuit, who desperately wants to be considered as a serious solution but still always ends up sitting at the little kids table) etc, etc, etc. Don’t fall for this Silicon Valley youth only crap. Your company and your teams need experience in all departments to build and run tech right!!!!

    3. @LtNikhil Avatar
      @LtNikhil

      If you are 30, avg age is 47, there are atleast 17 guys above age of 47😅

    4. @alexandernesteruk5158 Avatar
      @alexandernesteruk5158

      ​@@LtNikhildon’t know if it is a mystery to you – not everybody in a startup is an actual developer

  5. @ItsTristan1st Avatar
    @ItsTristan1st

    These same young developers cannot even write a simple hash table most of the time. My current place of employment has a team of 14 devs for the embedded part of the system. The company pays well to ensure upper tier staff. The output of that team is about that of 3 people. The young devs make more mess than anything else so have to be restricted to simple tasks like scripting. After about 5 years, the one young(ish) dev is now solid. What have they saved?

    The real problem is too many MBAs. In fact, even one MBA is too many.

    1. @only2sea Avatar
      @only2sea

      Like younger generations of our ancestors couldn’t climb trees. What we needed was food and safety.

  6. @lyl3645 Avatar
    @lyl3645

    The problem is with management who doesn’t understand how to evaluate employees’ skillsets.

  7. @brianschuetz2614 Avatar
    @brianschuetz2614

    I’ve been in software development since the late 1990s. I’m close to retiring (I’m nearly 60). I plan to do something other than software development after retiring. I don’t want to stop working. I just want to do something different in IT. I’m not sure what direction my future will go, though, but I’m trying to educate myself in other areas. I know that whatever I end up doing, I will be taking a cut in pay, which is why I’m waiting until I can retire with a full pension.

    1. @archiealvarado8831 Avatar
      @archiealvarado8831

      They said that if you want to be rich you have to know how to code. But there you are. Enjoy life to the fullest.❤❤❤

    2. @Roboprogs Avatar
      @Roboprogs

      60, same boat. Tired of cleaning up the messes.

  8. @prashanthb6521 Avatar
    @prashanthb6521

    This is why modern software is often of lower quality and bloated. Software engineering requires experience not just knowledge of tools.

    1. @julies5085 Avatar
      @julies5085

      And “care and empathy” too. Most companies don’t care

    2. @gammalgris2497 Avatar
      @gammalgris2497

      You shouldn’t use subpar services/ software which increases the pressure to cut costs.

    3. @tiger_96_ Avatar
      @tiger_96_

      so many US pharma companies shifted their gcc in Hyderabad India , Sanofi, Eli Lilly, Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, McDonald’s & many more

  9. @Websitedr Avatar
    @Websitedr

    No old school developers are just making their own business now they are not going to let an employer decide their future anymore.

  10. @rex25k Avatar
    @rex25k

    Guess the industry forgot this thing called TECHNICAL DEBT. This explains the high rate of project failure.

  11. @gammalgris2497 Avatar
    @gammalgris2497

    Continuously reinventing the wheel is driving costs. Being young, naive, highly motivated and cheap doesn’t make software and software maintenance cheaper. Repeating the ever same errors doesn’t make things cheaper too. Being caged in a high pressure environment and ever growing complexity will deter most people from thinking about the treadmill they are in. “Move fast and break things” is ignoring issues an idea/ product brings with it. Like building a factory and offloading the waste problem to others. Like building a prosthetic and leaving the customers in a support and maintenance limbo.

  12. @ian-nz-2000 Avatar
    @ian-nz-2000

    Not my experience. We have several software engineers over sixty in my team. Our experience is respected!

  13. @RubenMyBoy Avatar
    @RubenMyBoy

    I tried to retire at 58, I was asked to work two days a week overviewing programming code and advising the dev team, that lasted 6 months, I then returned full time that was 8 years ago. So this year I will retire for sure. I see young coders using AI, they tell me it speeds up the job! No wonder they get 40% of what programmers earn.

  14. @kristianlavigne8270 Avatar
    @kristianlavigne8270

    I’m half way through my software career at 51 years old and now taking a massage course to escape the madness of this field. Game Over 😅

  15. @SuburbanHomeowner Avatar
    @SuburbanHomeowner

    I’m a 70 year old developer for a defense contractor. Our company values experience. Our software is a lot more difficult than web programming. We still use C++, a powerful, precision language. I’d say the average age of our programmers is 50. We have quite a few new hires and all of them are impressive. But they don’t know anything about our business. There is also little AI penetration. AI code is based on public domain slop anyway.

  16. @SuburbanHomeowner Avatar
    @SuburbanHomeowner

    I’m a 70 year old developer for a defense contractor. Our company values experience. Our software is a lot more difficult than web programming. We still use C++, a powerful, precision language. I’d say the average age of our programmers is 50. We have quite a few new hires and all of them are impressive. But they don’t know anything about our business. There is also little AI penetration.

  17. @Tony-m5t Avatar
    @Tony-m5t

    As a retired software engineer who managed to remain current and active until my late 60’s, I really feel for the poor guys who get forced out. This kind of thing happens periodically. The last one was the outsourcing craze around the year 2000. Yes, Indian engineers are as good as American engineers and are cheaper, BUT they are also hard to communicate with and thereby insert a lot of bugs. The same thing is true with AI. AI seems to save a lot of money up front, but it also inserts a lot of bugs (seemingly at random) that will cost a fortune to fix. Management is always running after the bright and shiny solution to all their problems, but the reality is that there is no substitute for well-structured software written by experienced engineers.

  18. @indikaaruna4463 Avatar
    @indikaaruna4463

    It’s time for senior developers to come together and collaborate. We’ve spent years building expertise, delivering value, and creating quality software that shaped industries—often for the benefit of other companies.

    Now, with rapid changes and new trends disrupting the market, we should unite and stand strong. Our experience is not replaceable; it’s the foundation of the software world.

    New developers entering the industry also need to understand that this career, while exciting, can be unpredictable and often shorter than expected if we don’t protect its future together.

    And if we don’t have jobs, then we must take our skills and passion to create the best quality software for humanity.

  19. @dortmall Avatar
    @dortmall

    old-school developers can actually code

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