I think it depends a lot on the industry, a young SF based Rails / Django / based startup? I hardly see them hiring a 40 years old with kids that will ask for a salary higher than the CEO. A front end UI developer with knowledge of the latest Ember / Anguler / React / whatever they come up with next front-end tech? Perhaps they are more likely to find a fresh graduate (or just a self taught hacker who just rocks at HTML CSS and JavaScript) that is in their early 20's
But in big companies (Amazon, Google, Twitter) in enterprise software companies, banks, medical tech, finance, I think it's not that uncommon to find 40 year old developers. Most of the developers in my company average at way above 30. And we have a couple of engineers above 50. All of them are pretty kick ass Java developers and they all get tons of unsolicited recruiter spam.
(Maybe I'm delusional or in denial, or perhaps this is just the difference between industries, but I think that if you WANT to still do it while you are 40, and you keep yourself sharp, just like doctors have to keep up every year with the latest developments in medical research to stay relevant, then I think you can do it till you retire)
I think the reason many drop out of coding is that it is very time consuming to keep up, and some may want sometimes a less mentally demanding daily routine. Managing a team of engineers can be tough, but it's somewhat less mentally and intellectually strenuous and energy hungry as coding. Coding takes a lot of focus and sharpness, and sometimes it's simply hard grunt work, people sometimes get tired of it and want to move on to management (or being a "solution architect") or even product management.
I think the problem is that the 40 year olds chose on their own to do less coding at some point, and more management / IT / architecture. (e.g. the less good developers, those who don't pass the sort from 100 to 1 but still manage to land a job, eventually understand it's not for them and move on to other, not less important roles)
"I hardly see them hiring a 40 years old with kids that will ask for a salary higher than the CEO."
This preconceived notion that a manager or CEO must earn more than their employees doesn't make much sense. It's just a status game. If that developer (regardless of their age) has skills and experience that the company needs, and those skills are harder to find in the job market than management skills, it makes sense to pay them a higher salary.
Nobody questions the fact that baseball players and movie stars and investment bankers are paid several times more than the president of the U.S., so why shouldn't developers who are in high demand be able to make more than a CEO?
> But in big companies (Amazon, Google, Twitter) in enterprise software companies, banks, medical tech, finance, I think it's not that uncommon to find 40 year old developers.
I think there's a bit of survivor bias. More interesting are the stories of someone who's not at one of those large or old-school companies. There's a bunch of skills (MFC, Flash, microcontrollers) that used to define 95% of someone's job, and are no longer relevant.
But in big companies (Amazon, Google, Twitter) in enterprise software companies, banks, medical tech, finance, I think it's not that uncommon to find 40 year old developers. Most of the developers in my company average at way above 30. And we have a couple of engineers above 50. All of them are pretty kick ass Java developers and they all get tons of unsolicited recruiter spam. (Maybe I'm delusional or in denial, or perhaps this is just the difference between industries, but I think that if you WANT to still do it while you are 40, and you keep yourself sharp, just like doctors have to keep up every year with the latest developments in medical research to stay relevant, then I think you can do it till you retire)
I think the reason many drop out of coding is that it is very time consuming to keep up, and some may want sometimes a less mentally demanding daily routine. Managing a team of engineers can be tough, but it's somewhat less mentally and intellectually strenuous and energy hungry as coding. Coding takes a lot of focus and sharpness, and sometimes it's simply hard grunt work, people sometimes get tired of it and want to move on to management (or being a "solution architect") or even product management.
I think the problem is that the 40 year olds chose on their own to do less coding at some point, and more management / IT / architecture. (e.g. the less good developers, those who don't pass the sort from 100 to 1 but still manage to land a job, eventually understand it's not for them and move on to other, not less important roles)