This post and its comments warm my soul. At 33 and a decade in, I’ve only recently started to worry about what the tech world in general is telling me:
That I have to become a manager.
That I won’t always code until I retire.
That I won’t be welcome in the workforce in my later years.
All of those things frighten me! I love programming, and I want to be doing it in my 60s, happily. Glad to see that people are.
Do not worry. Your every day startup may not (because their teenager culture), but the enterprises of the world love you. I am now crossing in my mid forties, being a paper dragon (architect) I still outperform the waste majority of developers in our groups. I have their respect and they have mine.
However, idle you never can be. Because being of age and not being able to run with the pack is bad. Luckily, it is not the framework of the day but more the soft skills which make the difference.
That I have to become a manager. That I won’t always code until I retire. That I won’t be welcome in the workforce in my later years.
All of those things frighten me! I love programming, and I want to be doing it in my 60s, happily. Glad to see that people are.