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It's a scene from a horror film, midsommar, where the characters are studying a cult. The older cult members are committing suicide rather than age in the scene.
The joke is software engineers kill themselves before they can get old. I cannot speak to whether or not they actually do
Hi, older SWE here, the sun came up and juiced my battery, so I'm using my self-allotted internet time for the day to respond and say it's actually a 100 mile radius.
I used to like people. Then I met a bunch (world travel), a barrel (military), and a 'basket' (completed military service just prior to 9/11; now, cannot unsee 'asleep' masses) of them.
Turns out, the whole barrel spoils the good apple.
everything within the tech community has been commodified, so anyone working in the industry has to make the company lots of money otherwise they'll be let go. The way things are going, they might be let go regardless and replaced with bad AI models because it'll save the company money now.
Similarly, we don't own any "smart" devices, our locks are all mechanical and we keep a loaded shotgun next to the printer just in case it gets any ideas.
This reminds me of a software engineer’s LinkedIn profile showing they worked at Microsoft for 22 years but then became a goose farmer in 2023. Wherever they are, I hope they’re doing well.
Can confirm. One of my professors used to be a software engineer. Worked for Microsoft for a few years while still in college and spent 15 years at Google on the Gmail team.
Around his 45th birthday he decided he just couldn’t do it anymore and took a part-time gig teaching one class a semester and he got really into wood working and he and his wife are trying to open a commercial distillery within the next few years.
Scotch for this old Engineer and Analyst... And living far enough out in the country where you cannot see the neighbors or other lights at night at all - is totally worth it!
lol I have friends who are like you say. They want to do woodworking or live in the hills or something just as soon as they have enough money to tell the industry to fuck off
I guess I’m weird that I like technology. I want to keep doing tech when I’m old just not in the rat race.
Not a software engineer but an automation and controls systems engineer. Work lately has really been pushing me to live off grid and never touch a computer again. Today was bad enough I started making plans.
Can confirm. I bought a project car that’s older than I am, learned how to make furniture, and then moved to the middle of nowhere to live in a converted barn. 🤣
Ha! I'm not drinking whiskey, but when I turned 50 I did gain a fascination for mechanical things (cuckoo clocks, pendulum clocks) rather than digital.
I wish, my 401k match is on a vesting schedule at my current company, whomever thought that the company match has a vesting schedule is an absolute fucking asshole. I think about that any time I am working past 8 hours a day as a software engineer who wants to kill himself in the workplace.
> The joke is software engineers kill themselves before they can get old. I cannot speak to whether or not they actually do
Imagine having a mind that craves order and structure. Imagine spending that time developing the skills that allow you to solve a broad range of problems. Now, over the course of your career, you are going to witness that the problems you solve don't matter if there is a single other human being involved in the process. For all of your abilities to solve problems, the one thing that you cannot solve is human ignorance cascading into chaos.
All you have learned, is that your "abilities" aren't actually abilities at all. They are failed coping mechanisms for a crippling intolerance baked so deep into you that you shaped your entire life around it. You now have the ability to recognize every single minor annoyance around you, and devise the solution. You also now have the wisdom to realize the pointlessness of solving them. The one thing you cannot do, however, is stop seeing them.
I farm the best greens - it is true - turned forty and all of a sudden it’s legal now- I been waiting my whole life to grow it legally and. It is the time - I was too busy growing the healing of the nation to be sad about not having a software job anymore
Orrrr got promoted into management and hate their lives, frequently daydreaming about the good old days where they could just put their heads down and rock out some code instead of prepping for annual employee reviews.
thats genuinely so relieving to hear!
I am doing my masters in computer science atm and work part time as a full stack developer, and honestly i dont see myself in a management position, it just doesnt sound interesting to me.
However the whole AI und job market situation is scaring me a lot
If you’re in software, you will for sure be in unexplored territory. But don’t give in to the fear. The AI tools are excellent and may deprive you the skill building of solving problems yourself.
People will hire you even if AI is heavily invested in, the more efficient tools lead to more engineering positions, not less.
I expect it will be harder to enter because the tools are prolific and you have to use the tools RIGHT and still know all the fundamental and new technologies.
Treat AI tools as a workflow and type optimizer, but don’t let it do your thinking. Your value comes from your brain. Know the code you want to see first the tell the tool. If you need it to do research with you, treat it like google and read its sources and interview it till you truly understand.
Also 49. I was a manager for 4 years but escaped after our company lost the support contract. Now, I'm back to development. I'll do it as long as I stay employed. It often feels like a spinning top with the vicissitudes of contracts and economy so I never feel completely safe.
59 and trying to hang on until I can retire. But yeah, I expect I don't have much longer before I get replaced by a younger, cheaper, even more expendable person prompting Claude 24/7.
There will be no free time for the few remaining software engineers. It will be a culture of, why aren't we done yet and how long can it take?
Don't worry, if it's anything like my company they'll be offering great sounding early retirement/severance packages.
And when nobody takes them up on them the pinks slips will come starting with the highest paid engineers.
AI is coming for you too. And it doesn't matter how comfortable or "vital" to the company you think you are. The accountants don't know or care. They just see you getting paid more than somebody with the same title so you're a burden on the financial books.
That's funny cause I work in F100 company (oil) as a software engineer, and I have people over 60 in the team and the average is definitely over 40 in our department and while I hated the idea of working here now I really hope I will just coast as an SWE until ~50 in this company and then retire.
Really? It is something constantly told around me and I am 5 years in my career
And it is actually common in yhe 3 companies I have worked for, software engineers tend to burn out due to the pressure and complexity, and change roles to managers or tech leads/CTO that aren't in direct contact with the day to day software, and are more a figure to represent and to fall on (basically more soft skills related)
I think this joke is almost dated by now, there's almost been a ladder pull in the job market favouring experienced programmers over younger ones (which I am benefitting from)
In the 2010s, it seemed like companies were favouring hiring a bunch of young programmers and recent graduates for cheap, and, being part of that cohort, I felt like my career had an expiry date where I would become too expensive and old compared to a recent grad who they could pay less and get to grind for longer hours. Now, I feel like they are only hiring people with 10-15 years experience or they are not increasing headcounts at all, just relying more and more on agents wrangled by teams of senior and staff engineers. But even in the pre-AI 2020s, I think companies started recognizing that small teams of senior engineers can outperform large teams of junior engineers lead by hierarchy of team leads and managers, and hiring started to favour senior engineers / they stopped hiring hacker school attendees, recent grads etc. My friends that graduated in 2022 experienced an absolutely abysmal job market, but most of my old coworkers and classmates stayed employed during that period.
All of the software engineers at my current company (a startup) are between the age of 35-50. Interestingly, our sales team (minus the VP) and implementation engineers are all between the age of 22-27. Of course this is just anecdote, but it's been my experience.
Its a general engineering joke, that no one can be an engineer after 45. They can be a manager, but if you havent made it to managment by then, you're cooked.
My guess would be people dont want to pay the money for a senior engineer so they fire them and hire someone with less experience for cheaper. Happens in alot of fields unfortunately
If you're a software engineer working for a big company you either shift away from what your skillset is into management (or some weird Onboarding/Training/Technical expert grey area where you just keep your head down and hope no one notices you) or you just don't try to ever get a raise... or you get replaced with a fresh college grad you're expected to train before getting downsized.
Most of the old guys I know move into sales/sales adjacent for way more money as long as they can bullshit well. The Functional experts tend to stay put but those motherfuckers work 168 hr weeks to stay employed.
As a Tech guy, I absolutely hate technology. I dream of homesteading in Alaska or being stranded on a small island away from the Black Shakes. I started back when the internet was the Wild West/WarGames level. It was supposed to be the great equalizer of knowledge and equality. It was a place where ideas could flourish and be judged on their own merit.
It has turned into a Governmental Spy program that pushes ads and Russian bots to control the peasants.
Also, Porn. That last part turned out OK.
Actual ageing software engineer here, the answers are: (1) career progression tends to go to management; (2) they made enough to retire/fuck off early; (3) this field is unbelievably ageist and companies usually try to kick out high earners in favor of recent grads (unless they can be promoted to management, see #1).
(4) we grow weary fast. A lot of my most experienced colleagues and myself just want to start a farm or a beach club or a carpenter shop or something else. Many have already started
I'd like to reassure everyone, it's a natural process. At some point in their lives, they come home, have dinner, go to bed, and spin a cocoon like caterpillars. When they wake up in the morning, they've become project manager.
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u/link-navi 10h ago
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