This is one of the biggest concerns I have as an aging developer.
When I was younger, I could focus on the craft of software engineering, but as I age, I feel like I have to branch out my skill set as sort of a safety net to ensure that I'm still desirable.
My one comfort is that my network is vast compared to when I was a 20something, and now when I look for a new job, I just ask my network and the recommendation they give is usually strong enough to get me in the interview room.
"This is one of the biggest concerns I have as an aging developer."
As an aside, it is interesting how we sample a demographic at a point in time and then think that's the perpetual state. For instance when I was a teen, gaming was dominated by my age group. Being an adult that gamed was rare. As I aged the average age of gamers moved up with me. Now I drop in a game of pubg and almost everyone is late 20s to 40s.
The same thing has happened in software development. I was in a massive wave of the expansion of software development as a career, and at the time it was seen as a young person's game (and was naturally dominated by the very young being a new field largely with new positions). As the years passed the average age inexplicably moved higher. It trends down somewhat as new generations joined in, but being a developer in your 40s was incredibly rare 20 years ago. Now it's incredibly common.
But some of the stereotypes in both still hang around. In the same way that we chuckle about "old people" not understanding technology (e.g. "VCR blinking 12:00"), because many grew up before technology was so prevalent. But now I would make no premature assumptions about the knowledge or capabilities of a 50 year old or a 25 year old.
Well alternatively you could get a corporate job, stay there for a long time, and use your position of seniority to block anyone from using technology you haven't learned about ;)
This is why corporate standards in 2019 should address how systems integrate into the rest of the company, and not how they are implemented. The history of the past 2 decades bears this out.
As I age, I feel like I have to branch out my skill set as sort of a safety net to ensure that I'm still desirable.
Yeah, that's the thing: the compulsion to learn stuff not because it's good technology, has staying power or even helps you solve a particular problem... but because it helps you look like you're young and "with it", and ...
What’s the problem with that? One of my former manager is in his late 50s. He started developing in the mid 90s after leaving the military. He self demoted after his kids graduated and now he’s a full stack React developer working with Azure.
I’m in my mid 40s and I’m constantly looking at the jobs that are out there and making sure that I’m keeping up with the latest tech stack. It’s not like I could still get a job programming in my first language - 65C02 in the 80s or my first professional job writing C on DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes.
I don't know. On the one hand branching out could be a good thing if you can use your experience as a positive. On the other you end up competing with people who have done nothing else through high school, university and thier first job.
I think being at the center of two skillsets (software + domain knowledge, development + sales, etc) is great because you're competing in a smaller pond (fewer folks have the combo than either skill alone). It also means you can apply knowledge from each area to the other.
When I was younger, I could focus on the craft of software engineering, but as I age, I feel like I have to branch out my skill set as sort of a safety net to ensure that I'm still desirable.
My one comfort is that my network is vast compared to when I was a 20something, and now when I look for a new job, I just ask my network and the recommendation they give is usually strong enough to get me in the interview room.