Pay bands. Loss of the love/age discrimination. Hours/screw your stress.
Sorry... we don't understand what you do enough to warrant paying you 2x-3x what we pay the grads and we pay grads more than other starters. Pay the programmer more than execs or non-tech with big degrees?
There are also a bunch of folks that ride out the tech that they rode in on when they started. PHP? Classic ASP? COBOL? If you don't love to learn and adapt in both tech and culture, you won't know what the cool kids know nor will you fit well with their group to tell stories about pointers and punch cards.
At 40, those kids of yours are just getting better and better and you might be feeling guilty about missing out on parts of those first years. You might have also done the math on how much of your surplus value you, as developer, are pouring into the sales guys' gas guzzler... You are there when something fails. You are there cashing the checks that the sales people write beyond scope, budget, and/or time. You see that gals' work-life balance compared to yours and say, f-it.
Also, as the guy notes... StackOverflow is a self-selecting group. Which of these highly-paid, older programmers are trying to build up virtual street cred or answering surveys?
Sorry... we don't understand what you do enough to warrant paying you 2x-3x what we pay the grads and we pay grads more than other starters. Pay the programmer more than execs or non-tech with big degrees?
There are also a bunch of folks that ride out the tech that they rode in on when they started. PHP? Classic ASP? COBOL? If you don't love to learn and adapt in both tech and culture, you won't know what the cool kids know nor will you fit well with their group to tell stories about pointers and punch cards.
At 40, those kids of yours are just getting better and better and you might be feeling guilty about missing out on parts of those first years. You might have also done the math on how much of your surplus value you, as developer, are pouring into the sales guys' gas guzzler... You are there when something fails. You are there cashing the checks that the sales people write beyond scope, budget, and/or time. You see that gals' work-life balance compared to yours and say, f-it.
Also, as the guy notes... StackOverflow is a self-selecting group. Which of these highly-paid, older programmers are trying to build up virtual street cred or answering surveys?
Damn. What am I doing here, now? Gotta go.