Why do older programmers change careers?

I'm not sure how old I am. At the age of 43, I am still a programmer.

I have been engaged in this line since 1990. I have worked in traditional industries, worked in different positions in the IT industry, and served as the director of research and development in the promotion channel of programmers, but these can't bring me the pleasure of writing code. Finally, I returned to the post of programmer.

In China, there are not many people who are willing to wrITe code all the time, but in my opinion, it is not because of age, nor because of competition, mainly because of the career planning of China people and the survival pressure of IT enterprises.

Career planning in China

Now many training institutions and enterprises are talking about career planning.

The enterprise tells you that the promotion channel of our position is like this, Barabara. ...

This means that you can do this job, and in a few years, you can climb the ladder. ...

Well, no matter what the promotion channel is, you are a programmer at first, but climbing a few steps is definitely not.

Training institutions tell you: you must have a career plan and a life plan.

In my opinion, this is brainwashing: the core of their life plan is to "earn money hard and live a happy life", and then launch the corresponding career plan accordingly: work hard-> Get a higher position-> Make more money-> Work harder ...

If you believe this, then when a programmer is close to the bottleneck of personal ability or the bottleneck of career and industry and feels the pressure of breakthrough, he will consider jumping ship to find a direction that is easier to break through. Programmers who encounter this bottleneck are estimated to be mostly in the so-called "old age" range.

China's economy is in a high growth stage, which causes every family and everyone to constantly improve their income level to keep pace with it. On the one hand, this kind of life planning with "money" as the core vocabulary is very marketable; On the other hand, it also makes the survival pressure of China enterprises higher than that of other countries.

Survival pressure of IT enterprises

The changes in the world are accelerating, especially in the IT industry.

For enterprises, speed is profit, which is the opportunity to survive. In the early years, a popular phrase "fast fish eat slow fish" described this truth very vividly. In all industries, the competition is becoming more and more fierce, and IT enterprises will only get worse and worse.

Twenty years ago, a software development company could spend three to five years polishing a product; Ten years ago, this time was only one year; Now, it is shortened to a few months.

The IT industry demands higher and higher development speed, which can be improved from three aspects: increasing manpower, optimizing development process and squeezing manpower. For a specific IT enterprise, the first two have obvious limitations without business changes, so they finally fall into the third means: squeezing manpower.

When you think 996 is the reality of the programmer's world, the real reality is: in addition to 996, you have to be on standby at any time: the phone is always on, WeChat is always on pediatrics, and online search can find news that programmers change code on the roadside and subway at night. This squeeze on working hours is rare in other occupations. Therefore, programmers rarely have high work pressure.

For these two main reasons, programmers, especially those in China, are younger than other industries.

However, after getting rid of the economic pressure, most people still want to find a job or career they like to invest their energy and time. At this time, if they really love coder, they will return to this position again. In the stage of rapid economic growth, the conflict between enterprises and such people in working hours is difficult to reconcile, so such people are relatively few.

As the economic growth slows down, more and more older programmers will be active in the code industry.