A lot of people have mentioned that being a coder is a youth career, which is frankly too arbitrary. But programmers lose their energy as they get older, and making the transition at the right time is a must. After the energy phase, it turns into making money with your experience or architecture. Go with the flow, whether you make the switch or not. I’ve seen and learned a lot of programmers of different ages over the past decade. Programmers basically end up in one of three places.


The first is to go through with the technology and become an expert in a certain area

This type of person’s commitment to technology transcends age, which has little effect on the aggressiveness of their technical interest. This explains why some foreign programmers can make it to 50,60 years old and still keep writing code. To be precise, it is not insist but continue to enjoy the process of writing code. This is called true love. The domestic software environment is far less mature than the ecosystem of European and American developing countries, so some people shout that programmers are worthless after 30 years old, making many older programmers feel as if they will be obsolete if they do not change careers. Experienced programmers in the programming of the older or have a lot of play in the field of space, some large system framework does not always count on some of the young people to do, in this not belittle the young programmer must do architecture, experienced programmers may be slightly lacking in terms of executive ability but years of accumulated to the code of intuition, all of this is and its precious.

At present, some large domestic companies have begun to pay attention to the use of old programmers, as the saying goes, the accumulation of the company level is not only wealth, or the accumulation of technical experience, technical experience left not only documents and codes, but also the initial technical personnel involved. Larger companies have begun to value the discovery and use of experienced programmers, not just to pass on technology but to represent the company’s culture.

Once saw a 50 or so old program to code is to reach the degree of obsession, at the same time the addiction is also very big, after writing code to smoke for a few minutes, and then hurry back to get the code to go, is a true love. This kind of old code farmer is impossible to transfer to another post, code is his life.

The second part of the transformation mode is to do technical management

Not completely divorced from technology, but related to technical problems or hands-on, this belongs to the direction most programmers choose. It’s not just about technology anymore, it’s about management. Because of a better technical matting, start management as a whole or more smoothly. And you don’t have to throw the technology away completely, which is a good way to soft-land. This is the direction most programmers prefer to go.

There are also some transferred to testing positions, many people may feel that this position is not important, the definition of testing in the super large companies is not only to be able to go to the software process, do the function of the homosexuality foundation, cooperate with the research and development. Real testers, who need coding skills, can direct development, even black box testing. Experienced test engineers, many of whom are senior engineers, have a profound understanding of the framework of the test software and know from which aspects to process the pressure test. To do testing post is also a good home, not a very shameful thing, to improve the quality of the whole test has a great role.

Third turn to do products, or directly change industries, or even directly choose to start a business

The number of people who choose to do this will be much smaller, basically leaving the technical post. There are also a lot of direct transfer within the company as project managers or product managers. Although it is an internal job transfer within the company, few of them are directly related to technology, and a relatively large role change is needed. And in the psychological span is still very large, everything is not based on programming technology, it is no longer me to do a good job of technology, module, everything is ok.

It’s basically a reset, a reset of your goals, a return to the mindset of the original.

Directly choose to start a business, the switch is more thorough, directly from a worker into a boss, at the same time, the pressure on the body will become greater. In addition, entrepreneurship is a low-probability event, and success needs to be in the right place at the right time, and there is also an element of luck involved, so there are very few people who can go this way. Most continue to return to what they used to be good at, and continue to shine. Entrepreneurial risk is among the highest and the hardest to transition.

Programmers are old that day, advance to prepare for their own, is every programmer to want to do things. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to continue your programming life or turn it around.