Age 40, never promoted, feeling like a failure and seeking advice.

I think working in tech has given you a skewed vision of what actual jobs pay.

You're getting vastly overpaid for your skillset & intelligence due to obscene demand for every little tech gadget and app in the marketplace. ie. an accountant with similar education (likely more), similar intelligence and similar math/stats etc. acumen would get 1/2 that. And you still complain. You're very lucky you're particular choice of career happens to be in a bubble right now.

You shouln't be thinking "why can't I get paid more and a better title than 110k" and switch your thinking too "I'm going to work as hard as I can and save as much as I can before the bottom drops and I'm scouring Indeed for jobs paying 1/2 that"

love this setup! wrote:

Real Obvi wrote:

The system is simply set up this way. Setting up a system to do better is the challenge. Of course, it is easy to throw out a few cute phrases but to actually make the world work better for most people is challenging.

I am right there with you. I do not appreciate the jab that I am just pissing into the wind talking about this stuff without a 10-point plan. I have plenty of thoughts on this subject (how to make a better system) but I did not think LRC is the place to discuss it. Because even when someone agrees with me, like you did, you couldn't resist positioning yourself as smarter than me (all while rehashing the same points). Gah, online forums.

I don't remember positioning myself as smarter than you. Even upon re-reading my post I am not sure where you get that from.

But anyway, yeah, "gah, online forums!"

In general (all industries) you have to work REALLY hard or be REALLY smart to make 100k+ in the USA (and insane in non-1st world countries).

In tech, since there is massive over demand and VC flowing to unprofitable companies (this WON'T last forever) you can be a little lazier and less intelligent and make the same amount of $ (ie. it's harder to make 100k as a lawyer, accountant etc. than a developer - thus, a good job choice for the moment but not for 5 or 10 years from now).

The VC $ will only flow for so long and with internet and web services becoming ubiqitous in the 2nd and 3rd world the barriers to entry for talent overseas are coming down.

Take it from a guy who was fairly lazy - made a couple million in tech - became jaded with the industry and now owns a running shoe store!

rojo wrote:

Hang Fire wrote:

I feel that I will soon become expendable and my age becoming a deal-breaker when I'm on the hunt for a new job. .

I'll let others answer your question but hope when they answer that someone can answer a related one that I have.

One of my good buddy's has the very same fear you do about getting new jobs now that he's 45+. Why is age so bad? Why would a company discriminate against old employees? Is it simply a straight ageism / prejudice or is it because the older employees have bigger salary demands?

As someone who worked for a fortune 500 out of college as a software dev and was in the top 10 individuals in creating code.. non-tech f500's discriminate on age... but it's to older people over younger. There were literally hundreds of Sr. Devs and more and more being added at my company and I didn't just plug away at my job to try to get promoted I straight up asked. Promotion to Sr was all about tenure even though I was contributing in both heads down work and higher architecture work. Now there were a few Sr Devs who were better at on or the other than me and thus deserved the title more. But yeah. Tech company's discriminate if you are old f500 non tech discriminate if you are young. Now this may be anecdotal but it seems pretty common to non-tech f500s in tech hearing from friends.

As for the OP's questions. Yeah if you want to be a manager you need to take action. Those that say an MBA will help are the issue with management in tech they got their title by not understanding or evolving with tech and think one of the easiest degrees to get is reason to be in management not actual coaching/motivating/just not demotivating their team with a base set of tech knowledge. Middle management seems to be all about trying to network with the next level and not make them mad so you might get promoted one day to director/Sr. Manager. (I am obviously cynical about my management lol over the past 4 years or so) but I am sure good middle managers do exist and there may be a few that even like it lol.

Not a ladder I am willing to climb at this moment so started my own consulting/SAAS company instead with a friend and gave myself a nice raise.

Dang you’re making solid money! I’ve been coaching now for over 18 years. While I’ve had my share of kids go to nationals, as well as represent their countries internationally, I just make over 27k. Trust me, it could be worse! ?

I'm not sure if I'm making poor decisions when choosing companies.

(early 40s tech guy here, currently working for big tech in a major metro. comp was in the $100k range in the mid 2000s at smaller tech companies, then went to $500k in the 2010s at big tech, now about $1.2m as a senior manager, still in big tech.)

The general way to get ahead in tech is to put yourself in the deepest pool possible and have no work-life balance, while relentlessly climbing inside the company you are in. While doing this, always be looking around and leveraging what you have into something potentially better - there is a shortage of software devs in the world, so you can usually level up on comp if it's really important to you.

The reason I pulled that quote of yours from above is that the key to maximizing your growth and comp in tech is to make sure you're in the right companies. This means tech-focused places where engineering drives the company. If you're a great dev at an insurance company, you will almost never do as well as if you're at an eng-focused company.

The other challenge for you is where you live. Your earnings are hard-capped in many parts of the US, but you also likely have a higher quality of life for it.

What this all comes back to is deciding what tradeoffs you want: if you want your earnings to go up, figure out how to get hired at a FAANG. If you want personal growth, find a place where you feel like the dumbest person in the room. Are you willing to move for it? Are you willing to take a year at (maybe) lower earnings to build your skillset? Are you willing to spend your nights and/or weekends getting better at something?

The one part of what you're saying that I don't buy much is the age side of it. I work with plenty of people who kill themselves to get ahead and earn a lot of money in the process. Some of them are 30, some are 40, and some are 50. In my experience, when someone says "I'm worried that company X won't hire someone who is 50", the unstated part is that a lot of 50 year olds don't want to work the extra hours and/or the stress that comes with the higher-paying jobs. Those who do fit in just fine. (As an aside: I'm not saying any of this is good/healthy, but in the late-stage-capitalism hellscape that corporate America is, it's what you get.)

I note you don't once say anything about enjoying your work, and I suspect that's the problem. Most software devs I know would comment about their love for the work etc, yet all you seem concerned about is promotion. So I suspect you are probably paid too much for your actual value, as you don't seem to care about the profession and likely going through the motions.

Find a role that you will actual love, and let the salary take care of itself. I'm 51 and a software dev , the idea of swapping to more management away from dev seems really weird.

I can show you what I mean. From that post:

repeats my understanding of the system back to me

The system is simply set up this way. Setting up a system to do better is the challenge. Of course, it is easy to throw out a few cute phrases but to actually make the world work better for most people is challenging.

It's this "yeah yeah I see it too, but you're just throwing out cute phrases

or who was the "cute phrases" comment about?

The people I promote are always the people with the most initiative. Maybe that isn't possible in your role.

I don't want to be negative or long winded. I am 38 years old married with 2 kids a motivated son who wants to run but his biological father yes he is my step son steps in with crap like I was a 4:54 miler.... 1600m runner.... I am a 4:04 miler and want to slap the taste out of his mouth as he is now 230 pounds myself after a heart attack at 32 is still a 165 and can break 5:00 in a mile now. However financial house hold income is $300,000+ a year did not stop me from throwing a work related tantrum the other day in which I ran outside and chucked my house across the street. 4 years ago I made $43k a year but because I am an a-hole and chew people out have promoted to management fast. Does this make me happy no I am stressed out frustrated and miserable will I continue to promote yes because work is my only competition. My wife and daughter hate me my wife brings in an additional $70k so our household is close to $400k. Man I am a little younger then you.... are you surviving are you providing, my thing is man just be happy there are days that I just don't want to wake up in the morning.

$110K in the Mid-West, you are doing extremely well and your money goes much further than the populated cities of the east and west coast.

Who cares if you have never been prompted. You seem to be steadily increasing your pay and having no trouble finding work.

What is there to complain about...?

love this setup! wrote:

I can show you what I mean. From that post:

repeats my understanding of the system back to me

The system is simply set up this way. Setting up a system to do better is the challenge. Of course, it is easy to throw out a few cute phrases but to actually make the world work better for most people is challenging.

It's this "yeah yeah I see it too, but you're just throwing out cute phrases

or who was the "cute phrases" comment about?

Oh, I see how you are reading that. Completely different than the intent upon writing.

There are always people on here who have all the answers. Usually followers of Ayn Rand or folks from the exact opposite end of the political spectrum. A few cute phrases from them and they think they have solved all the worlds problems - if only everybody else were not too dimwitted to understand their brilliance.

So, my comment about cute phrases was directed toward the usual suspects. It had nothing at all to do with you.

I'm a little younger and female, but I started experiencing age discrimination around my late 30s. I mean, recruiters have directly said it to me. I wonder why these people even call me about jobs if they're going to make my age a thing.

There are several aspects to this trend:

- Salary demands

- Potential health issues, that on average crop up starting around 40

- Perceived inability to adapt to change or learn new tools

- I will say my younger (20s, early 30s) colleagues have a lot more enthusiasm for work than I do at 41. I joke around that it's cute, but in reality it is what helps them get hired instead of me if we were to compete for the same role.

Now, I have rebuttals to all of the above. Nonetheless, I think with the declining birth rate and more people getting priced out of college (or just forgoing it because who wants to pay thousands for online school), I know there will always be someone who needs my skills. The main question for me is salary. At some point I'll have to take a pay cut. I can live with that.

The only sector that doesn't care is government, and well I did that but wanted to gauge my eyes out every day so I quit that nonsense.

I have been promoted in the past but not with my current company and for whatever reason now, I too feel sore about it. My friends too are making their way up with fancier titles, but I would say a majority of them work at smaller companies.

I don't have a solution for you. I just want to say that you are not alone.

I personally have focused on at least I get paid well and am employed when so many others aren't. I have friends, own my own home and (knock on wood) my health. I know this isn't the answer for everyone. I just know it helps me.

A bit of a tangent but my favourite story regarding age and experience:

nonary ant wrote:

Hang Fire wrote:

They just oversee the work of the Directors, Managers,

Director is a higher title than VP, isn't it?

A director is a management position, not the same as a member of the board of directors of a company. IME it's been under VP.

But titles can have very different meanings from place to place... as a VP at Amazon, you could be managing an organization of thousands and paid >$1M stock+cash, and as a VP at a bank you could be an individual contributor facilitating the collection and central disposal of trash receptacles for $(whatever a janitor gets paid) an hour. I'm not sure I'm exaggerating much.

OP,

Are you willing to put yourself in the mix by moving to SF or NY? I work in tech, not as a developer but in a technical operations role; I’m much less advanced in my career and I don’t consider myself especially smart or industrious, and you and I earn about the same. I’m just situated where the action is. That was a choice, for better of for worse, that you can make, if you want to. Do you want to?

Heck, post-COVID, a lot of these companies will be very open to remote work so you don’t necessarily need to leave your town. But, as another person wrote, you will need to join an eng-focused org. And that’s not necessarily FAANG — Etsy, Spotify, Netflix, Stripe, Stripe and Dropbox all pay engineers handsomely, as far as I know.

Start checking the monthly “Who’s Hiring” thread at news.yconbinator.com to get a sense of what’s out there.

Good luck, no matter what you choose. It’s ok to feel sad and demoralized at and about your work, lots of people do, especially this year. But you can change it up and join the fray — again, If that’s what you want.

(Meant to say “Slack and Stripe” rather than listing Stripe twice)

"history of jumping ship" is not THAT accurate, given the 2multiple 6-year periods of employment at the same place.

OP, Charity Majors had some good advice on this recently:

https://charity.wtf/2020/09/14/useful-things-to-know-about-engineering-levels

One question I have for you: when you say you've "never been promoted", what has that conversation looked like with your management? Or has there never been one?

You said,

"when it's clear when nobody is getting promoted around me, I jump ship and find new employment"

"I usually get good/great performance reviews but there is never talk of moving me up to any management role."

Are you in places where the only 'up' is into management, or do you WANT to move into management? If there hasn't been talk of going into management, why not? You can talk about that stuff - if you mention it in the right way, it could start them looking for roles for you, or evaluating you in a new light. If there is literally never any talk of it (rather than just an exaggeration), part of that is their fault for not asking what you want in your career progression. But part of it is up to you to help them understand you're interested.

Similarly for IC roles, too, at places with good higher tiers for individual contributors -- have that conversation, if you want to move to that 'next level'.

If you talk with them, you may if nothing else get interesting info about what they want out of you to be considered.

I'm not saying they will always be fully honest with you, but if you truly have no idea where you're at, and you haven't asked, have those conversations with your management.