Paul Tomblin wrote:

In a previous article, "William W. Plummer" said:

user wrote:

snip

Personally, I prefer working in IT, where the surest way to get
a huge pay increase is simply to threaten to quit. ;-)

Threatening to quit works until you are about 35 years old. Maybe a bit
longer if you walk on water. But later in life you can expect to be
pushed out in favor of younger, technology-current engineers.


There is no hard and fast rule that says you can't stay technology-current
as you age. I started off doing FORTRAN on mainframes, went to C and
Unix, then C++ and Unix, and here I am at 44 doing Java on Linux, making
50% more than I was making when I was 35. And every step up the ladder
was done by identifying what I wanted to do next and teaching myself.

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up. Although I
have a nagging suspicion that my next "technology" will be "how to manage
a team of programmers in India to make sure that what they produce isn't a
giant cluster **** like every other outsourcing project I've seen".

I agree and have a very parallel career to yours. But at about your
age, I got into management. And wound up doing DoD acquisitions work.
Technical work is much more satisfying (like flying!), but doesn't pay
as well and you don't get the management bonuses. I'm partially retired
now and can't quite justify purchasing "Dot Net" and taking classes.

And you are right about labor in India. Once they master the
technology, we will be the customer and will completely lack the ability
to compete.