What Is The Career Path For A Programmer?

The unfortunate truth for computer programmers is that software engineering has become a ‘move up’ or ‘get out’ profession – the programmer career path is to either move up the ladder into management roles or face unemployment. The harsh truth is that tech companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced engineers rather than keep their older more experienced programmers.

While refusing to admit this openly, for fear of age discrimination suits, the mathematics of the situation are clear. Why would any company hire or keep on an experienced programmer (with potentially outdated skills) for $150K rather than hire a recent graduate (with no skills) for $60K. Younger staff understand newer technologies better than the old and, even factoring in the costs of training them, they are still significantly cheaper than older candidates over the long term. The young also typically do not have families and are more likely to be willing to work all-nighters if required. Ironically, this means there is both a shortage and surplus of experienced programmers at the same time.