I'm in my late 40s, and have been working as a developer since I was a teenager. Here's a simplified account of the last 20 years or so:
I spend 10+ years working for a mid-size company, progressing from developer to a sort of combination senior developer / IT manager. My salary grew at a reasonable pace. I was wearing a lot of different hats, and gained experience in a lot of different areas. That company went out of business a few years ago.
I then spent a couple of years at a small (12 person) web dev company. We had one in-house product and worked on various sites for various clients. Mostly ASP.NET, some Drupal. I took a bit of a salary hit there, making maybe 85% of my previous salary.
I left that company about a year ago, and am now at a fairly large company, primarily working on Dynamics AX custom programming, with some random ASP.NET/C# stuff in there too. I'm still not back at my old salary, from the company that went under, but I'm closer.
With a little more Dynamics AX work under my belt, I could probably jump ship for an AX consulting job that would get me back to that old salary. Or I could stay here and make a pretty reasonable salary, with modest gains, over the next several years. (There doesn't seem to be much room to move into management here, though if I stay long enough, that may change.)
Or I could try to go back to another web dev position, ASP.NET and/or Drupal, maybe. (That probably wouldn't get me much of a salary bump though.)
I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing ten years from now. The company I'm at now is stable enough that I might be able to stay here until retirement, but I wouldn't count on it. I'll probably need to change jobs 2 or 3 more times before retirement. I try to keep my skills up to date, so I can stay employable, and, at some point, I'll probably start using the standard 50+ tricks on my resume: dropping my college graduation date, dropping the oldest jobs from the resume entirely, etc. And dyeing my hair maybe, if I get too grey.
This being HN, other people have of course talked about starting their own company. I'm not sure I want to do that, but it may become an attractive option at some point, especially if the health care situation in the US gets straightened out enough that I can afford to pay for my own health insurance.
I spend 10+ years working for a mid-size company, progressing from developer to a sort of combination senior developer / IT manager. My salary grew at a reasonable pace. I was wearing a lot of different hats, and gained experience in a lot of different areas. That company went out of business a few years ago.
I then spent a couple of years at a small (12 person) web dev company. We had one in-house product and worked on various sites for various clients. Mostly ASP.NET, some Drupal. I took a bit of a salary hit there, making maybe 85% of my previous salary.
I left that company about a year ago, and am now at a fairly large company, primarily working on Dynamics AX custom programming, with some random ASP.NET/C# stuff in there too. I'm still not back at my old salary, from the company that went under, but I'm closer.
With a little more Dynamics AX work under my belt, I could probably jump ship for an AX consulting job that would get me back to that old salary. Or I could stay here and make a pretty reasonable salary, with modest gains, over the next several years. (There doesn't seem to be much room to move into management here, though if I stay long enough, that may change.)
Or I could try to go back to another web dev position, ASP.NET and/or Drupal, maybe. (That probably wouldn't get me much of a salary bump though.)
I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing ten years from now. The company I'm at now is stable enough that I might be able to stay here until retirement, but I wouldn't count on it. I'll probably need to change jobs 2 or 3 more times before retirement. I try to keep my skills up to date, so I can stay employable, and, at some point, I'll probably start using the standard 50+ tricks on my resume: dropping my college graduation date, dropping the oldest jobs from the resume entirely, etc. And dyeing my hair maybe, if I get too grey.
This being HN, other people have of course talked about starting their own company. I'm not sure I want to do that, but it may become an attractive option at some point, especially if the health care situation in the US gets straightened out enough that I can afford to pay for my own health insurance.