I really don’t think that’s what he’s saying, and if at least some of this doesn’t resonate with you, you’ve never looked for (programming) work after 40. The problem is that programming is, by it’s nature, “strange” work. In every other job, you perform some function for a long time, learn all the ins and outs of it, and then move on to manage other people who are performing that function: break their work down into tasks, assign different people to different tasks based on skill sets, suggest timeframes, etc.. That’s true from sandwich making up to neurosurgery. Programming work seems to defy that natural progression. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and I’m no better at breaking software development projects down into discrete tasks for _other people_ to carry out than I was when I started - and I’ve never met nor worked with anybody else who could, or even pretended they could. So we have this odd career where you start out as a programmer, and you stay a programmer until you retire. Couple that with the outsiders expectation that programming is getting easier when the reality is that the opposite is true, you have a _lot_ of people with a very low opinion of programmers as professionals - i.e. if you were actually any good, you wouldn’t have to be doing this any more.
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