The Truth About Aging in the Tech Industry

Where are the old programmers?

But they never existed in the first place!

The programmer population doubles every 5 years (approximately).

So even discounting the age pyramid (dead people, or career changes), there are only 0.20% of 60-64 year-olds, vs. 50% of 20-24 year-olds.

0.20% 60…64-yo, 0.39% 55…59-yo, 0.78% 50…54-yo, 1.56% 45…49-yo, 3.12% 40…44-yo, 6.25% 35…39-yo, 12.50% 30…34-yo, 25.00% 25…29-yo, 50.00% 20…24-yo.

That adds up to 6.05% of 40-64-yo vs. 93.75% of 20-39-yo. There never was enough programmers to make old programmers.

Of course, we cannot stay on this exponential growth long, so the question will have to be revised in 20 years; then we'll see what happens of all those young Amazonians :-)