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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

The retirement age has already been pushed back about as far as it can be, barring major advancements in medicine. Maybe some of us will still be fully capable of doing software work at age 67 but those who have spent their lives doing manual labor have usually accumulated some significant disabilities by that age. They need a break.

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Hell of trope there.

I live in a rural community filled with farmers and FiFo workers (fly in | fly out mine and rig workers) with a median age of ~ 60 years.

My father has worked hard manual labour his entire life, he only recently stopped splitting wood and climbing ladders. He was born in 1935.

He's not unusual here, many 60 and 70 year olds, 80 year olds even, are still active on the land here.

Rephrased, it's just as problematic, albeit with a kernel of truthiness:

  Clearly some of us are still fully capable of doing manual labour at 67 but those who have spent their lives doing software "engineering" have usually accumulated some significant mental burn out by that age. They need a break.

You see those who have survived the job, not those who don’t. Have you ever asked your father about people he’s worked with who are now dead? Probably a whole lot of em.

> You see those who have survived the job, not those who don’t.

Quite an assumption on your part.

Despite having serious mathematical qualifications and several million SLOC of code behind me, I've also worked cattle stations, mine sites, and been part of SES and St. John's Ambulance crews (first responders to accidents).

That said, to address your question,

he's not worked with either Aaron Swartz nor Terry Davis.

Pretty significant selection bias in that observation.

Non American PoV's often seem that way.

The outside view is that the US has minimal Occ Health & Safety enforcement in labour and was late to the game in any case.

Interesting that the current President is 79 years old (and will be 82 by the end of his term) and he took over from someone who was also 82 at the end of their term.

Given that, software work at 67 should be well within cognitive limits.

(I'm actually not sure if I'm being sarcastic)

They have lots of supporting staff, mostly younger than themselves, to do the heavy lifting. Some politicians developing dementia while holding office must practically be puppeteered through term by their staff. See https://theintercept.com/2023/09/12/national-security-dement...

Good lord. Depressing. There's no way they should be holding such positions of responsibility.

If we put our senior devs on it, we can finally beat Medicare!

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