I'm probably more negative on this than average since I'm already x-tech and long term unemployed (middle aged) but my take is it was never a sustainable career for _most_ people. A minority get lucky, or are otherwise able to signal the right qualities to retain steady employment.
Even if you do manage to make it as an IC all the way into your forties, you're going to run into the pervasive age discrimination, which is only getting worse. And that is before AI factors and general capitalist job-destruction effects are even considered.
However if you enter the field and treat it as a money pump for a decade or two that will inevitably fizzle out, and you have a plan B career, it may not be a bad way to start. Just have that plan B ready (I did not).
"Even if you do manage to make it as an IC all the way into your forties, you're going to run into the pervasive age discrimination, which is only getting worse."
Is this really the case? With the demographics of today, where can employers find all these young SWEs to replace the older SWEs?
IMO they don't replace them 1 to 1. They will eliminate jobs over time, or, hold employment steady as population increases, therefore its a shrinking industry. Anyway I understand we are still producing 100K CS grads a year in the US alone, so they aren't going to going to run out of young people any time soon.
I have no plan. I'm not actually good at anything else, and TBH I wasn't great at software. So I'd need to retrain for something. I have always been a stingy spender so I have enough money to go for 10 years, perhaps significantly longer if there is no crisis.
Even if you do manage to make it as an IC all the way into your forties, you're going to run into the pervasive age discrimination, which is only getting worse. And that is before AI factors and general capitalist job-destruction effects are even considered.
However if you enter the field and treat it as a money pump for a decade or two that will inevitably fizzle out, and you have a plan B career, it may not be a bad way to start. Just have that plan B ready (I did not).