
What after 15 YOE?
I was curious, that what will happen to the people who are right now working in growth, program managers, or in fact as business analysts, SDEs after 15 years.
I am 25 Years old right now, and all I can see is people aged between 21-30 in startups. 30-35 year old people are less than 5% of the workforce. After 10 years, all my age group people will be 35, and all the roles I see at that age, are too scarce.
Will it be too difficult to switch jobs then, or career, hikes will kinda stagnate there?
Want to know from other experienced people that where does the crowd go?

I am close to 15 years ex. So probably i can answer i guess. In my area of work, i see all the less experienced folks not much capable in understanding the whole picture of business for creating roadmaps and strategies , cannot do stakeholder management much and moreover do not understand failsafe situations . That way i feel my job is safe. I can also do the job which my 2 year experience person does and in a better way and can also work like my manager who is probably 20 years experience and lead the teams.
As long as one is technically relevant , experience is a boon for orgs.

people skills are very hard to get by. That will keep one afloat, I second your thoughts

As someone who has spent nearly 2 decades in service/consulting companies, I agree with your assessment. A lot of folks joining these days don’t care about the big picture. They are happy to come, code and go home. While this is great for WLB, it absolutely kills your chances of learning the business. End of the day, you can be a super dev, but if you can’t understand the customer it’s not of much use.

i have pondered over the same problem. Most likely it's going to be very difficult to find so many high paying roles ie director and above.
stagnation will become real.

I believe the next step would be then to cement your position in the organisation somehow, which will most likely lead us down the path of office politics and the rest, which many on the app crib about 😅😂

So people above 5+ yoe should focus on politics rather than technical/soft(job role) skills? 😅

You are missing that the avg Indian is 29. 15 years from now, we will be an older country. So people will stick around until 45-50 in corporates.

Do you think current workforce won't be replaced by younger folks?

The workforce will mature. New roles will be created. We won't have as many young people as now in the future, it will stagnate somewhere.

All those people who graduated in 2000-2005 time period are in service based companies at senior roles or moved to the US continued working as Techies or moved into management roles.

In that era, probably not these many people were having such salaries (inflation adjusted) in their 20s.
Right now, thousands of people in tech industry aged probably 22-23, are earning 35-40 lakhs. There are EM positions giving 1 Cr. But it won't be just possible that even 20% could become EM (in 10-20 years)
The difference between 2000-2005 and 2020-2025 is, Market has also grown significantly. Like actually the jobs are growing at more than 10% CAGR (10 times in 20 years). It won't be the same in next 20 years in software industry.

Your comment is really sensible. Applaud. There makes no sense to compare 2 different era. Pehle modi nahi tha ab hai. I am not making it political but earlier we were a lower middle class country but now we are slightly better if not more. See what our fathers/family used to earn vs what we do. Whether these salaries would exist or not would depend on political stability to some extent and the AI, Quantum computing and blockchain evolution largely

I am 41, working since 2003. As of now, every day I am thankful to God that I have a job that pays me well and have enough work to finish and pray that I can do a good job at it.
PS: I started at 3k Rs PM(36k pa) back then as an associate v&v engineer.

Acker about 8 to 10 years typically roles become less technical.and more management oriented. So plan for that. Apart from building technical stuff, focus on management related stuff like people management, strategic thinking, team dynamics etc. What is called soft skills actually becomes the differentiator later on.
Then you are also not tied to one vertical and can spread your wings much more.

That's true that people move towards managerial side, issue is, the roles are much lesser.

That's true. Org structure is a pyramid. Roles will be less as you get senior. Which is why preparation and expanding skill beyond technical is essential for a long term career.

The jobs we will be in demand in next 10 years will be drastically different than the ones today.
If anyone asked the the same question in 2012 before the mobile first boom took off, the answers will be way off than answered today.
Just like civil or mechanical engineering, the jobs of today will still be done but by far few experts in their domain.
All you need to make sure to be sensitive to changes in the market and jump ship at the drop of a hat to thrive.

How to jump shift to new tech? All the jobs ask for YOE in particular tech stack.