IT Pros and Career Longevity

Will you be in IT long enough to start withdrawing from your 401k? Matt Heusser in his Uncharted Waters blog at IT Knowledge Exchange makes a not very scientific observation when he interviewed for a job at Google, that there seemed to be an absence of employees older than 30. His observations came with obvious caveats -- that Google was expanding quickly, it tended to hire the best and brightest right out of the most prestigious schools, and so on. Naturally, those new hires would be young, bright eyed and idealistic.

The pat theory, if you can call it that, is that tech workers tend not to last that long in the profession -- about 15 years -- with many either moving on outside of tech to management or to something non-tech-related at some point by their late 30's/early 40's. I'm sure some of them get burned out by all the quickly changing tech and being in constant learning mode as well as the politics. His theory, of course, applies to just about any white collar profession.

Do you feel you could remain in this career well into your retirement years or do you have a plan to get out before your golden years? Agree or disagree here.

Posted by Michael Domingo on 12/08/2011 at 11:59 AM