Is Computer Programming a Good Job for Retirees?

braindrainbahrain asks: "Ask Slashdot has been rife with career advice lately, so maybe I can get some too. I hit a milestone recently, the big five oh, and the realization of retirement is starting to settle in. The trouble is, I don't want to sit around, play golf, or even travel that much. I work in a technical field, but I have always enjoyed programming. Indeed, I do it as a hobby. I wonder what you readers would think about programming as a post retirement job. It seems well suited for a retiree, one could do contract work for a few months of the year, in some cases work from home even. By way of background, I have worked in hardware engineering for a very long time, and have pursued graduate study almost regularly (two Masters degrees so far). Should I begin preparing for a post-retirement career in computer science?"

Too soon to say

[Oswald]

Ask me again in 20 years. I'm going to retire from my first 25-year career in 2008. After that, I plan to spend a lot of my time programming for fun and (meager) profit. If I never accomplish anything more than contributing to open source software, I'll still have a good time. If I actually make a career of it, so much the better.

I wouldn't do it.

[Bluesman]

I have a rule.

Anything that you enjoy doing instantly becomes much less fun the moment you are doing it because you are required to, for whatever reason.

If you enjoy programming as a hobby, why not just continue to do it as a hobby? There are plenty of open source projects that would benefit tremendously from having an extra hand, especially one that doesn't have many other commitments. There are so many projects I wish I had time to work on, but other obligations get in that way. The time you have is such a luxury.

Hmmm

[The Living Fractal]

If you are retiring at 50 you have serious financial security. So I suggest you treat it as a hobbie instead of job. Do it for yourself, not somebody else. Maybe it will turn into something that makes money for you. But if you do it for some company then they own your work. Give yourself more freedom.

Of course, if you manage to find a company that you mesh with and the projects you work on are the same thing you would do by yourself, then by all means, go for it. The team envrionment can be rewarding.

Just try to get out of the cubicle as much as possible. You'll be dead in ten years if you don't. Or close anyway.

TLF

Go for it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you like problem solving, like to learn new things, enjoy working with computers, then definitely go for it.

You didn't mention if you can survive off your current retirement savings, but if you can that I think there's even more reason to do it. You'll have the flexibility to offer your services to groups that usually can't afford to hire expensive programmers (think non-profit national science organizations, smaller mom and pop shops, etc...) or you can contribute to open source projects.

I think the best part of it, though, is that if you try out a certain technology (say web programming) and hate it, then you can jump to something else. There's nothing forcing you to have one speciality and you can figure out the skills required once you have a solid enough foundation (there is so much information available online and it's usually free).

Only you know if this type of thing fits you. But I will say that if anyone tells you that you're too old, or that your brain isn't flexible enough, pay attention to what they say and the prove them wrong.

Enjoy your life.

[tempest69]

Ok, first off, programming for someone else is really a test of patience. While programing on its own is a great endeavour, having someone tell you how it should work will be as bad as whatever you're dealing with as an electrical engineer.

That being said, if you love code, then delve into open source, find something that you want to fix and fix it. It will feel great. If you really enjoy programming you can just keep going. If you need to find some spare cash, then you can point to your hobby work that is in the current distro of Centos or Ubuntu. And wind up with a survivable paycheck, or you can marry the feilds you know and wind up with a big ole paycheck. It is relativly hard to find a programmer with masters level domain knowlege in two fields. Ok its not that hard, if flash more than $50/hour

Good luck

Storm

Re:Overqualified

[sottitron]

Might not be the case if he has a cover letter that concisely states your salary requirements and explains that he doesn't really want to retire into a golf, travel, or idle lifestyle.

Some keys to success

[heretic108]

Some keys to success:

1. 
    
2. Confine yourself (at least 80%) to work that you actually love. If you commit to doing stuff you don't enjoy, you'll be very prone to burnout.
3. 
    
4. Be independent, find and exploit market niches; your independence can give you an operational agility long lost by larger outfits. If you keep your overheads down, you'll have good margins on all kinds of enjoyable 'nickel and dime' jobs, and be very competitive against larger operators.
5. 
    
6. Always keep your eyes open to gaps in the market
7. 
   

This association is not correct...

[d2_m_viant]

Is Computer Programming a Good Job for Retirees?

Should I begin preparing for a post-retirement career in computer science?

...computer science != programming

Ever think about Teaching?

[quizteamer]

I know you mentioned that you have two Masters. Assuming that they are in a technical field, have you considered teaching? Many community colleges hire part time people who have come out of industry and have the proper degrees. It is tough work, but can be rewarding with a good group of students. I wouldn't suggest High School work (the Certification process is lengthy and it isn't part time work), but teaching programming at a local school could be an alternative to a job in programming.

Re:On the contrary

[Anonymous Coward]

Get out, enjoy yourself...

What I think you're missing is that no matter what your job is, if it involves computers and IT, someone, somewhere, will enjoy doing it for free.

That's going to be a "problem" for everybody from musicians to Microsoft employees, as more and more grunt work is automated and more and more individuals are empowered to do whatever they want with their lives. Based on the sentiments in your posts about not wanting to compete with people who don't really need the money or the work, I'd say you are the very model of a modern Don Quixote. You need to change your attitudes at a very fundamental level, or the rest of your life is going to suck hard .

I'm not trolling, or kidding for that matter. Find ways to deliver value that only you can bring.

Do you want Full-time vs. Part-Time work?

[billstewart]

After my father "retired", i.e. told his company he was retiring and wanted to start taking his pension, he worked there as a consultant full-time for a year or two before cutting back to half-time, and it took him a couple of years to _actually_ retire. But he was a research chemist, and research is the kind of thing you can do part-time.

Professional programming usually isn't part-time work, at least if you're working for a company that's producing a product to sell as opposed to doing in-house projects to support other activities. It's typically feast-or-famine schedule, with the usual deadline crunches. Now that the 90s boom is over, there may be less of the 80-hour-week-deathmarch kind of thing going on, and programmers may be more likely to have lives rather than being 25-year-olds with an infinite tolerance for caffeine, but that still tends to be the environment.

So if you want to work part-time, you'll need to look a bit longer for a gig than if you want to be full-time. On the other hand, if you want to work occasional full-time gigs, then contract/temp work does fine for that. Or if you want to do sysadmin work, that's often flexible about schedule.

Mature attitude needed in IT

[myowntrueself]

The enterprise IT world *needs* people with mature attitudes.

I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer so this may come across off-topic, but there is a lesson to be learned with respect to mature vs *cough*immature*cough* people in the world of IT.

Most of the people working in this area at the moment are very young and enthusiastic. Thats not a bad thing in itself; its bad when they start 'playing' with systems on which other peoples livelyhoods depend.

They are often people who think its ok to introduce fascinating new technologies into the enterprise machine room because they *love* to tinker with shiny new stuff "ooooh Linux iscsi on all our servers! Wheeeee!!!".

Its bad when you have IT professionals who so love fixing computer problems that they don't mind being woken up by a pager at 3am; for them its a wonderful opportunity to wrestle with a computer problem.

The mature attitude says that computers should not wake people with a 3am pager call; they should not go wrong in the first place. It says that you should not introduce bleeding-edge technologies into important systems. It says that stability and reliability are very important.

Same sort of thing applies to coding I guess, but not being a coder, take no notice of me.

Re:Let me answer with...

[gangien]

//please set the following flags:
if (this.getAge() 23) {
          this.jobSecurity(true);
          this.jobCompetition(false);
}

Horrible code.

• You should explain why you'll be setting stuff not asking someone to set it.
  
• Why are you using the this reference?
  
• The method names should really be given the "set" prefix.
  
• Don't use magic numbers, that "23" should be at least a constant. Maybe even better would be a property (or the equivalent for whatever language you're using.)
  
• The context of the current object for age and then job security and competition seem bad, you should consider refactoring your code so perhaps something like getJobMarket().clearCompitetion();
  
• I'll give you a pass on the HTML stripping the '<' sign. At least I think that is what you intended, but you're code is very unclear so I'm not positive.
  
  I know it was a joke.. but...
  

Good luck with that

[stonewolf]

I have a masters in CS, 30+ years programming experience, lots of business knowledge. You name it, I pretty much have it. I was laid off on my 49th birthday. That was 5 years ago. I can not buy a paid programming job. The only serious contact I have had in the last 3 years was with a company in India that was desperate for experienced people. Moving to Bangalore is not an option for me right now. The contract market has dried up.

I work on open source projects. I do some writing. I took the courses and passed the tests so that I can teach in the public schools. I haven't been able to find a job there yet. There are a lot of people like me chasing too few teaching jobs. I do teach part time at the local community college. But, very few people in the US are interested in learning programming right now. I have only had 6 students in the last 3 semesters. I teach and code when I can. I was thinking about going to law school. But I do not have the money and I would have to move which is not an option right now.

So, all I can say is good luck with that.

Stonewolf

Re:Mature attitude needed in IT

[myowntrueself]

the sysadmins I work with want to install every single new technology the day it goes beta. It's encouraged in the name of "innovation", which I agree with.

What you have to do when talking with management about such issues, is to liberaly use such words and phrases as "untried", "untested", "unproven", "not ready for the enterprise".

You have to make sure that the people above you are made totally aware that if they settle on some unproven solution that any downtime or other problems that result will be their responsibility.

You have to spell this out to them and make sure that you do so in front of other people, not in a private, closed-door meeting.

Theres nothing that scares the bejeesus out of management quite so much.

Re:That depends

[Haeleth]

Hey, you know what would be even more fun and rewarding? Lobbying! Yeah, lobbying your country's politicians to introduce heavy tariffs on foreign technical workers.

Sure, if you want all the companies to move overseas instead, while you simultaneously spark a major trade war with every emerging power.

If you care about the American economy, on the other hand, your time would be better spent working out why companies want to go to the considerable effort of hiring foreign workers instead of using the local talent. Then maybe you could start lobbying your fellow Americans either to acknowledge that their pay demands are unreasonable for a commodity skill like programming, or to go out there and get the extra skills and experience they must lack, if jumping through bureaucratic hoops to hire an H1B is the most appealing prospect.