> The career of a pro athlete has a maximum lifespan of around fifteen years. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money until around your mid-thirties,

This sounds ageist - I'm around 40 and feel I am at my mental peak, compared to even my mid 20's. This isn't a good analogy at all, the brain doesn't "wear out" like a professional athletes' body does, it just changes its structure. The brain is a remarkable organ.

▲

sibeliuss 2 hours ago | parent [-]

He just means: by this age you've probably found your preferred title and level, unless you want to rise to more C-level / executive positions, which are rarer in any case and most folks don't want.

▲

JohnMakin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is definitely more charitable, but isn't this already the case now? It seems he's saying past your mid 30's you'd no longer be viable as a software engineer. That's never been the case, and I'm not sure why it would now suddenly be the case.

▲

sibeliuss 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Even clearer, if you don't adapt to the changes taking place in the field there might not be a future for you. Its not about age, it is about attitude and flexibility (which are, admittedly, issues when getting older).

In other words, if you want to continue stubbornly typing out code by hand, the person right over there has already mastered agentic tooling and is doing vastly more than you, more quickly, and with greater precision, and will simply be a more fit candidate to hire. Roles for this type of legacy stubborn personality will be less and less, and you will age out as part of the old school.

	▲	JohnMakin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I see what you're getting at, but if it's not about age, why use an age related analogy? I probably should have amended my first statement in this thread is that it sounds ageist, if even implying that the people who will refuse to adapt will be older. This day is already here, people are already adapting to this. He seemed to frame it as the current young 20's career people will have this limited timeframe of productivity.