When I read articles like this, I feel nostalgia and envy. Why was I not born 10 years earlier?
I see other people in my industry who are 10 years older than me and they not only had a way more fulfilling career, they are much better off financially too. It's like everything fell on their lap.
When I started programming professionally (post dotcom crash mid-2000s) you could really achieve results that were considered game-changing for businesses as a solo contributor writing all your own code from the ground up. The field as a whole had not been really mapped out all the way, so even someone of moderate intelligence like me could feel like they were creating new useful things (especially on the web).
Modern software development frequently feels like gluing together towers of shit from other people's towers of shit. Additionally, the parts of the industry where the business case is "a computer could markedly improve this process and make people's lives so much easier" are pretty much saturated. The high paying career opportunities that are left generally seem to trend towards either value extraction or rent-seeking behavior.
I actually agree completely with you — feel, frankly, like I retired at the right time in the arc of "programmer" as a career.
At the same time I suspect that those that came before us are happy to have also had a career where they also wrote the firmware, OS, boot-loader — feel our generation had to build software on top of shitty OS dylibs, etc.
Wait ten years and see how you feel about these times — and how others, ten years younger, feel about you.
I have always been envious of the kids that wrote the Apple II text adventures, envious of the Woz's that built 8-bit computers in a time when "anything goes".
Financially, time addresses that.
I had student debts, made only a little money for a while. But, over time, you pay down your debts, begin to put money away ... compound interest and all that.
But on a more ... spiritual level ... I see now that in life I have, from time to time, come to crossroads where I could choose one path or another. If you have gained any wisdom up to that point in your life there is a good chance you will choose the path that will bring you closer to what it is you seek. If it is financial comfort you seek, you're going to find that you more often than not choose the path toward financial success.
We only wish though that the spending money had come when we were younger.
