I work in a large office with lots of cubicles. It’s a pretty intense environment, so it’s not unusual for tempers to flare occasionally.
But there’s a guy a few cubicles down, Mike, who likes to curse our company. He’ll slam his phone down and yell, “This company [expletive].”
When he does this, I look around, and nobody seems to be bothered by it. My feeling about what Mike is doing is, “If you don’t like working here, leave!” But I just keep quiet.
I'm 58 and have been continuously employed as a software engineer since my 20's. Even now I can find new jobs. I have watched friends & colleagues wind up in the situation of being unemployed (e.g. due to being laid off and being unable to find new work). Generally this was due to them getting complacent, staying at one place too long, and not keeping skills current. I've consciously avoided falling into this trap by continuously learning, changing jobs when no longer growing in my current job, and preferring start-ups (which tend to be new development using new technology).
I'm 54. Got my current job when I was 52 (prior to that, 11 years at Microsoft). I think if you're not over-specialized that you can still do well. Doing be a person who just writes device drivers, or just does web stuff, or just writes toolchains. Do it all, and at depth when you can.
I tend to get into projects that are 2-3 years in scope and involve actually shipping new technologies at consumer scale. This will teach you all kinds of interesting things, from fundamental product underpinnings to making devices manufacturable. Keep coding, that's for sure. It's not a young person's game if you keep at it. My father in law retired, a firmware engineer, at 75.
