i also work on a small development team and believe that there are distinct aspects to culture that promote success. just saying the word "Agile" is not enough. software releases are not a stunt where we work up to a frenzie of effort and shove it out the door hoping it works. software development on our team is a sustainable lifestyle involving a constant reasonable level of effort producing a steady level of output. we have delivered 10 production releases per year for about 11 years and perhaps we have worked past 9pm 3 times in the previous 4 years. you can try to glorify how 25 year-olds can stay up hacking all night and do wonderful things but that is not a role model for the majority. most professional developers also have outside lives and even (gasp) families that they might like to see. one key factor that enabling us to maintain both productivity and social lives is a strong defense of the work pipeline. we know how much technical work our team can fit into one release and we say NO to everything else. because our releases are frequent, it lowers the stress of putting items off until the next release. even so, our managers are sometimes required to use an iron fist defend our capacity and refuse to allow us to become overwhelmed. this is a central part of our culture, our managers never succumb to external political pressure to work us into burnout and in exchange we dont slack off during the reasonable number of work hours we give each week. the result is sustainable productivity and essentially zero turnover traceable to burnout.

I'm a member of the > 40 set with 22 years of professional software development experience and i reject the universal notion of aging into technical decline. in my opinion, personal expectations of increasing salary and decreasing workload are an automatic psychological consequence of humans expecting more respect and higher position with age. however, constantly-maintained technical skills and an evolving technical and business philosophy are not automatic. they require considerable personal investment and vigilance. the harsh reality of garbage in equalling garbage out applies nicely to career paths. this article is trying to find an alternate explanation allowing those older engineers who have not properly invested in their own careers to feel good about decreasing desirability in the job market. most engineers accept responsibility for investing effort to earn a technical degree and a bit more to learn how to apply it in business. the problem with so many people is that they expect that effort to be finite over time. before you blame your predicament on some factor outside of your control, consider the possibility that you might be entirely responsible for getting into your current position and what you should be doing to get out if you don't like it.