Why Programmers Lose Their Edge Even with More Experience

During wartime, veteran soldiers outperform rookies, but in peace the opposite can be true; similarly, experienced workers are valuable when a company expands, while younger staff are preferred for stable maintenance. The author uses this analogy to frame the discussion of programmers.

Many high‑value professions (doctors, lawyers, teachers, photographers) are B2C and have high entry barriers, so experience remains a strong asset. Programming, however, is predominantly B2B and tightly tied to the employer; even though developers could theoretically work directly for clients, in practice almost all programmers are employed by companies and have little negotiating power.

Senior programmers accumulate "business‑layer" experience that is often non‑transferable, while younger developers are cheap, obedient, and require less management. The rapid pace of technology further erodes senior value: five years ago, high‑concurrency sharding required deep expertise; today cloud platforms provide one‑click distributed databases, eliminating the need for senior architects and senior ops staff.

The author cites personal observations: a junior developer hired with five years of experience could only use Scrapy and Selenium on Windows, lacked basic Linux commands, and required extensive hand‑holding, illustrating the low marginal value of years spent on repetitive tasks.

Three categories of jobs are identified:

Physical‑labor jobs : value declines with age as physical capacity wanes; programmers are likened to "brick‑carrying" labor because they execute predefined tasks without much creativity.

Cyclical jobs : earnings fluctuate with macro‑economic cycles; the author notes that even in tech, cycles exist, though the industry’s rapid growth has masked them until recently.

Declining jobs : technology can render entire professions obsolete (e.g., carriage drivers after automobiles). The rise of AIGC and cloud services threatens programming roles in the same way. Despite these pressures, the author still recommends a programming career for the next ten years, citing its still‑high income potential compared with many other fields, but warns that the advantage of seniority will continue to diminish.