Can’t stand that slum accent.
computer science is a dying degree, but they earn the highest at a younger age especially software devs, ubaya ni the older you are the lesser you earn.
Engineering is the future, and the older you get as an engineer the higher your earnings although i would agree at a younger age our comp sci bro earn more
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Not true unless you are talking 40+ years old devs that haven’t been keeping up with new tools and tech. Which won’t matter anyway because by that point utakuwa ushaingia management.
Umeinamanisha pyramid mkuu!
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Software companies prefer to hire younger coders who will work harder are probably sharper, they earn a lot, older devs are usually a liability they are stuck in older ways can not keep up with the latest trends e.t.c it pays well but at younger age. software development is an elastic industry that changes quickly with newer tech coming out and newer ways of making software, wierd languages, msee alikuwa ana code cobol,pascal na basic 1980’s anaogelea kwa Swift, Kotlin, Go, and TypeScript
In engineering you get paid more the older you are since the older you get the deeper understanding you get , the more experienced you get the more you understand certain topics, it is a solid field that doesn’t fluctuate with latest trends, most of engineering is applied physics that was discovered before 1950’s
example nikiwa second year i was fluent in coding c++,python and java but topics like Electromnetic Field Theory and Control Systems, Computational Emag, Signals and Systems ndio nimezielewa vizuri vyenye nimezi experience and applied them in my field zilikuwa zinani piga chenga pale daro mbaya sana and i believe i will understand them deeper with time
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COBOL is still a good skill because a lot of mission critical systems e.g. air traffic control towers, banks, missile silos, use it. These systems can’t really work with AI due to their sensitive nature, so companies will pay a lot of money for anyone who understands the systems. Ironically, AI has made these jobs a cakewalk.
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Nani anasema older devs hawajui new technologies? I doubt you are in the software industry you are just making assumptions.
Mtu alikuwa akicode 1980 saa hii either ako corporate management or they’re probably running a startup, hafanyi kazi ya mikono. As for the rest, they learn and upskill on the job all the time, a serious dev with about 15 to 20 years of experience haezi kuwa ati sasa amejua tu C and pascal.
To add to that his experience with software engineering in general makes him much more valuable as a hire because software is not just coding kuna algorithms, system design, low level design, and more principles that are not specific to a programming language and are honed with experience. Companies like Microsoft which is the company in question assess these principles regardless of the programming language so ata kama wewe ni mtu wa C ama swift it doesn’t matter, and I know that because I’ve interviewed with them before
At my current company my technical lead is well in his 40s na hizo kotlin, go, swift and all the new hipster technologies amejua zote ata kutushinda and he takes short courses to continue keeping up with new tools
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First of all, let’s not romanticize experience at the expense of relevance. Yes, older devs can learn new tech—but most don’t, and that’s not an insult, it’s backed by trend data. According to Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey 2023, younger devs (18–34) dominate cutting-edge stacks like Rust, Go, and newer frameworks like Svelte and Next.js. Why? Because they have to. The market demands it. These devs are grinding 10–12 hours a day, hungry to prove themselves, and often outpace older devs who’ve moved into managerial or product roles. You said it yourself—most senior devs are no longer hands-on, which ironically proves the point: coding is now a young person’s sport, and that’s where the money’s flowing. Just look at early-stage startups or unicorns—they’re hiring based on raw tech speed and new stack fluency, not how well someone designed an algorithm in 2003.
Now about “experience beats tech savviness”—sure, experience matters in theory. But when you’re hiring for speed, agility, and the ability to ship quickly, newer tech stacks and cloud-native patterns often outweigh 20 years of C++ or COBOL. The market is shifting fast, and being deeply experienced in yesterday’s tools doesn’t give you an edge today. ata top companies like Google and Netflix are hiring based on current Leetcode-level thinking and production-ready knowledge of recent tools, not legacy architecture design. And as for your tech lead who’s in his 40s and knows Go and Swift—great for him, but that’s the exception, not the rule. If everyone were like him, hatungekua na threads on Reddit and Hacker News full of devs complaining that they’re being ghosted by recruiters after 35. Just check this thread on Hacker News: older devs openly discuss being sidelined unless they reinvent themselves constantly.
Lastly, let’s get real: if you’re talking future-proof careers, engineering wins. Civil, electrical, mechanical—older engineers don’t get replaced by bootcamp grads or 19-year-old wizards. They get more valuable. A 55-year-old structural engineer with 30 years of experience designing bridges doesn’t suddenly become “obsolete” because there’s a new CAD tool. Meanwhile, software devs are increasingly replaceable, and the AI wave (GitHub Copilot, GPT-4, Meta’s Code Llama) is already writing full-stack apps. Your flashy React skills? Soon commoditized. Engineering disciplines have barriers to entry and regulatory protection. So if you’re thinking long-term, don’t worship at the altar of short-lived frameworks. Think sustainable career: real-world engineering is still king, and ironically, it’s the younger devs who’ll need to pivot when the AI dust settles.
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Both perspectives are valid, it all boils down to the niche of the industry, really. Unicorn startups go after young blood because they use the latest tech and need tons of work done fast. Big companies, especially non-tech ones like hospitals and banks, still use ancient stuff like COBOL and Visual Basic – it’s just much more affordable to maintain legacy platforms than rebuild them with new tech, so those old developers are indispensable to them. Both can be true, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
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Only those and maybe a few others. But AI is making using programs like c++, python, website design very easy. A lot of developers on that end are going to be/ or are being laid off.
I just wonder how many companies in Kenya are hiring people with cobol skills for example?
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COBOL systems can only be found in banks, hospitals and other niche industries, and those ones will typically outsource abroad. That said, AI can write across multiple languages, so you just need prompts and debugging skills.
Do Kenyan banks use cobol?
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For ATM’s, yes. I don’t know what they use internally.
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Atms hawatumii visual basic under windows 7. because most atms run windows 7 lts under the hood
COBOL is run in the bank’s backend, which is where the core system operates.. Windows 7 is just responsible for the GUI and basic operations for the guys who load up the cash as well as you the customer. And no, don’t try anything fishy, these systems have military grade security.
Isn’t military grade a term that means the cheapest possible product you can get and still functions? Anyway am a low level coder machine language as i code mostly for chips or hardware sometimes i use c, when i need to simulate something i will use python. cobol is too ancient for me its like an english man trying to understand old english
If you can debug code, AI is your best friend. If you can’t and you can only declare statements.. you’re shit out of luck, son.