Joker. Anyone who have worked in tech world will tell you after 3 years that they are so sick and tired and burnout from programming. And never learning enough. Always foegrttknf
Always behind. And another new skills to pick up....

Then you'll end up be just those analyst or consultant or project manager.

are you speaking from experience?

My experience tells me burn out happen when the project is in death march or 1 year when bonus is given out, whichever earlier.

And when the god like fresh grad who thinks programming is all brains.
And fail to realise that there is a human factor to it, a time factor, a team factor, a technical debt factor, and money factor....

And burn out also happen when they realised even if company double their pay, they can't produce twice the amount of work even if they want to.

Nothing comes out of their brain.
Mental block. A wall.

It's okie we will get the new hires to refactor everything

You are coming from old school, hence wont be surprise to see backward mentality like this. First of all, you need to have clear definition of what is output. Output is not about the amount of code, but it is the impact.

In Singapore itself, you can see the example of how great products can generate much more output than lousy one. Take the example of trading app, there are plenty homegrown trading app out there like phillips, ocbc securities, utrade etc, they have great support in Singapore but not many is using it. If Robinhood is coming to Singapore, I bet many would opt to use Robinhood even they dont have big office here. Tiger and Interactive Broker is actually much larger than local trading platform because they have much better product.

This is how technology works. Winners take most of the pie (80% to 95%). Another example is alipay. 80% of the China transaction is coming to alipay. If there is no intervention from government, they are bound to be the largest bank in the world.

Government is giving licences to operate digital banks last year. I wouldnt be surprise if some of the traditional banks are getting replaced (UOB might be a good target). You will see in the next 10 years. Things will be obvious once it becomes reality.

I'm 43 this year. I started out with matlab, then C, then R, then Python. I'm still coding and doing a decently paid job with good work/life balance.

If you have interests in doing something, it's never too late. And tech job is particularly well suited for people not good at talk talk, and is in high demand as long as you can prove your skill, which is actually simple - tech interview is the most difficult to fake.

Haha refactor until become failed plastic surgery :P
still working but inside unmaintainable :P

sure or not? 7.5k is like the lowest that I have seen my peers getting. anything lesser than that is unheard of.

I actually think that programming is one of the best choices regardless the covid-19 pandemic. I mean, we already live in a digitalized world, and programming is one of the most important things to know and learn actually. In case you are going to be a great specialist in this domain, you might actually earn a hell a lot of money, and besides all that, it is a good career choice for both short and long term. After all, if you are tired of working in this domain, you can set up your own web app development company, and give some younger guys the opportunity to develop themselves and your company as well.

Programming was created by introverts