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Programming to more programming

First of all, there’s more programming. Many companies have acknowledged the value of very skilled programmers, and our pay can keep climbing—we don’t need to go into management to get a high salary.

However, some companies are not so progressive. If we stay in programming for more than ten years, we’ll need to look around more for jobs. There are a number of tech companies whose pay simply tops out no matter how good we are, and there are managers who won’t pay a programmer more than the manager makes. There’s no use in trying to convince them otherwise. We can just move along.

Another option is contracting. We bid on jobs either by the hour or by completion of the job. The advantage is that we will (usually) make a lot more money per hour. The disadvantage is that we will need to look for jobs a lot more often—and in lean times, we may not be able to find any. Before considering this route, we must have a sufficient professional network for finding jobs, plus enough money ...