Turning 40: A Software Engineer’s New Beginning - Finding My Edge in the Ever-Changing Tech Landscape

I’ve been working as a software engineer in South Korea for 12 years now. It’s been over a decade since I started my journey as a developer, and this year I’m turning 40. I’ve been juggling between being a hands-on “mercenary” developer who gets things done quickly and an engineering manager leading teams through busy days.

The Anxiety That Comes with Turning 40

As my career progressed and I got older, I found myself harboring a subtle anxiety. With new technologies emerging every single day, I wondered: How long can I stay competitive in this field? Will I become “obsolete”? This worry resonated perfectly with Paweł Strzałkowski’s talk at Balkan Ruby 2025, where he mentioned that these doubts started creeping in around age 35—exactly matching my own concerns over the past few years.

The Real Value of Experience

Fortunately, in my current role, I feel I’ve established a strong position thanks to 12 years of accumulated experience. As the speaker mentioned, aging and gaining experience actually brings advantages: increased learning efficiency and the ability to avoid common mistakes that inexperienced developers often make.

His point about how 10+ years of debugging production and legacy code becomes a solid asset that maintains senior-level value even when tech stacks change deeply resonated with me. The fact that developers over 40 can adapt to new frameworks faster and use their experience to avoid common pitfalls also matched my current situation perfectly.

In recent years, especially with the full onset of the AI era, many developers have found themselves facing another massive technological shift. Through a mix of choice and necessity, I’ve been introducing and working with embedding and LLM technologies in my work, and I feel I’m successfully riding this wave of technological change. This has become an opportunity for me to confirm my adaptability to new technological shifts.

The Developer’s True Weapon: Creativity

Paweł Strzałkowski emphasized that for IT professionals, especially aging developers, the only skill needed for long-term success is ‘creativity.’ Through over 20 years of development experience, he argues that creativity is the key to solving even seemingly impossible problems.

In my case, the process of integrating new technologies like LLMs and embeddings into existing work was itself an exercise in creativity. The demonstrations in his talk—voice control using LLMs, image recognition, embedding and vector search—were excellent examples of how creatively we can apply new technologies to our daily lives and work. I too have been finding joy in development by using these technologies to increase work efficiency and implement previously impossible features.

The speaker recommended that developers embrace creativity as a core skill that complements technical abilities to deal with technological change. This means going beyond simply learning new technologies to developing the ability to imagine and experiment with what those technologies can do.

Three Pieces of Advice for Long-term Success

Paweł Strzałkowski offered several important pieces of advice for long-term success.

First is the importance of personal health management and hobbies outside of work to prevent burnout. Second is finding what drives you beyond simply making a living. Finally, he strongly advocated for creating clear plans for the coming years (1 year, 2 years, 5 years).

This planning goes beyond simply preparing for HR questions during job interviews—it has great value when done for yourself. It should include career goals, consideration of leadership roles (team lead, lead developer, engineering manager, etc.), or whether to maintain a hands-on coding approach.

Standing at a New Starting Point at 40

Now that I’m 40, I find myself at an important crossroads, just as the speaker’s final advice suggested. Should I continue as an employee, or should I start something of my own? Creating concrete plans for where I’ll be in 1, 2, and 5 years, as the speaker suggested, seems like it would be tremendously helpful in finding answers to these questions. Seriously exploring what my own “driver” is will also be important in this process.

Paweł Strzałkowski concluded that there’s no need to worry about turning 40. It’s not a limitation, but an opportunity for a new beginning. He emphasized once again that creativity is essential for maintaining interest in programming and succeeding in the constantly evolving technological environment. Along with practical advice like starting to explore LLMs by asking ChatGPT “What is LLM?”, he didn’t forget the importance of learning from our own mistakes.

While he agrees with DHH’s saying “It’s more fun to be competent,” through this presentation he wanted to leave us with his own message: “It’s more fun to be creative!”

Closing Thoughts

I deeply resonate with his words. At 40, I may be standing at another starting point as a developer. Rather than harboring vague anxieties about technological change, it’s time to use the efficiency that comes from experience and creativity as weapons to navigate new technological waves, while taking time to question myself and concrete plans for the future.

If I continue to sharpen both technical capabilities and creativity, I’m confident I can continue a more enjoyable and meaningful journey as a developer, regardless of age.

This article was written based on my direct experiences and reflections, with assistance from Claude Sonnet 4 for improving the writing style and organizing the structure. I believe that using AI tools for writing is itself one way for developers to exercise creativity.

References

  • Paweł Strzałkowski, “Creativity: The only skill you need in the long” - Balkan Ruby 2025 presentation