I’m a 35-year-old in Seattle, and I’m genuinely terrified that I’m already becoming too old for this industry. I looked around our all-hands meeting yesterday and realized that except for upper management, almost everyone on the engineering team is fresh out of college age. They can pull all-nighters without blinking, while my back hurts if I sit in the wrong chair for two hours. Are we all just silently sliding toward an expiration date once we hit our late 30s? How do you stay relevant?

Does anyone else find it difficult to get another job while you are currently employed? Most people say that it's easier to get a job while you have a job, but that has never been the case for me. What normally happens is I go to an interview with the knowledge that I can mess up the interview and perform poorly. Sometimes I ask questions that I know are going to make the interviewer uncomfortable. This is probably both good and bad. Most jobs I have landed happened when I was unemployed.

If every employee had an AI assistant that doubled their productivity, would companies hire fewer people or expect twice as much work?

Engineers should probably form unions.

The work culture on my team is pretty bad. There is high burn out, lots of fighting, finger pointing, working 24/7. When I bring this up, the leaders mention that this is just how tech culture is. It is worse at other companies. I haven’t worked at another company so I feel like I can’t counter. What should I say?