I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "market worth." Do you mean salary? Because if so, no.
Do you mean something like "net value to company"? Then maybe. Another way to say that would be "you start to get paid what you're worth after 30 or 35."
I'm mid 30's and the salary cap is what I'm experiencing. Inversely, many of my friends in business, law, medical, etc. made less than I throughout their 20's and have now caught up, with potentials to earn far more.
For example, the lawyers I know are now making partner in firms, the business majors getting percentages based on sales and earnings.
I'm looking to become a consultant but the very idea of increasing pay with experience is foreign in the tech field, but standard in other professional trades. I believe offshoring, H1Bs, and lack of a professional association (AMA, bar, etc) is to blame.
I'm also about 50. I am doing far more senior and interesting work than I was doing when I was 30. I felt like I was just starting to figuring things out then, but now I'm doing way more interesting arch and design for work involving a large team.I had great experience earlier in my career working at large, well respected companies.
At 30 I was just getting started. If you feel you peeked, find some new jobs and technologies that you'd like to have on your resume and find new jobs. How about java and distributed systems at a place like google or facebook, c++ on a major database? Look for those things.
I was only referring to salaries regardless of technologies used. In my relatively expensive US city I do not see any companies willing to pay more than about $150k for a senior dev. This is similar to what I see in most cities, and there are not many companies giving stock options as is common at Google, Facebook, etc.
The question is: you've been doing higher level work, but has your compensation flatlined?
Flattened? Probably not, it's slightly higher salary, like 5%, but it's not enough time for my stock grants to vest and show a clear trajectory.
I left one of the big internet superstars, and tried a startup. After a year I decided it wasn't going anywhere, so I went to a medium sized company that is really growing. I make slightly more in salary than i did at my internet superstar company, and more $ value in stock grants. My new company is growing so the stock should go up, but its less certain too. My job title looks good, so I will be able to use that in my 'next' job, if there is one; maybe I'll stay here forever. My goal is $400-$500k per year in salary and stock, over a 5 year average. Say you get about 200k in salary, and you get an initial 4 year stock grant, and each year they give you another 4 year one, so it takes several years of that to overlap.
I am probably going on too much, but I really want people not to believe some ridiculous story about being washed up at 30. Learn something new, people! Before you take a job, look at your resume and see what your career trajectory is. Do you work places and go after a year (this can be bad)? Do you have a substantial time period at a strong company? Can you talk about why you left each company? What can you contribute?
I was more than 10 years at Microsoft, mostly IC and some lead work, and then back to being an IC at the internet giant, then lead at a startup, now mixed design and dev at the new company; i was hired on dev skills plus experience.
$150k in stock and salary is reasonable for an experienced dev, say 10 years. At the startup we paid mid career good devs 150k in salary, plus worthless options. A typical deal for devs with 10+ years who can do c++, java, distributed programming is 150-175k in salary, a couple 100k in stock, paid over 4 years, plus new grants each year. 2 years ago when twitter was doing better I got almost 200k in salary, plus double that in stock, payable over 4 years.
The unadorned "developer/engineer" role[1] -- that is to say, not CTO or even Lead Engineer -- itself seems to tap out after 8-10 years, in terms of both salary and respect.
That is, in the average case, anyway. There are of course companies which pay upper-tranche (in terms of salary and respect) for very highly talented programmers who aren't in leadership or crossover roles. But these are a comparatively rarified stratum; by and large -- for the great majority of companies out there -- the "Senior Developer / Engineer" role definitely seems to plateau within about that timeframe.
So if you don't find yourself drawn to that category of engineer (and to those kinds of companies -- many truly gifted programmers I've known still pull down decidedly average salaries) -- and you find yourself wanting more salary (or respect / responsibility) -- you better start thinking of something else.
[1] Leaving aside distinctions between "developer" and "engineer", as discussed elsewhere recently, for the sake of simplicity.
