This is an observation that in general technology worker pay tends to plateau at about 5 years worth of experience. It is not that it doesn't go higher, but the rate of increase significantly drops at about the 5 year level. That is unless one goes into management or quasi-management (which is not "tech pay" anymore).

("Plateau" may be the wrong word, but it is hard to breifly describe a curve with a kink at 5.)

It could be SoftwareAgeism, or it could just be that experience itself is not heavily valued, regardless of the worker's age. I suspect it is a combination of:

* SoftwareAgeism
* ToolOrientedHiering - If pay is based on knowledge of a given tool(s), then more than 5 years is not going to make significant difference. (Only C++ takes more than 5 years to master :-)
* Experience is difficult to varify or only shows up in subtle ways.
* Domain knowledge is not valued either - WhyIsDomainKnowledgeNotValued

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CategoryEmployment