Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
I'm 51 and I've been programming since I was 21.  I write code every day.  I love what I do and I have never been more productive than I am now nor have I ever written better code than I am writing now.  I write highly complex multi-threaded algorithmic code that operates on extremely large graphs (up to 3.5 billion nodes).  I have no interest in getting into management.<p>I did get "lucky" in that I was a member of the founding team of a publicly traded company and am now a technical co-founder and chief software architect of an up-and-coming engineering software startup.  I've written 3 blog posts in career and, except for LinkedIn, I participate in no social media/networking.  I've never posted on StackOverflow. Outside of my niche industry, I'm sure that no one has ever heard of me.  And, that's exactly how I like it.<p>Just my $0.02