I&#x27;m 53.  I&#x27;ve been a programmer for 30 years, mostly in embedded systems.  My explicit career goal is to never become a manager.<p>As you get older&#x2F;more experienced, it becomes harder to find jobs.  When &quot;senior developer&quot; means 5-7 years of experience, what do you do with 30 years?  It gets hard to find places that will pay for that experience.<p>I&#x27;ve found, though, that there are jobs.  You won&#x27;t be switching jobs every 1-2 years - more like every 5-10.  &quot;Big engineering&quot; places seem to value the experience more than, say, web places.  (This may be just because I&#x27;m in embedded systems - there&#x27;s not much use for that in web services.)<p>Your advantage isn&#x27;t how fast you can crank out lines of code.  It&#x27;s how fast you can deliver real value to the business (what else are they paying you for)?  Along those lines, one of the most valuable things is the bugs you <i>don&#x27;t</i> write and the bad design decisions you <i>don&#x27;t</i> make.