andreas_ (8/5/2011)
...I once worked as a team manager once but that was not for me ...One thing that has struck me is that I haven't seen many persons in their 50s-60s working striktly with software-/database development. However, I hope I still do that when I close in on that age, though maybe by then I will have more say over what I should work with and how it should be done thanks to my experience. Who knows?
As one of the "gray beards" here, I find that I get the most complex work assigned to me, which is just fine. That's how I perceive my "value added". For example, I once saved the company an estimated half-million dollar, multi-month project by re-writing a query in the existing critical application so that run-time decreased from 18 hours to 1. Sure, it took 18 hours work on my part, but suddenly we were hitting our SLA again. My salary is considerably lower (nuts!) than the cost of that now-indefinitely-deferred project.
Certainly, there are older workers who aren't "senior" developers. That's fine; there are managers who will never be CEO either.
"A man's got to know his limitations," as Harry Callahan said.