Management is such a weird thing since nobody wants to hire you for it if you've never done it. But it feels like if you've done it once, you're on that track a

Management is such a weird thing since nobody wants to hire you for it if you've never done it. But it feels like if you've done it once, you're on that track automatically. I'd gladly head that way. Pure software engineering is gradually becoming less interesting to me over the course of my career - the people problems are the ones I like. However... I'm older than you and have never gotten a "you're too old" vibe from anyone. In fact, if I have a complaint it's the opposite, it's that some companies want to treat me the same as someone 10 years younger - i.e. they don't see much difference between 2 and 10 years of experience, and you're a "Software Engineer" either way.