After 5 years, I learned how to say "No," to marketing and managers and people who thought something was a good idea, even if they outranked me. Before then, I

After 5 years, I learned how to say "No," to marketing and managers and people who thought something was a good idea, even if they outranked me. Before then, I felt it was my job to say yes to everything and make it happen. (This was also the phase of my career when I once put in a 108-hour work week.) What gets better at this point, is you see problems coming earlier. What gets worse is the disillusionment that comes from realizing not everyone knows what they're talking about. After 10 years, I learned how to manage people and projects. I don't think it's possible to do this well until you've had at least one excellent boss, one terrible boss, one successful big project, and one failed big project. What gets better is understanding and being able to handle the bigger picture. What gets worse is that you become responsible for things that you don't really have control over. After 15 years, I learned how to choose the right technologies for a project. I think you begin to get good at this once you've made a few technology decisions and seen how they turn out five or so years later. What gets better is the satisfaction from seeing, understanding, and using long-term patterns in software development. What gets worse is the frustration of seeing people reinventing the wheel or making the same mistakes that you made 15 years earlier.