Mid forties and I've been programming all my life. If you don't want to be in management, don't take a management position. Same goes for architect or whatever

Mid forties and I've been programming all my life. If you don't want to be in management, don't take a management position. Same goes for architect or whatever else they throw at you. You will make less money. You may get tired of learning new stuff all the time. I've gone from Domino, PalmOS, C, C++, Java, web stack, Objective C, Swift, and more. It can be exhausting or exhilarating. But no hiring manager cares that I worked on PalmOS back in the day.