I think you can climb higher and grow, but not necessarily in ways most technologists would enjoy. For me I see the growth opportunities as 1. Become a team le

I think you can climb higher and grow, but not necessarily in ways most technologists would enjoy. For me I see the growth opportunities as 1. Become a team leader, then manager, CTO, .. etc. 2. Become an "architect". I.e. move away from coding and design systems, choose technologies and suchlike. 3. Very rare: Become a very senior individual contributer with lots of freedom. I can see why side hussles are popular as a way for developers to express creativity and try to make some money a completely different way. > Whenever you start again with a different technology stacks you become an entry level. Totally. I can't (generally, there might be exceptions) get a full time non C# job without taking a paycut that would put me on the streets. Confounded with the fact that because of this people are going to lie about experience to change jobs to another tech stack, which I wont do, so I'm competing against those people too. I too am (almost) 20 years in. Male (but I think these problems apply to everyone).