Your question sort of misses the bigger problem: if you're a developer over a certain age (35? 40?) you're completely unemployable in many areas. If you expect

Your question sort of misses the bigger problem: if you're a developer over a certain age (35? 40?) you're completely unemployable in many areas. If you expect to hang on for 10 years you are also expected to move up to management, otherwise employers assume there is something wrong with you and you will never get interviews. Then you get the elites and the children of the elites who assume that everyone who didn't make a billion dollars by the time they turned 30 has some defect with them. These people will never hire old developers either. It's a horrible attitude, but very pervasive in tech. Expect to move on from development by some point, figure out what else you want to do after that and start reading more books.