43? you young-uns crack me up. > I can still keep up coding This sounds like you are not confident of your skills. At 43, with 20-ish YOE, if you want to beco

43? you young-uns crack me up. > I can still keep up coding This sounds like you are not confident of your skills. At 43, with 20-ish YOE, if you want to become a SWE IC at FAANG you better be good, and know it. > but should I do that, or try for management? no offense, but you sound like an 18 yo. In all this time at startups, how is it you haven't learned how to make decisions? Sorry if I am being harsh, consider it tough love. :) You might just be coming off in writing as being indecisive and lack confidence, whereas in real life you are solid. Or you might have the humility that only true seniority brings. I can't tell from here. Either way, I don't think this is a question with easy answers that you can get from a forum. You need to do some soul searching. I would first settle the question of whether or not you want to go into management, not whether or not you think FAANG will have you as an IC. There are plenty of books on becoming a manager. Almost all of them suck, but that doesn't matter. You'll get some initial perspective from reading 1 or 2 of them. Assuming you do want to switch tracks to management, I don't know at all how FAANG is at hiring no-experience managers at age 43. Personally, I like to be prepared so my personal plan in that case would be to get a manager job at a startup -- it should be super easy for you. Do that for 2 years max. Quit no matter what after that. (You need to make that your plan and stick to it.) If you like it, apply to FAANG! Note though that being a manager at FAANG is completely different than being one at a startup. But what you're going for is the resume builder as well as the experience of having direct reports. Ideally you'd get a job where you have firing authority. Not that you want to exercise that, but it changes things. Now if you search within and read a couple books and decide IC is what you love, take a month to bone up on core algorithms and then go for it.