Not just 40+. I'm just over 30 and I've felt that way for a while. I have a lot on my plate but other than that I live alone so I do have the time and energy to

Not just 40+. I'm just over 30 and I've felt that way for a while. I have a lot on my plate but other than that I live alone so I do have the time and energy to focus on learning the bleeding edge and I do enjoy it. But the truth is, the exact things described in that post kill my motivation. And here's an interesting fact: I spent almost 9 years working in one company. The only reason why I stuck around for so long was the absence of all the ridiculous reporting, filling jira tickets and all that dreadful crap. We had a relatively small but very solid team with simple rules and procedures: everything that needs to be done is done with well-described and documented gitlab issues, each issue gets it's own branch, do what you have to do, push, open a merge request to the lead developer(me for the past several years). Simple and straightforward, releases were always ready well before the deadlines, developers staying with the team for 5+ years on average, even when offered double what they were making. What changed? The exact thing that the reddit post described: new management, endless bureaucratic crap, endless made up acronyms, pointless meetings with tons of questions not worth discussing(ex: "Apple doesn't allow this so we can't do it", followed by 3 hours of discussions as to who should we talk to to get it up anyway) and to top this off: "hey there's this other team that doesn't do anything, we'll mash the two together so they have something to do". As a result all the most senior members(myself included) decided to quit, non-negotiable. it really pains me to see how much ego, bureaucracy and arrogance I see everywhere. Needless to say, I had to make some compromise with all that but it is insanely frustrating. I feel like most of the software engineering world is going through a Steve Ballmer crisis: the industry is dictated by people who know nothing about the inner workings. As a result unnecessary solutions are pushed down our throats: "We should use X technology". Fine, but why, it will be slow, unmanageable and will leave us pegged to the company that developed it? "Nonsense, it is the best, everybody is using X". And 6 months later...