I think it all depends upon the choices you make. If you chose to climb the management ladder you get exposed to more political games and BS, but on the plus s

I think it all depends upon the choices you make. If you chose to climb the management ladder you get exposed to more political games and BS, but on the plus side you tend to get paid more. I've made an active decision to stay close to the coal face and avoid where possible the political BS. We've got a pretty small dev team, with ages ranging from 21 to 54. We tend to work pretty well together, the younger people having a little more energy for playing with the latest shiny, with the older devs providing a degree of stability but embracing new things where they make sense. The best thing about having older developers is that they tend to have a lot of intuitional knowledge, allowing the newer and less experienced devs to avoid repeating past mistakes.