I have taken a bit of a different approach. For the the first 10 years I have been focused purely on coding while dabbling a bit in UX and Design while rejectin

I have taken a bit of a different approach. For the the first 10 years I have been focused purely on coding while dabbling a bit in UX and Design while rejecting any management opportunities given. The last 5 have been a mix of the prior and management, product owner, growth, founder. I plan to continue this while staying at smaller companies where your responsibilities are what is currently needed and very hands on, not strictly what your title says. This I feel gives me the most flexibility for the future. I’m not necessarily concerned about not finding a job in programming until I retire, but I like to make life decisions (e.g. where and how to life) first and job decisions second. I haven’t done a whole lot of programming in the last 1.5 years or so, but so far I’m not feeling that I’m falling much behind given that I’m doing around 15 hours of mentoring, code reviews and problem solving sessions with programmers per week.