I was CTO long time ago. Rose to position from being a programmer in small company. As the company grew bigger I kept moving up. Was still pretty technical thou

I was CTO long time ago. Rose to position from being a programmer in small company. As the company grew bigger I kept moving up. Was still pretty technical though. I still coded a little in order not to loose sanity but most of my time was spent doing high level design, architecture, getting into some strategic technical partnerships and so on for some giant projects in telecom and other enterprise software areas and making sure it was correctly interpreted down the line. Then one day new owners came and after talking to them a little I said fuck it and went on my own. Consequence of being close to burnout. Now 20+ years later even though I did not become rich I have my own one company where I design and create products. Some I own, some are done for numerous clients. I mostly work alone but hire subcontractors on on need basis and am happy like a clam.