> first 5--10 years of a developer's career for what they really are: an apprenticeship. This might be the case at the FAANGs or maybe at a few corporate giant

> first 5--10 years of a developer's career for what they really are: an apprenticeship. This might be the case at the FAANGs or maybe at a few corporate giants where you can retire in place, but my own experiences were that if you weren't reinventing yourself or making your own major career changes, by year 10 you could be near aging out altogether. And, while I haven't looked at the data recently, that matches pretty well with what I recall being told as a college sophomore CS student, IE: by our mid-30s, most of us would not be working as software developers. I wish I could agree with you - it would be a fair deal if there could be a conversation about software apprenticeships, but my own experiences were that no one, and certainly not your boss, were there to mentor or guide you. It was bloodsport where you produce or perish.