Well. 50 was six years ago for me. I just "retired" back to being a senior IC after a six year stint as an engineering manager. I absolutely want to be doing

Well. 50 was six years ago for me. I just "retired" back to being a senior IC after a six year stint as an engineering manager. I absolutely want to be doing this until I retire from full time, paid work. (After which I will still be doing it in some form.) I was less happy as a manager than as an IC. My experience has been that as I get more senior, the frustrations that the OP complains about are less and less a part of my day-to-day, and when they do pop up, I find that my accumulated experience usually helps me to solve them quickly. What's interesting to me is that when I was in my late 20s I went through a "what do I want to be doing in my 50s" exercise. I decided to get a PhD, did some interesting research, published some papers, did a postdoc, but ultimately ended up back as a dev at 40. I don't regret any of it.