I called it quits about 8 years ago (I'm 55), mostly due to the fact that I couldn't get excited about anyone's "next big thing". Got into teaching, which was a

I called it quits about 8 years ago (I'm 55), mostly due to the fact that I couldn't get excited about anyone's "next big thing". Got into teaching, which was a new, rewarding skill to work on mastering. (I've still got a long way to go--what a challenging field!) But of course I am teaching CS, and now it's just a nightmare of trying to figure out how to teach it. We have a lot of people saying we still need to teach the basics in addition to AI-assisted, and we have a lot of people saying to just teach vibe coding, and a lot of people saying just teach SE and no coding. And we're just trying to do the best we can for the students, while wondering if the field even has a sensible future. (Anecdata: universally, my hired grads have told me they are incredibly grateful to have gotten through college before LLMs hit the scene.) And it's a pisser, because teaching CS was great. I get to try to optimize learning and talk about what I love? Heaven. I think I'm in this category of software engineer in terms of how much I love the work: Requirements gathering: 5% Functional spec: 5% Design doc: 20% Programming: 65% Deployment: 5% And engineers who were here: Requirements gathering: 20% Functional spec: 25% Design doc: 25% Programming: 5% (or 0%!) Deployment: 25% are having a much easier time with this transition. Unfortunately for me, programming is also the most fun to teach. I have a lot of other interests outside of CS, one of which would actually pay money (GIS). Not sure how to get paid for dualsporting, hiking, bicycling, geology, visiting museums, writing (I do get paid grocery money for this), hand-coding, or reading. But I'm open to suggestion. :)