Career plan by age: * <8: Astro|Cosmonaut (then I realised I wouldn't get in coz of health issues) * 8-14: Physicist/Engineer (Science! It rocks! But the fami

Career plan by age: * <8: Astro|Cosmonaut (then I realised I wouldn't get in coz of health issues) * 8-14: Physicist/Engineer (Science! It rocks! But the family got a computer when I was 12 and - shit - this programming crap is fun..) * 14-19: Programmer (Wrote code that other people used. Wrote code that other people bought. This stuff is still fun, but went to university at 18 - first one in my family to be able to so...) * 19--25: Academia (Shit - universities are fun. Full of smart, driven folk. Graduated at 21 and hung around as an employee while I figured out what I'd do my PhD in...Started digging into cog psych & HCI stuff as well as development. Then I figured out that I wasn't actually driven enough to focus on one subject for 3 years... and that the UK academic arena was falling into a mess of short term contract driven work... and my contract came to an end.. so... off to industry) * 25--29; CTO (Not that anybody called it CTO in those days. Joined one startup which crashed and burned. Second one didn't. Went from first "techie" employee to technical director in about four years. Then I was actually bright enough to realise I didn't really like / was-any-good-at managing people and that I didn't enjoy my job. So without waiting for shares to vest (still not sure whether this was a smart or a dumb move...) left to...) * 29-34: Consultant (Started own company. Had some great clients. Did some good work. Got better at managing people. Had some bad clients. Made some dumb decisions. Crashed and burned with a stack of personal debt. [hire accountants folk - they're worth their money].. which in one of those joyful acts of fate butted up against...) * 34-36 Carer (Family member became terminally ill and needed 24/7 care, so we kept him at home and out of hospice as long as possible) * 36-40 Senior Dev/UX person (Back to being an employee again. One agency. Two startups. Debt killing time. Started deliberately raising my profile with speaking, community involvement, writing, etc. coz I knew I wanted to get back to...) * 40--now Co-founder (Started company again. Making fewer and more interesting mistakes sprinkled among the odd smart decision. Bootstrapping some product ideas that we're funding with consulting work. Generally enjoying stuff...) Next - who knows ;-) (NOTE; If anybody still wants to let a fat 43 year old with no binocular depth perception and subject to migraines & misc. other nonsense be an astro|cosmonaut - please let me know ;-)