As I get older, I realize that: a. I want to keep working on technology. Whether I'm a programmer or data scientist or even a startup founder, I want to keep t

As I get older, I realize that: a. I want to keep working on technology. Whether I'm a programmer or data scientist or even a startup founder, I want to keep taking ideas and directly implementing them-- not being some champion delegator and credit-taker because I would feel dirty and be bored out of my fucking skull if I had that job. b. I do NOT want to be what most people think of as a "programmer"-- a subordinate who implements crappy ideas with no room for creative control (I'm willing to cede business-strategy creative control, but I decide how to solve problems) and gets no autonomy, no respect, and no chance for advancement. I also think there are very few companies where software engineers actually have it good. Even at Google it's a million times easier to climb the management ladder than the engineering one. You actually have to be good at something to make Staff Software Engineer at Google; not so for its management track. So, I like programming-- even the debugging, and even maintenance/reading code when I decide that it's important for the code to be read. I don't want to be what empty-suited idiots think of when they think of a programmer, though. Fuck that shit. I'm too old and I'm way too talented to be the butt of that joke.