I have been through that crossroads, I moved into a PM role and was told I was a good PM but I didn't like it because I wasn't building anything. I was a maste

I have been through that crossroads, I moved into a PM role and was told I was a good PM but I didn't like it because I wasn't building anything. I was a master of PowerPoint, Excel and burn-down charts. Through some re-orgs I moved into management and stopped PM'ing projects. Very different role than developer or architect, still no daily effort on building things, but managing others that do so a little more rewarding than PM. Not much difference in pay and looking upwards at middle-management makes me shudder. Now I am at a crossroads (the other side of yours), at 40, where applying for senior developer or technical roles probably puts me somewhere in the middle of the stack of resumes. I haven't been coding as a full time gig for a while. Not trying to blather on about myself but think about 10 years from now what you would like to be doing. If you think you can be a PM or manager that is better than your current ("I'll be the PM that does it right"), understand that there are often complex constraints those roles are put under to deliver things. Try to take a step back and look at the big picture. In a software development career there are going to be technology and process fads that come and go with entire industries associated with them (often selling to your management a box of silver bullets to ease their pain). Sure there are going to be stupid processes you have to follow - that is everywhere and probably for every career as well. Comply with the coding standards and processes as you build stuff, you'll see they will change over time but in a way they really don't change. Daily stand-ups, weekly status reports, TDD, waterfall, Xtreme Programming, pair programming, curly-brace police, etc. Do you love creating things with software? Focus on that and the craftsmanship of creating software and building systems that help people do stuff. Write code, test it, and ship it won't change.