[ctdonath]

I don't take it as necessarily an implication of accumulated failure.

Career paths just tend to end, somewhere somehow. Might flame out. Might get a bad rep. Might be doing just fine but that tech & corp might just be leading to "going nowhere", coasting or the path vanishing. Be on a road long enough, you eventually discover it ends, be it accumulated choices or "just does".

At some point you need a change of direction. Might even be the same direction, you just have to get on a different road that actually continues that way. I'm still doing what I always liked doing, I just swapped out the technology & clients for something more modern.