[canadian_tired]

You raise a good point about ageism... and perhaps the concept of tenure. My advice to young guns is that never rely on your employer to take care of you. HR is there for the Company...not for you. Most "lifers" I have worked with seem to have the same results as you, which does suck. But hey, you can be a martyr or you can avoid it by not sticking around so long. It does suck...and it is unfair, but it is reality. I suppose the exception are those "public experts" that have such an impact outside of their corporate sphere, that they can stay in the same job for ever. I hope you have great fun and find enormous satisfaction ahead!

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I basically stuck with it, because I liked the people I worked with, and they gave me enough free time to do the stuff I enjoy doing, while paying me...OK, for the stuff I don't enjoy doing.

What I really enjoy doing, is writing code for free. The kind of code that I write, on my own, is precisely the kind of code that most modern corporations don't want.

I take Quality very seriously, and that's actually an impediment, in today's coding culture.

[canadian_tired]

I can tell you with certainty that there are indeed cultures that take code quality seriously. In fact, almost above anything else. However, the work itself may be uninteresting to you. Life in tech for me has been a series of impedance mismatches. I love diagrams... I keep an Ikigai Venn diagram on my wall. It helps me focus and evaluate.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I find that I am happier now, than I have ever been.