[harrylepotter]

36. Started my career at 19 and cofounded a company early in my career. Developed a like of coordinating technical direction rather than being in the trenches, and moved into product management in my mid 20s. Grew quickly into director/VP TPM roles, but recently went back to a cofounder de where I’m very much again in an IC developer role out of necessity. To my surprise I haven’t been this happy in years.

The fear was always that I would age out of my job (…probably read too many posts like this). This has simply not been the case, nor has it been for many of the people I went to college with or who were my senior in the early days of my career development. To some extent there’s a lure of managing people, but I also think that as you get older you simply stop answering surveys like this and focus upon the tasks at-hand.

I also lived my younger years with a crippling fear that I’d fall off the bandwagon if I blinked twice. This has also not been the case. technology continues to build upon the same foundational principles; it’s a matter of whether you’re willing to learn and evolve or if your goal is to settle down and avoid this. Admittedly I do not have children.