[adrianhoward]

> I'm starting to panic that I'm running out of time to "get my shit together."

There is no time limit on getting your shit together. Seriously.

Please don't buy into the valley hype of everybody-is-a-success-in-their-twenties. It's bullshit.

> So, I'm interested to see the discussion about what those of us who are life long hackers (with a ton of varied experiences) can do besides keep writing code or moving into people management.

Considering what you said about liking prototyping, product strategy, etc. you might want to consider looking at adding some UX-ish skills to your skill set. There's a lot of overlap in goal, if not necessarily technique, and from my perspective it's even harder to find good UX folk than it is good developers at the moment.

Also - pretty much any consulting or team lead job is - at some level - people management. Don't mix up people management skills with organisational hierarchy or "being the boss" or telling people what to do.

I'd imagine that if you go chat to your uncle about his consulting work he'll tell you that large chunks of it aren't figuring out what to do - but working with people to make sure that it gets done. Management is all about helping groups of people do stuff effectively together. It's hard to think of jobs that don't involve people management of one sort or the other.

[mcdowall]

I'd second the UX suggestion, it's always the role that is difficult to fill in teams and only going to grow in demand.

[michaelochurch]

Please don't buy into the valley hype of everybody-is-a-success-in-their-twenties. It's bullshit.

VCs and in-crowd founders, not engineers, created that age discrimination culture. It's a way for the people who have made it already to put phony time pressure on the people coming up the ladder. The only way to get a highly talented person to throw 100 hours per week behind someone else's shitty idea is to convince him that he'll be yesterday's dogshit by age 40. When people are scared, they're less likely to challenge authority.

Back when the Valley was about technology (imagine that!) an age discrimination culture was untenable, just because ours is a field where it takes so long to get half-decent at it. Now that the marketing people and MBAs rule it and actual smart people are second-class citizens, age discrimination is much more prevalent.

[adrianhoward]

"VCs and in-crowd founders, not engineers, created that age discrimination culture"

Just not true in my experience. I spend most of my time outside the valley/VC world. Seems to be common among twenty-something dev types everywhere. I've not noticed any change for the worse over the last twenty years (although now I'm in my forties I'm seeing more of the disadvantages of ageism ;-)