[zmmmmm]

I relate to this quite strongly. Whether you like it or not, a software career forces you into being a generalist eventually. Technology changes dramatically every few years - unable to improve what we have, we do entire revolutions to make incremental progress, and in the process, we make everybody's skills stale. The only things that survive are the principles that are common to everything. There's nothing you can do about that. And once you end up a generalist it is very hard to be appreciated for your wide breadth of general skills. People want the best person for exactly the job they are about to do, very few take a long view, very few even have the luxury to do that.

From another perspective, we are in unknown territory here. Us 40+ developers are at the vanguard of a generation of software people who have no trail blazed before them to tell us where our careers should go. There simply isn't a widespread professional software industry of 50+ and 60+ years old for us to look at and say "that will be me in 10 years". We were largely the first generation for whom software was a major industry. I take comfort from this because in all likelihood it will work out better than our worst fears would have us imagine. It is as much the lack of example and uncertainty as the reality that makes us feel insecure.

[mqsiuser]

I met COBOL/zOS people that talk about retirement "next year". They are ~60 to 70

That shows something: Every generation has it's path (must have :D "push/squeeze")