[arethuza]

Same here - I've had CTO, Director of Engineering, Head of Architecture posts for the last 20 years at everything from start-ups to multinationals and I still keep my hand in investigating bugs (i.e. looking at code and databases) and writing code, most of the latter in my own time.

I wouldn't want a role that had no "hands on" element - personally if you don't occasionally get your hands dirty and stay current with current technology then your capability to make sensible high level decisions decays pretty rapidly.

[Toenex]

Same here. Mid 40's now with a PhD so I'm 'overqualified' as well as 'getting on a bit' if someone really doesn't want to pay for me!

For the last decade I've been in small start-ups where you wear many hats, Head of this, VP of that. However, even when I'm focusing on business development I'll probably find a way to cut some code. "I could use MS Access for this. Hmmm maybe a better idea would be to write some python and plug the data into an sqlite dB instead" - is usually how my brain works.