After more than three decades in corporate life, I have "dropped out," and I'm working on doing stuff that makes me feel good.
Being happy is a lot more important to me than toys; but I have a company that provides the kinds of toys I like to play with, anyway.
I've been focusing on re-establishing my working engineering cred; mostly by creating a pretty vast portfolio of new, relevant projects. It will be the kind of thing that you won't be able to ignore.
Which will be quite important, as my gray hair causes an almost instant "write off" response.
The last couple of years have also given me great opportunity to reinvest in my own self-development.
I'm not really big on the "unplug yourself" advice. My GH ID is an almost solid green. I've been doing seven-day workweeks for a couple of years, and actually enjoying myself (and not making a dime).
Sooner or later, I'll have to slow down the hamster wheel, but I'm not there, yet. If I expect people to pay me real money for real work; I need to make sure the product (myself) is tip-top shape.
If I do that, then everything else kinda falls into place.
I think you're missing a key ingredient--your network of colleagues. I don't think companies care that much about technical skills after a certain level. The way you get work is by having associates who know you and can get you in.
You are correct, but there's a couple of mitigating factors in this:
1) I have a fairly substantial network, but most of them know me as a manager, not a tech. I'm an excellent manager (people still ask me for advice), but I don't love it. I love being a coder.
2) Of the fairly substantial coding work I've done, almost all of the work (that I can talk about) was done for NPOs, as open-source for organizations that don't have a pot to pee in, so that network is a bit dicey for me.
I am doing something that is not usual. I'm reinventing myself in-place. I've done it before, but that was back when we actually respected folks with gray hair. Running into the ageism issue has been...enlightening.
I'm also not very good at pitches. I do demos; which means no pigs in pokes. I tend to not take the wraps off of things until they have reached the MVP stage, and I'm not particularly interested in getting funding.
I just want to do what I love: write code. I'm an excellent architect. My systems tend to last for decades, but that isn't really something that folks care about, and I understand that. I need to re-tool my architecture focus as well.
I have history writing demos that can't be ignored. I'll need to build a new network, but I can't do that until I have something to show (not talk about -SHOW).
After more than three decades in corporate life, I have "dropped out," and I'm working on doing stuff that makes me feel good.
Being happy is a lot more important to me than toys; but I have a company that provides the kinds of toys I like to play with, anyway.
I've been focusing on re-establishing my working engineering cred; mostly by creating a pretty vast portfolio of new, relevant projects. It will be the kind of thing that you won't be able to ignore.
Which will be quite important, as my gray hair causes an almost instant "write off" response.
The last couple of years have also given me great opportunity to reinvest in my own self-development.
I'm not really big on the "unplug yourself" advice. My GH ID is an almost solid green. I've been doing seven-day workweeks for a couple of years, and actually enjoying myself (and not making a dime).
Sooner or later, I'll have to slow down the hamster wheel, but I'm not there, yet. If I expect people to pay me real money for real work; I need to make sure the product (myself) is tip-top shape.
If I do that, then everything else kinda falls into place.