[noname123]

I hate to hijack this thread. But I hope this is still useful for decision-making/informative for OP. For folks out there who are ex-programmers and didn't love the corporate grind anymore... what other exit strategies did you guys pursue (besides going into management)?

I'll start. I felt like OP maybe about ~7 years ago. I hated the grind of learning and re-learning frameworks, ageism etc. I pivoted into data science for my day-job because I found it more interesting (and to do something more meaningful particularly if you're doing something related to research/public healthy/policy etc.). On the side, I also started applying my coding skills to option trading and making my own trading bots (where I re-gained a lot of my enthusiasm for coding back without the grind of agile and coding for myself and just for fun). I'm happier (and financially better off) today and my only regret is I didn't start sooner. Hope to hear more from others who exited coding monkey careers!