I'm 36 and think I faced similar issues.
Was proposed a management role about 3 times. Somehow it felt like the end in general.
For my coworkers age isn't as relevant as simply coding skills. They want to be able to give me any task and be technically lead, if they don't know the technology themselves.
I've set a goal for myself: be able to do most of the coding related tasks - including devops, testing, deployment, monitoring - using up-to-date tech stacks.
During this weekend I've played around with self hosting and ended up replicating my company's development pipeline. It's quite barebone, but includes a git server (with working ssh clone urls), simple docker based CI pipeline, nexus repo and some management apps. All apps are proxied behind let's encrypt's SSL certificate.
I also added a simple google oauth integration so that anybody with google account could quickly set-up their own repos.
I don't remember last time I had so much fun to be honest. Also, as a byproduct, I hope, I gained the "hard to get unless you're in trenches" knowledge that is so valuable, when opportunity comes. It does come often in the place I work.
This is an example of the general approach I take: make sure to keep technical skills up to date using free time, by setting up goals, which are easy (for me) and fun - the end result should give the "I'm so happy with, what I made" feeling. It shouldn't be forced, because that would make me hate it in the long term.
I have a long list of things to try out sometime (computer vision, home automation, simple raspberry pi project, webapp to manage a game we play) and just pick something in free time.
Was proposed a management role about 3 times. Somehow it felt like the end in general.
For my coworkers age isn't as relevant as simply coding skills. They want to be able to give me any task and be technically lead, if they don't know the technology themselves.
I've set a goal for myself: be able to do most of the coding related tasks - including devops, testing, deployment, monitoring - using up-to-date tech stacks.
During this weekend I've played around with self hosting and ended up replicating my company's development pipeline. It's quite barebone, but includes a git server (with working ssh clone urls), simple docker based CI pipeline, nexus repo and some management apps. All apps are proxied behind let's encrypt's SSL certificate.
I also added a simple google oauth integration so that anybody with google account could quickly set-up their own repos.
I don't remember last time I had so much fun to be honest. Also, as a byproduct, I hope, I gained the "hard to get unless you're in trenches" knowledge that is so valuable, when opportunity comes. It does come often in the place I work.
This is an example of the general approach I take: make sure to keep technical skills up to date using free time, by setting up goals, which are easy (for me) and fun - the end result should give the "I'm so happy with, what I made" feeling. It shouldn't be forced, because that would make me hate it in the long term.
I have a long list of things to try out sometime (computer vision, home automation, simple raspberry pi project, webapp to manage a game we play) and just pick something in free time.