I'm 67, and am in the final stages of my career. This article resonated, and made a lot of sense based on my own personal experiences. Early in my career, my head was full of fantasies and ambitions about entrepreneurship, being a founder, being a leader, etc. It took a long while for me to realize that I am not a leader, and am much more of an individual contributor. It was liberating to accept my true nature, and to go with it. If you are lucky enough to have a job that you find interesting on most days, that turns out to be a tactical advantage: you will spend more time learning, thinking about things, and improving your ability to contribute effectively. If you are lucky enough to have a job where you feel like you are making the world a better place in some meaningful way, that can be surprisingly fulfilling. At the age of 50 I did a career direction change and took a new job doing embedded software for medical devices. Been doing it ever since, and find my life to be rich and meaningful. Anecdote: our twin granddaughters (now 4) were born about 6 weeks premature, and spent over a month in the UCLA NICU. We all spent a lot time there. Next to every incubator was an Avea neonatal ventilator, a product that I had written a lot of software for. Nowadays I'm working at a medical device startup that's working on next-gen radiation treatment for cancer patients. Software people are blessed at this point in history, in that we have a lot of options. You can make good money, support your family and provide for retirement etc., while at the same time doing something that you enjoy and find meaningful. It was kinda terrifying for me to take a leap into the unknown mid-career and start doing something that I believed in, but it worked out well. (I have a small sample size, i.e., one, so I don't know what the odds are here. Your mileage may vary; no guarantees implied or otherwise, just one data point for your consideration.)