I was nomadding in Istanbul, working 4h per day, whenever I wanted to. This was the perfect setup. Unfortunately, as one gets older the classical developer role is not really possible anymore. Now I work 8 to 9 hours, 2 days in the office per week, 3 days at home. While it is better than the normal 9 to 5, quality of life really suffers. But I think it is mostly about that the 4 hours I could do whenever I wanted without human contact, just deploy and make it work. Now I have more of a management lead role. Maybe I should switch back to pure development... But I am afraid, because I saw it, at least in Germany, this means it is going downhill career-wise with age.
I'm in my 50's, was nomadding around SE Asia when I turned 50. So yeah, age isn't it ;)
Getting into management is definitely more of a hours thing. But manager productivity is different; it's about talking to lots of people and not maintaining focus on one thing for hours. It's a shit-load easier to do from anywhere. But at the same time, it's definitely time-intensive. When I was CEO of a 200+ organisation I worked 10+ hours a day. The hours were a lot easier, though. Less hard thinking and focused concentration, more half-hour meetings which seemed to be mostly about listening to other people tell me why they decided to do something.
I was in Germany for COVID - I can see why you say this. But that's still only true if you stay in large organisations. In smaller orgs you get more flexibility, even in Germany. You can still become an expert developer and get the decent money without getting into management. Having said that, it is easier to climb the salary ladder if you get into management. But you can never go back; it's very hard to get back into a developer role if you've been a manager. Beware of what you wish for.
Thanks for the comment, this sounds actually kind of great. This year I'll enter my 40s so maybe in the next five years I'll start to switch to smaller companies. I really miss the builder schedule.
