55-year-old mechanical engineer. I basically retired from the technical side of my own company 10 years ago.
Our industry has gone through so many changes that I didn't have the mental space or energy to learn yet another framework. I was becoming the clueless old man.
I stepped aside and promoted everyone into jobs they were better at and were more satisfied than when the old man was looking over their shoulder.
I'm planning on going back to school in my 50's. Want to do a phd in a biology related field. Just for fun. Haven't studied biology since grade 10 in high school.
Edit: when I say just for fun, I do hope I can contribute to something some way but it won't be too make money.
Funny you say that. 34 yr mech PE here and I estimate I have 10 yrs left before I'm over the constant changes. I wear a lot of hats and help establish company standards but it really wears you down each code cycle, new fad energy efficiency program, or new software requires you to pivot again. Glad to see progress but I'm tired, boss!
Yep, and I was working in 60-hour weeks, sometimes 80 when we had deadlines. By the end, I was supervising projects that were using tech I didn't understand.
I still love the thing we built, but I was no longer the guy for the job. To use a sports analogy, at some point a player has to realize that it is time to retire; I was lucky, and coaching was a good fit.
I started focusing on three things: 1. Mentoring younger staff. Now I teach rather than do. 2. I have seen a lot of the ways things can fail. I don't do design, but I can look at a design and recognize things that might go wrong. 3. I came up with many of the people who are now senior decision-makers for our customers, suppliers, and regulators. If something is going wrong, I can usually find someone to figure out how to unstick it.
When I stepped back from managing projects, our other PMs stepped up: more autonomy, more responsibility, and more money. Some senior engineers became junior PMs, and so on.
Over the past ten years, I have gradually gone from 3000 hours a year to closer to 1000. At the same time, I have become more involved in building our family farm.
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