My story: My very first job was as COBOL programmer aged 20. I was made team leader after a couple of years and found it was a great job for me. You are hands on but you get to be involved in more stuff. I stayed in that sort of role for pretty much the rest of my career, sometimes with a team, sometimes on a team. Out of 43 years I spent about 7 years in the middle away from coding in management and sales. They were not my happiest time but I got paid well and I am sitting in a house it helped buy. Make of that what you like.

My problem when in my 50s was putting up with how ridiculous some of the people I worked with seemed to be. Shoehorning in the latest (now obsolete) technology where it did not benefit the end result was common. In the end I settled into being a Java full stack contractor, remote from internal discussions, just getting on with doing a good job. I retired myself from that at 63.