I don't know why. Maybe that's when I finally started "needing the money". It's also when my salary jumped up really high.

Maybe it was the absurd Internet age, but I've been through about 8 years where "it wasn't fun". It was about deadlines and deliverables and what we could deliver and "good enough". It wasn't about being my very best. It wasn't about doing anything well.

I just took a job as a manager about 4 months ago and I'm sort of hoping this is my path out of the codeworks. I still have the deadlines, but I'm also being trusted to "handle things". I love my team, they're great.

Sometime around 1997-1999, the slack came out of the industry. The creativity and energy died (at least for me) and it just became a business. Maybe I grew up, maybe the industry did, but it went from being a career to being a job.

Like Drew, I've thought about how to get out, but really, there aren't a lot of good options because we don't have a lot of savings. Probably the best bet would be some kind of sales or insurance, but you need time to build up the money. Then you're under another "deadline" of sorts, quotas, making the numbers.

I'm only 43 and I'm ready to retire. At this point, I'll try the management and see how that goes.