Why didn’t you make the significant sacrifices?

This is one of those areas where family starts to influence decisions. My wife and I had kids between 24 and 28. From that point forward, 'supporting the family' took priority over personal fulfillment.

Now that our kids are grown and self-supporting, it's wild how much simpler the risk calculation is. But at 52 with engineering manager being the dominant role in my CV, not particularly appealing to the small companies making big moves that I'm interested in.