I know a lot of my friends working in techinical fields in their 40s (software eng., QA eng. IT(DBA, System admin). I just worked with two DBAs in their 60s.What wrong with that ? I talk to them,they feel very luck that they change their career from software eng. to DBA.There will always be techincal jobs there. Somehow, I feel the skill set for techincal person and manager and bussiness man are so different and you have to find out what you like most. A lot of my friends makes over $100 K as a technical person. On the other hand, it is very hard to keep to have a technical position, you have to find what the technical trend will be and do the change like those two old DBA did. They all worked with mainfram before and also did the programing with assembly lang. No one knows what technical fields will be after 30 years from now. If you still want to have a technical job after 30 years, you have to keep up in your skill. Good luck.