same here on all accounts except it's been 22 years for me and the knowledge that my autism scares off most employers makes me aware that it won't be my choice that this is my last tech job.

Mostly because I got into the field early ..

i'm convinced that's how i got started in the first place -- i didn't have the education or experience, but i knew how to recompile a kernel and knew what bash was so i got hired at a time when there was a deep enough labor shortage for people in the field. it makes me feel sorry for the people graduating today since the fields are so saturated today.

the funniest/worst part is that i was a software engineer for over 10 years of it -- but kept earning and IT salary because of my lack of experience. so i could have been well off enough to survive my 50's+ years if someone had just told me or if levels.fyi had existed sooner. lol