This is awesome! Thanks to everyone who has replied!

I've seen a lot of comments along the lines of "I've been doing this for 20+ years..." I love hearing all these stories and definitely will make some changes to the article based on what I've read in the comments.

A few counterpoints:

- Just because there are some examples of 20+ year software careers, it does not imply that the norm is to work for that long.

- Many of the people in the comments who have worked for 20+ years are in the "forced up" or "forced out" categories that I've outlined in the article. Reading all the way to the end would have been helpful...