I'm nowhere as accomplished as the original author but let me try adding a few other tips.<p>Plan on spending a lot of hours learning/practicing/tinkering to explore and pickup new tech skills, OUTSIDE of your normal work hours. If you think you want 9-5, Mon-Fri job, don't get into this. You won't last. Whatever task you do will be automated or given to younger (aka cheaper) worker eventually. Or the technology you use will become obsolete. Maybe you can last more than a decade, but your compensation will not seem like a tech worker.<p>Basically, plan on being in a self-paced vocational school every few years.<p>A HN poster mentioned few months ago he was able get to the position of a CTO by virtually having 2 full time jobs through out his career. One was his normal 40hr/week job. The other job was also 40hr/week, but unpaid as he just about spent that much time learning new tech skills.