Hello Folks,
Thanks for the replies. Sorry for this long and meandering response...
salary ceiling - In my own experience, as someone moves away from hands-on work, they can progess up the hirerarchy, getting progressively higher salary, so no ceiling there. (software engineer to team leader to project manager or development manger) Anyone I have known writing code (as part of a permanent job, maybe software engineer) at more than 35 years old, is not doing well out of it. That is the ceiling I am thinking of. "Principal Engineer" kinda thing is just about where I am at now also. My principal concern is mobility, and transferable skills. Architect or Principal Engineer type work is very enjoyable for me, though it is appears to be generally done by people with great knowledge of particular industry or sector. More importantly, it seems like a slow-turnover area, so I might be longer looking for work. On the plus side of 'slow turn-over', I might not get laid off so fast. My impression is that smaller companies have one or two such people, and they stay forever. If that company expands, it hires a couple of junior engineers and an operations manager. The main point of my thinking is that I would like to also be a good candidate for a more senior management role (operations manager/director or such) in a few years.
open university - no better reason than a pal is currently doing one with them. His circumstances are quite different, not purely copy-cat.
Some of the course material really interests me, I imagine the rest of it could be tedious.
the balanced approcahed to work and life - so far I have enjoyed most the better paid jobs I have done, there's a happy co-incidence. So my policy is simply to chase the remuneration, job satistaction seems to follow.
do I like management - some previous jobs (product manager, service manager) drove me nuts, so I'm not even sure of that yet ! If I was sure I could keep doing my current main job forever (technical architect), I would do that.
cheers,
JM