Anyone in the field who hasn't figured this out yet needs to be let go.
What a laugh! Another slashdot story about how a development career is over when you are 50 (or 40, or 30, or 22)! I have no doubt ageism is a reality in our field, but
I am about to turn 64, have intentionally avoided management my entire career (although I have had plenty technical lead assignments), and have learned an entirely new language and development environment in the last two years.
The secret is simple. I have bothered to learn about the technical domain of my industry, and am not just a programmer. This makes me valuable to my employer, a NASA contractor.
Someone just leaked the entire plot on Wikileaks.
You joke, but if this were true, it would be poetic justice. If the (likely bogus) rape allegations were posted, this would just be what Assange does to others. Why are most Slashdotters so outraged by the rape allegations, but not outraged by what Wikileaks posts that can literally destroy lives?
Mathematicians, by and large, tend to be very unhappy people in my experience. Not all of them, of course. Some mathematicians have a certain "spark" that allows them to abandon mathematics temporarily and give themselves over to the pleasure of an interpersonal relationship; but even so it is still against their nature to do so, and they will always slip back into the comfort of a mathematical outlook sooner or later.
Even with qualification, this seems like a very rash generalization. I attended a doctoral program in Logic at the University of California Berkeley, where the names on the office doors were pretty much the same as the names of the most significant theorems. What struck me was the incredible diversity of how the best mathematicians' minds worked. Some saw mathematics as a meaningless game with symbols. Others had a vivid imagination for platonic realities that they captured in their work. Some were multi-talented, outgoing, and verbally and socially skilled . Others were introverted and poor communicators. I don't know what mathematicians you know, but your generalization that mathematicians tend to be unhappy makes no sense to me at all. I personally knew, and in a few cases worked for, a number who solved important problems. An example would be Julia Robinson (Hilbert's Tenth Problem) who certainly suffered from poor health and did have some difficult times earlier in her life, but at the time I knew her (1986-1972) could not be described as an unhappy person.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion