Why not start your own business or become CTO? Why work for someone less experienced?
I don't know how it's like where he lives, but the risk might not be worth it. It also takes a huge amount of dedication and work to make it work, I can imagine that at his age, his priority would lie with his family. (Hell, I'm a decade younger and my priority lies there, wife + kids should be a priority).
Of course, the CTO option seems good in that case :-)
CTO typically means lots of travelling, which isn't really good if you're prioritizing your family (well, unless you can bring your family with you, and you probably can't).
At half the companies, the CTO is the head of all engineering, and at the other half, the CTO is responsible for evangelizing the technology. In both cases, but especially the latter, you are going to be the public face of the technical side of the company. Expect lots of travelling to conferences and other speaking engagements, and expect the sales team to call you in on sales trips to help sell the product to high-rolling customers. If your company has multiple offices around the world, you're also going to be expected to tour the offices as well.
All this time travelling is time you won't be spending with your family.
I started my own business when my wife was pregnant. I found it much more family friendly than 9-5 cubicle job.
Plus work from home means that I can easily take care of making dinner etc.
But I didn't consider a consulting business and actually I have no idea how your day looks like in that area. Care to elaborate, I'd love to hear about it :-)
However, getting VCs and other investors to take an interest is proving very difficult. As soon as I say that I am (a) a single founder and (b) just shy of my 50th birthday, I never hear back from them. It seems that 3 decades of experience and running my own software development & consulting company writing apps for small business just isn't as cool as a group of young twenty somethings coming up with an esoteric idea out of left field that may or may not be profitable?!?
Becoming CTO (or in general, moving into management) is not for everyone. That said, in practical terms it behooves the early/mid thirties developer to have some kind of plan to mitigate age discrimination. Consulting is a good half way point.
I just dont understand why someone with so much experience would apply for entry level position, under some college greenhorns.
Because not everyone can stomach the risk involved in entrepreneurship?