Ask HN: Continue as individual or move to managerial track, 50+

Been in tech for 30 years. Started as a programmer, grew into team lead. But then moved into sales and startups and somehow did not program for a decade. Finally back in programming for the past 8 years. Indian background but "pretty much a bay area local" now. Almost Nimby :)

Anyways, the megacorp career path is lined up in technology/IC and management tracks. The expectation now is move into management track because I have done well in delivering, defining roadmaps, and mentoring people. It is kind of the agreed plan for the next year, but I have developed cold feet. While I can not compete with the young ones in terms of hours they can put in and also the more recent learnings, I am finally starting to connect the technical dots after my decade long break and I enjoy building the code and the tools/products. For financial reasons, I do want to continue in a well paying job for the next decade. No experimentation as my previous experiment and mistakes along the path depleted my savings. So the goal is to be a cog-in-the-machine for at least a few years and a decade if I can. I think the managerial role will work out, but if it does not, I fear re-learning hands-on work will be so much more difficult this time around. [ I have thought about program management and at this point that seems to be my 3rd preference. ]

How will HN crowd look at this? Or maybe it is a reddit question :)