Companies try to find young devs, less experienced but more openminded and flexible.. do you think we will still find some cool sobs when we're > 40 || > 50 years old, even if we keep up with new technologies and stuff?

Never thought about it until now..

Ageism is real and alive in the technology world, sadly.

I am 40, and can tell you from my own experience - either you decide to take the lead in the company and pitch for lead position, or have your own business/product.

People expect based on your age that you are already in lead or even CTO level when you hit 40.

It doesn't matter if you are a really good programmer and that you are only interested in that. Perception is that programming only is for young people (wrong perception but nothing we can do about it).

Best option to my opinion is to have your own business or product by that age.

I think you will need some special things in your CV. Even if we know that dev are always learning, most recruiters will probably see you as a guy who won't improve a lot.

So if you can show that you have something special, like working in popular business, dev a popular framework or whatever, you will probably have good chances.

But like @sinisas said, you should probably try to take the lead. It will be more adapted to your salary I guess.