About competing with younger versions of yourself: yes, it is good to have an exit strategy. Still, having experience and knowing SoC design flow from “cradle to grave” allows me to see things from a global perspective that many younger versions of me do not. In addition I know 3 spoken languages and about 15 coded languages (perl, verilog, vhdl, csh, tcl, c, assembly, you name it)… newbies can’t touch that.
The bigger threat to me is foreign PhD’s who work longer hours, complain much less, and make 1/3 of what a similarly educated American would demand; however there are always communication issues and political issues which may shut down the availability of such workers.
