I have been working on research in data management for the last 40 years. I like my job and my research institution (Inria, the French national research institute for computer science), which have offered me great opportunities to learn a lot, do good work, get to know smart and nice people and overall feel useful. However, since the early days of my mid-career, the research environment, including academia and industry, has certainly become more complex, making the move from junior (or pre-tenure) researcher to senior researcher quite challenging. Based on my experience, I review some of the main questions and challenges and give some hints on how to deal with them. I'll sometimes use stories and anecdotes to illustrate the point.