Ask HN: What does it mean to settle into a career of coding?
I've been at my current job as a senior developer for almost 3 years. It's appropriately challenging, the benefits are great, I like my coworkers. This is after almost a decade of moving to a new startup every 2 years.
I feel like I don't have an incentive to even consider another employer unless they were going to pay more but still have equally great work/people/balance. In other words, I'm content, and it's freaking me out.
Is "settling" at your job in this way at all detrimental to my career as a developer?
1 comment
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 16.4 ms ] threadIt might be detrimental if you stop growing your skills. Learning can be painful, and so it's tempting to just coast on what you know. A good company and manager will help you grow your skills, but if they're not your job can go from great to "oh shit" very quickly when you realize your skills are obsolete.
https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/23/obsolete-skills/ explains the dynamic (organizational technical lag) and has suggestions on how to deal with this.
https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/15/40-hour-programmer/ and https://jvns.ca/blog/2017/08/06/learning-at-work/ have some more ideas for proactively making sure your skills get better.
In general nothing wrong with it, though. I stayed at one company 8 years, switching teams when I got bored, and it was mostly pretty great for my skills and career.