Ask HN: Is it wrong not wanting career progression beyond senior?
I pursued computer science because of the career prospect, the fact that the salary is not capped by regulators and I had the grades to get accepted in a program. I am not a senior developer, but am never out of work for more than 2 months in my entire 15+ years career with the up and down in tech. I live comfortably in a low-cost-of-living area. I am not looking for FIRE. I switched roles every few years so that I could learn new tech stacks and get perspective from different teams.
The increased responsibilities of senior+roles are daunting. I once had the energy in my younger days to jump into the challenges, but ended up jaded after not getting the results. People have been just looking out for themselves. (Not wrong!)
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadIt's fascinating to me that you've not attained the senior level after a 15+ year career, though. That's a lot of time to spend as a mid-level engineer. Out of curiosity, why aren't you a senior engineer?
Then I took a QA position in a big corp after spending my 20s not saving any money. Even this manual/automated testing role qualified me for a 50% pay increase from the old job without salary negotiation. No dev shop took me after seeing I was clueless in recent tech stacks. After a few years, I was tired of the manual testing part and looked for a new job.
Then I had automation roles in a few local companies with increasing DevOps components. The companies are progressively less rigid so they are good in letting us exploring and using new tech stacks.
My belief in not doing "evil" in my 20s has hurt me financially and career-wise in the long term. I didn't read industry news before I turned 30. The QA job, even if the company had some controversies, was a savior to stop beating a dead horse.
From individual pov, no. Because everyone a different priorities in life.
Goal is to find the company where their expectation meets your priorities.
But if you are looking for general advice, I think it's important to want career progression. Generally speaking, for most people, bills go up as they age (kids, health, yada-yada). Unless you are sitting on inheritance money, you'll want to have a bigger pay-check to meet life's challenges.
To a point yes. There was a time when you could realistically pay off your mortgage before you were fifty, and for some people maybe this is still the case. College expenses are another consideration, just depends on how much you as a parent are going to shoulder those costs compared to grants/military/self earn.
For myself, costs have lowered and I'm able to donate more money to charity. So if you can swing a bigger paycheck and you're motivated help others I think it's worth doing so.
Also, this path allows you to delegate work to other contractors that you have vetted. After all, your clients care about the results, not who does the actual job.
So what model does apply? How do you find enough work efficiently enough with that kind of model? How do you make it sustainable and not run out of the screws that your professional network needs replacing?
It doesn't hurt to occasionally beat the bushes and ask your friends if they need screws replaced, or if they know anybody who does.
Short answer: if you replace screws efficiently and communicate well, you will become the go-to person for replacing screws.
Also--your decision is a "for now" decision, not a "forever" decision.
I’m in this field because I like writing code. So many of my managers tried to push me to advance my career, and generally speaking, there is peer pressure. Don’t give in, if you’re having fun, and make enough for a dignified living, that’s what really matters, not the title.
The old guys who have total ownership over some esoteric but irreplaceable part of the code really have it made. Especially if they are working remotely. At that point you almost are like a piece of B2B SaaS software. As long as you do your task tolerably well no one wants to go through the hassle of replacing you.
As long as you work somewhere with ladder mobility and some churn, the opportunists will rise, and they'll want/need you to rise too.
Five years ago I transitioned by accident to an executive position in cybersecurity, mostly because of my emphasis in secure development, and the recent creation of the area. IT security always has been my second love, but becoming a manager took a lot of the innocence that let me sleep like a baby every night.
I'm not complaining, I had to learn many skills, took very different challenges, and while I barely code anymore, I've both suffered and enjoyed the journey and the personal growth. Nevertheless, some days I still miss having way less responsibilities, and a more peaceful life.
I guess my point is, OP should do what he thinks is better for him while he can get away with it. If OP honestly believes his happiness is staying a senior forever, more power to him. In my case I wanted the challenge before the opportunity passed me.
The key, though it's admittedly easier said than done, is for you to do you and not worry about what everyone else is doing.
Ultimately, I think you should feel ok rejecting a promotion if it forces you into responsibilities you don’t want to have. But you’re probably going to have to accept the consequences of that either way. And you might even be forced into doing some of those responsibilities and not get paid for it.
As you can imagine, some of these responsibilities can drive you mad. The domain experts may expect the product to do X, but they want it to work the same as their product made in the 90's and they start dictating how the UI should function. Since ultimately the success of the product is in my hands, communication ultimately is the most important thing. You have to push back against nonsense and suggest other ways of doing things to people who may be set in their ways (lots of yelling and you need to keep your calm). The endless meetings are another issue. And we don't have a strong company culture to set policies on meetings (like Amazon enforcing meetings must have a small 1 page writeup that everyone has to read). When you're hyper-focused on not wasting time and you join these meetings where half the time is spent talking about weekend plans it can drive you insane.
I got into software development because I enjoyed coding, problem solving, etc. I never signed up for this! I think after this, my next move will be able to step down into a role at another company with less responsibility. This is just too much pressure, especially with two young kids at home.
Additionally, you can continuously learn new skills independent of formal role.
First, if it's OK with you, then it's not wrong. Ignore the things society/advertisers tell you: "You need a boat! You need a nice car! You need a pool!" Do you want a boat? Do you want a nice car? Do you want a pool? You actually have complete control over these optional financial burdens.
OK, so if you've taken a step back and established what you actually want, (and this may change throughout your life), then you can set some goals around how to achieve that. People may judge you (fuck em, imo). You will get asked questions about what you do for a living all the time (probably), and maybe the status of a more prestigious role is important to you. It's all up to you (possibly with some input from loved ones if you value their opinions).
Personally, I'm kind of a minimalist. I have pretty much all the stuff that I want already. I actively fight against acquiring more stuff. If I had enough capital for my family to live off 10% per year, I would quit my job today, and offer my services for free to causes that I actually care about. Come to think of it, I guess that's one of my goals.
I got talked into management twice and I hated it both times.