[HN Gopher] Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advic...
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Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could
I do?
Hey HN, I'm 35, working for an IT consultancy company and I feel
my career is going at a dead end. I did well with my career (maybe
too much?) and after 10 years I'm far away from coding activities,
more involved in project management and I'm not sure that this is
what I want. I like coding (that's why I started this job, I also
consider myself good at coding) I like to learn and explore new
things. The problem is that, at same time I feel that coding can't
be a lifetime career: what will happen in 10 years from now? Maybe
company will prefer younger coders to hire and I will not be able
to find a job anymore? (I have family, I can't risk to lose my job)
Shall I find now another role or company that may be can offer me a
job where I can cover for both roles (Coding and project
management)? I'd like to hear your point of view, maybe I'm
missing something here. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Author : iamcirou
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-04-11 11:51 UTC (11 hours ago)
| pbiggar wrote:
| This might be a good read for you:
| https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum...
| bad_username wrote:
| You may be interested to become a software architect. This role
| is not offered by all companies, and differs from company to
| company. But usually it requires a good mix of technical,
| business and management skills, with the emphasis on technical.
| In my company, at least, the architect is expected to be hands-on
| and be able to code the critical/foundational parts that _have_
| to be done right. So you might want to find a company where there
| is a meaningful architect track that is parallel to the
| management track in terms of compensation and career levels.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| Congratulations on making the jump to management, which is a
| socially acceptable job all the way to retirement.
|
| I'm in my 40s and still coding. I wish I had your problem, which
| I'd solve by scratching my coding itch out of hours.
| nsb1 wrote:
| Be careful though - this is the path I took, and it still comes
| with trade-offs. I started out as a developer and made the
| transition to management, where I now oversee a mid-size
| engineering department (~100 people). I never get to even look
| at code any more - there's just no time. Off hours I get to do
| what I want of course, but there are real life things competing
| for my time there. Unless you're single with no kids and no
| house to maintain, there will always be a list of stuff that
| needs to get done, and then you have to choose again. When I
| actually get a couple hours to myself to do some project
| coding, it's glorious, but it doesn't happen very often.
|
| One piece of advice I can give is that if you do decide to go
| down the management path, own that decision and understand what
| it means. I spent a number of years trying to keep a foot in
| the code, and it was exhausting because I never had the blocks
| of time necessary to produce good output, and as a result, both
| my code and my management duties suffered. Learning to let go
| was very difficult, at least for me, but when I did, it was
| better for me and everyone I was managing. My job was supposed
| to be about making sure other people could do theirs, and as
| soon as I understood that, I was able to focus my attention
| properly.
| indigochill wrote:
| I'm just a couple years behind you and have been having a related
| discussion with my manager recently. He identified that for
| developers, there are (at least?) two paths of progression:
| either you move into a management role (like technical director)
| or you move into some sort of domain expert/specialist role.
|
| Like you, I wanna make stuff, not manage people, and I told my
| manager that as well so we could set progression expectations.
| What this has looked like for me is still that I'm not doing as
| much coding as I was as a junior, but I am documenting a lot of
| things, formalizing development processes, teaching peers about
| dev ops practices, and so on. I keep on top of new developments,
| understanding what's worthwhile for our team and why, and
| disseminating that information to the rest of the team.
|
| My feeling is that you can be safe from younger coders if you
| continue to learn from your work and show the expertise you've
| gained from your years. On the other hand, I have also seen
| senior-titled engineers whose code was indistinguishable from
| fresh graduates, and that's a bad place to be.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I know plenty of 60+ year olds who have specialised in a
| programming technology and get pretty good government contracts.
| Some of them went to management and back, because people
| management isn't for everyone.
|
| Good luck!
| joeblau wrote:
| I, thankfully, ran into this problem when I was 28 and I'll just
| let you know my journey. The thing that I realized about my
| career is that the _people_ I was working with where "dead end
| people." They basically followed what society was telling them to
| do. If Google/Facebook/Redhat engineers invented some tech (today
| Google/Amazon/Microsoft), our team was just re-implementing it
| 5-10 years later. When I realized it was the people I had a
| decision to make -- Try and change the people I work with or move
| myself to an area where people were still excited about the
| future.
|
| I moved to Silicon Valley and have never looked back.
|
| I've been programming since I was in high school (started on
| TI-81 in 1996), I'll be 40 this year and I still LOVE LOVE
| programming. BUT the only reason I do love it is because I've
| reached a level of mastery where I pretty much get to choose what
| projects I work on and the _people_ I work with. Steve Jobs said
| something back in the 90's that Ive heard other say about the
| variance in skills of developers vs other jobs[1].
|
| You're burned out because you're working with low quality people
| and it's way easier to move yourself to an ecosystem where people
| are more excited about the future than it is to change your
| peers. (P. T. Barnum also says something similar to this in Art
| Of Money Getting, published in 1880 [2])
|
| Also, contrarian advice -- almost every one of my friends has
| switched to a manager track. I'm currently in the process of
| building my own company and most of them can't provide any value
| at this early stage. They don't read anything on how to become
| effective managers, they aren't socializing in any communities,
| they aren't attending any conferences on people management, not
| reading any books as life long learners, they say things like
| "I'm technical" and "I know enough to be dangerous", but they
| can't materially contribute to helping me build my product
| outside of testing and light UI feedback.
|
| So my two things would be: 1. Move to a better
| environment (Doesn't have to be SV but some place where there is
| a community passionate about things you are). 2. If you're
| going to eject out of coding, eject to an owner, not to an
| employee.
|
| [1] - http://www.geekmind.net/2012/07/steve-jobs-on-average-vs-
| bes...
|
| [2] -
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm#link2...
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Maybe company will prefer younger coders to hire and I will not
| be able to find a job anymore?
|
| 32 here, but most of my professional circle is my age or older.
|
| Programming is not Logan's Run and outside of maybe bold and
| snappy SV startups companies cannot afford to sneer at
| experienced professionals wanting to join - not in the current
| market at least.
|
| My advice would be to talk to your superiors about this - perhaps
| they would be willing to put you into a coding role? If not, you
| can start sending out resumes and having interviews - it's not
| like you have to be jobless to make time for that.
|
| Perhaps you have friends from previous college/pervious
| companies, who could help?
|
| My experience is that switching roles is generally hard and will
| take time - you'll need to take that into account.
|
| But it's not impossible and I have anecdata to support it.
| dimmke wrote:
| I'm 29 and the amount of anxiety I read about in programming as
| a profession is staggering. All the people trying to get into
| it worried that they're not cut out for it, only for 10 years
| later to be worried that they're aging out of it.
|
| I wish I could understand where it comes from. There are so,
| so, so many programming jobs out there. There are no hard and
| fast rules about anything. I love the comparison to Logan's
| Run, I've had the same thought myself. I know many people in
| their 40s and 50s who still code in their day to day.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My pet theory is that it _used to be_ something hard and for
| the young and innovative, but was eventually commoditized.
|
| My aunt was one of the IT pioneers in the late 80s in
| Poland(her first task was to figure out how to put together
| her work machine - fun stuff), and was only laid off in 2010
| - two years before retirement - due to stuff unrelated to her
| performance.
|
| I think currently it boils down to us being expensive
| resources - I was told repeatedly at my current workplace
| that we (the team) are "a cost", so we should focus on
| delivering instead of ensuring quality, which is kind of
| ironic given that I know we're pushing code which simply
| doesn't work so we aren't actually delivering.
|
| Bottom line is that we're expensive and that causes anxiety
| among the decision makers, who in turn transfer that anxiety
| onto us.
|
| This is my best guess anyway.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| If you are considering moving back to a technical career, perhaps
| my experience (over the last 34 years) will be of use to you.
| There is an excellent living to be made purely as a technical
| person without having to unduly fear your job going to younger
| folks. I chose to take six months off each year since 2001 (*). I
| have never had anyone report to me ever, yet I have strived to be
| good enough technically that I am often the person people turn
| to, from higher management to the entry-level programmer. I do
| short-term consulting engagements (almost always hands on
| technical work), and I am never in a hurry to get the next gig.
| This is what I have learnt.
|
| First, think in terms of entire systems. Clients pay, and pay
| handsomely, for honest solutions to their (technical) problems.
| Don't think of the solution as a "coding" issue alone. There's
| design (of interfaces, of documentation), there is hardware (IoT,
| network), there are deployments with 24/7 operations, there are
| installations in unforgiving environments ( sensors in a
| corrosive humid tank) and so on. Each one of this is a technical
| challenge. At the end of the day, clients want a system that is a
| pleasure to use and is maintainable and extendable by someone
| else.
|
| Second, get good at all aspects of delivering a system entirely
| on your own. That is, you don't have to do it by yourself, but
| you should be decent enough to pitch in as a replacement for any
| part. This provides opportunities for endless learning, and in my
| experience, breadth of experience is rewarded.
|
| Third, many real-world problems are not shiny and cool, and
| younger people don't want to do them. HN is biased towards Open
| GPT more than say, wastewater management systems, so one could be
| forgiven for feeling uncool and out of date all the time. Nah, it
| is a big world out there. And there's plenty of opportunity to
| use Rust or Elixir or whatever tickles your fancy.
|
| Fourth, if you go my way (not working one's tail off for the
| whole year), I'd advise you to downscale expectations in terms of
| money and lifestyle. Once you learn to make peace with making
| less money, you will find that you will have loads of work coming
| your way, enough time and plenty of money to enjoy life where it
| counts. Most good things in life (health, travel, books, sports,
| entertainment, vacations) are surprisingly affordable. And you
| need time to enjoy them with your loved ones.
|
| Good luck.
|
| (*) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21645117
| sergiotapia wrote:
| There is ALWAYS work for a senior engineer who keeps his blade
| sharp. Just because you have years put in, it doesn't mean you
| need to get into management. Dive deeper, become an even better
| engineer. You have years on the job, something money can't buy
| and companies WANT.
|
| Just don't be one of those older engineer codger that still
| pushes for subversion instead of git and prefers php instead of
| something modern. That's a fast track to becoming irrelevant and
| unhireable. Keep up to date and SHARP.
| forinti wrote:
| It's curious that modern life has brought this sort of angst.
|
| I mean, long ago you would work in farming or as a blacksmith all
| your life and that would be it.
|
| With such constant change nowadays, you can't help but feel that
| you are always on a tightrope. Late capitalism has made everyone
| expendable; you have to prove yourself constantly.
|
| Also, inequality takes away some of your freedom. Sometimes I
| wish I could take some time off from IT and do something simpler
| like wait tables or walk dogs. But it just is not possible to
| take such a huge pay cut.
| NamTaf wrote:
| I'm not entirely buying it.
|
| You might be a blacksmith, but eventually you'll become the
| master of the shop, take on some apprentices under you, and
| take on more high-level responsibilities. You might still get
| to work iron periodically (especially if it's a complex,
| artisan piece) but more of your day will be consumed with
| balancing books, managing contracts of supplies, client liason,
| etc.
|
| I don't think that's really evolved a great deal compared to
| the OP's sitaution.
| mulmboy wrote:
| Plenty of people live on the wage from waiting tables or
| walking dogs. Of course it's possible for you - it's just a
| lifestyle change.
| Mave83 wrote:
| let younger agile people Code, be an Software Architect if you
| like Code or manage coding teams. That is most likely better.
| JVerstry wrote:
| Many times over, I have been working in companies where they had
| no other option but to call back coders from retirement to ensure
| migration and operational activities. There are plenty of aging
| systems requiring coding skills and experience freshmen can't
| deliver. Tech can be a lifetime career for sure, you only need to
| figure out where the demand is and navigate it...
| nullandvoid wrote:
| I'm a little younger, but also try my hardest not to get dragged
| into more management (it's easy to happen).
|
| Are you worried you're not going to be skilled enough in
| management - and therefore you're trying to get "ahead of the
| game"?
|
| If not then what's your fear - code until you can no longer, and
| then take a few months off, re-train and go into management (as a
| skilled coder you'll already have a big advantage if you want to
| manage teams in tech). Life is too short to work a job you don't
| like.
| stoneglyph wrote:
| Buy some ETH and learn about the blockchain and defi. Some smart
| people expect ETH to go to 10k or more this year, based on this
| the code change in July, along with an inflationary collapse of
| fiat. You could do some videos, or websites based on 11ty and
| jamstack. It sounds like you are capable. There are some very
| promising alt-coins that run on ETH that could see 20,000 percent
| gains this year after the July code change in ETH. A first
| project - generate your own seed phrase with dice or atmospheric
| TRNG streams and validate it offline on a secure OS (openBSD?).
| You could write a python program to do this. You could also help
| us all get away from centralized banking and services. Good luck.
| [deleted]
| tilolebo wrote:
| There are companies out there who value the experience of senior
| software engineers (and I mean real seniority, not the job title
| that you update to senior after 3 years in the field).
|
| Such companies will have a career ladder up to Principal or
| Distinguished engineer. You will have to share your knowledge, of
| course, but without having to give up coding and do people
| management, if you don't want that.
|
| I'm 39, happy infrastructure engineer, individual contributor. I
| tried being team lead for some years, but didn't really enjoy
| people management. That's okay.
|
| Charity Majors wrote some great posts about that:
|
| - https://charity.wtf/2019/09/08/reasons-not-to-be-a-manager/
|
| - https://charity.wtf/2019/11/23/questionable-advice-after-bei...
|
| - https://charity.wtf/2020/09/01/the-official-authorized-list-...
|
| - https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotio...
| derwiki wrote:
| Principal (even many Staff roles) at my company is reduced
| coding and many have direct reports, so YMMV. To stay coding,
| stay "senior" level.
| tilolebo wrote:
| I work with a Principal engineer in my team, who used to be
| the team lead. He works on IC level only, doing a mix of
| architecture and operations work, with some interviewing on
| the side.
|
| No direct reports. There are multiple Principals in the same
| situation. No direct reports, they just usually work on a
| scope that involves multiple teams,but they don't lead them.
| brogrammer2018 wrote:
| Same problem here, work in IT as developer, tech lead and PM,
| have not been promoted for years. I am staring to think IT
| consultancy software is full of dead end jobs.
| NamTaf wrote:
| Your company pushes you to a managerial role because your
| experience allows you to deliver more value in that than you
| would as an individual contributor. You're are essentially a
| force multiplier for more junior ICs by providing the strategy,
| direction and mentorship to them. You'll find this career
| trajectory to be fairly normal.
|
| Being a coder makes you a cost centre, whereas being a PM gives
| you some degree of charge over a budget, which means you can more
| directly quantify your $ contribution to the business. The upper
| end of your salary expectations will therefore likely be higher
| in the PM role. It sounds like you don't want to do PM, but sort
| of realise this.
|
| There are a handful of exceptions to this, where you become such
| a domain expert that people will write blank cheques for you do
| still do the technical stuff, but you will find overwhelmingly
| that your experience level is one where companies see your best
| value in providing you the responsibility to guide the high level
| and leave the detail up to juniors below you.
|
| Of course, you may choose that you want to become that greybeard
| IC, and that's totally ok, but expect it to put some degree of
| limit on your salary's upward trajectory. I don't think that they
| will kick you out just because you're old, but they certainly see
| you as being able to deliver more value in some degree of
| management. As an IC, you simply can't provide that much more
| value back to the company compared to juniors in similar roles,
| because your true value lies in being leverage to multiple
| juniors through your experience and mentorship. If you're paid
| well enough, satisfied with having that for the rest of your
| working life, then it's an increasingly stress-free way to pay
| the bills because your mastery of the role will mean it's easy to
| deliver.
|
| It's worth noting, that some of the other ways around this
| (starting your own company, freelancing, consultancy) will
| inherently include a degree of management of some description.
| Whether it's the right balance for you is again something only
| you can gauge.
|
| So if you truly want to stay as an IC, how do you do that? Talk
| to your supervisors about your career goals and highlight that.
| Have that discussion, explain to them that you're happy to take
| on a mentorship role but still want to be in the weeds at the end
| of the day, and hopefully your company is flexible enough to work
| with you there.
|
| Context: I'm also 35 but in a mech engineer career, and in
| exactly the same career stage as you. I now have 3 people
| reporting to me, but more informally play a
| strategy/mentorship/leadership role to a team of about 10 more
| junior engineers.
|
| I have thought a lot through this, and my team has multiple of
| those old greybeards who stayed in the technical expert IC role.
| I wrestled with the same issue (I used to love doing technical
| design, FEA, CAD, etc., and can still probably run rings around
| the juniors in it) but ultimately realised that I want the career
| growth and that I can deliver substantially more value by moving
| into a leadership position.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Come to Google! No forced management track so you can code for as
| long as you want, no ageism (colleague just turned 60; I'm 40
| myself), will probably let you support a family, great WLB :)
| tonetheman wrote:
| I would love to work at google. I am an older coder and founder
| but I doubt highly I could pass the tests to even get an
| interview. :(
| ggambetta wrote:
| Give it a try :) I interviewed twice and was hired twice, at
| 30 and at 39. Don't believe the naysayers, the interviews are
| actually super reasonable! It's algorithmic, but not
| leetcode; it feels like _" let's figure out this problem
| together in the whiteboard, colleague"_.
| _0o6v wrote:
| Having to reverse a binary tree or some other associated
| nonsense for a frontend UI role meant I turned the
| interview process at Google down. That and about 6
| prospective hours of interviews for my application to then
| be sent to a "hiring committee" who ultimately decided if I
| was worthy enough of a job at Google, it just wasn't worth
| the hoop-jumping.
| foogazi wrote:
| What was the TC difference between GOOG and the job you
| have?
|
| Might be worth it for some people out there
| foogazi wrote:
| > but I doubt highly I could pass the tests to even get an
| interview.
|
| I don't get this "won't even try" attitude for a job
| interview - what is the worst thing that could happen?
| asdev wrote:
| fine print: must leetcode for a year before entering. results
| are not guaranteed. along with the fact that you'll feel like
| an insignificant cog in a gargantuan machine
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I'm nearly at your spot in my career, but I'm not in management.
| I'm transitioning from a senior programmer position into a
| technical architect and team lead. I'm going to help write
| requirements and how to implement them from a high level, then
| create tasks and assign them to team members (including myself)
| to implement. I might be mentoring others from time to time.
| Maybe there is a similar position where you are?
| clcaev wrote:
| I think 35 is quite young, I wouldn't worry about "aging out" for
| another decade or three.
|
| Make sure to keep up with technologies as part of your day job.
| It's amazing how fast things, even SQL change. You don't need to
| own it all, just build situational awareness with an occasional
| deep dive.
|
| Read other people's code. Look for projects that interest you and
| always be learning from them. Build things. Build your writing
| and presentation skills. You can always learn by helping to
| document the projects you use.
|
| Look for industries that fit your interests. Programming is a
| dual-class: your domain of expertise and your technical chops. As
| you progress in your career, deliberately choose your domain.
| Immerse yourself that sub-field, identify high-value problems,
| and how computing techniques are used to solve them. Your success
| in later phases of your career is measured by how you are able to
| help a given community with problems that matter to them.
|
| Critically, seek low stress: it's a long haul. Save. Avoid
| abusive employers and clients. Keep professional boundaries.
| Build and maintain a robust circle of friends. Finally, if you
| have children, focus on them now -- you won't get another chance
| later.
| maverickJ wrote:
| 1. You might be leaking energy: Try write down the different
| activities you have done during coding over the past 10 years and
| see if any of theses activities has been antagonistic with each
| other. If you have found antagonistic activities, try eliminate
| them and give yourself a year to work on complementary activities
| in coding. It might reveal a thing or two to you.
|
| 2. It's incredible hard to predict an accurate version of the
| future. A better alternative might be to set yourself to quickly
| adapt to changing scenarios and being strong on timeless
| foundations.
|
| 3. Align your strengths with the output of the company: Find your
| strengths are and what you enjoy and figure out how to align it
| with the outputs of the company and serving humanity. I find that
| having a goal bigger than ourselves tends to energise us.
|
| 4. If you need to move to something different, it might require
| you paying a price; I think of it as paying a premium on your
| first deal.
|
| 5. Have a personal motto:I have observed that organisations tend
| to become the motto they ascribe to themselves. Maybe individuals
| can leverage this?
|
| Some posts from leverage thoughts that my help below:
|
| https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/do-not-engage-the-mi...
|
| https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics...
|
| https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/paying-a-premium-on-...
|
| https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/humans-and-work-thre...
|
| I hope this helps and I wish you the best.
| christiansakai wrote:
| TIL 35 is old.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Like others have pointed out, a career in tech doesn't
| necessarily follow a linear path.
|
| I landed my highest profile job so far as a fresh graduate, but I
| quickly found out it was a miserable place to be in. I have made
| a healthy work environment my top priority ever since. In my
| opinion you should chase what makes you happy, which may or may
| not be what makes some random HN users happy.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I am 39, been programming for about 10 years, and I have never
| managed anybody. Mentored numerous, always had an "open door" to
| sit with a junior or even not-so-junior dev to hash
| out/debug/conceptually consult on something. This is part by
| explicit choice, part by just not being as "emotionally" invested
| in the tech decisions as people who desired management. I always
| volunteer to take on or clean up parts of the code or stack that
| no one else wants to touch as long as my other work duties would
| be reasonably adjusted to accommodate for this, so that everyone
| else's job could be more fun and productive. I have always been
| valued by both management and for being this kind of "informal
| player", and never felt my job was at risk, or that I got stale.
| You don't need to be working on the latest tools/lang's/stacks:
| just writing and reading code constantly. Tech challenges that
| keep your skills sharp lurk everywhere.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I work at company (Olo) where at least two people I know of have
| asked to go back to developer positions from their manager
| positions, and have done so without any negative takes on it.
|
| In my mid 30s I had a couple years where I kind of re-invented
| myself. I had been doing your typical C# backend stuff for like
| 10 years, just going to work, doing the thing, going home. Then
| for 2 years I spent some time learning other languages (F#, Nim,
| Rust,Go) doing coding challenge type things (Codingame, Advent of
| Code) and doing some open source work and game dev on the side
| etc.
|
| Anyway it all kinda made coding fun again but when I next had a
| job search it opened a lot of doors. Knowing Rust and F# got me
| in the door at some very interesting places, and all the
| "leetcode" challenges made me able to interview very confidently.
| eurekin wrote:
| I'm 36 and think I faced similar issues.
|
| Was proposed a management role about 3 times. Somehow it felt
| like the end in general.
|
| For my coworkers age isn't as relevant as simply coding skills.
| They want to be able to give me any task and be technically lead,
| if they don't know the technology themselves.
|
| I've set a goal for myself: be able to do most of the coding
| related tasks - including devops, testing, deployment, monitoring
| - using up-to-date tech stacks.
|
| During this weekend I've played around with self hosting and
| ended up replicating my company's development pipeline. It's
| quite barebone, but includes a git server (with working ssh clone
| urls), simple docker based CI pipeline, nexus repo and some
| management apps. All apps are proxied behind let's encrypt's SSL
| certificate.
|
| I also added a simple google oauth integration so that anybody
| with google account could quickly set-up their own repos.
|
| I don't remember last time I had so much fun to be honest. Also,
| as a byproduct, I hope, I gained the "hard to get unless you're
| in trenches" knowledge that is so valuable, when opportunity
| comes. It does come often in the place I work.
|
| This is an example of the general approach I take: make sure to
| keep technical skills up to date using free time, by setting up
| goals, which are easy (for me) and fun - the end result should
| give the "I'm so happy with, what I made" feeling. It shouldn't
| be forced, because that would make me hate it in the long term.
|
| I have a long list of things to try out sometime (computer
| vision, home automation, simple raspberry pi project, webapp to
| manage a game we play) and just pick something in free time.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I'm glad you have time for this! I'm 37 and haven't had time
| for personal tech projects in years; family, home ownership and
| life have all gotten in the way. I'm on the management side
| (senior director equivalent), but I do make more than any of my
| engineers and I probably spend 50% less time working. I do a
| mix of people management, architecture design and executive
| communication, but it's 95% stuff that falls into "important
| but not urgent" so I delegate most of what I can.
|
| I don't get the satisfaction of being happy with what I made,
| but the quarterly bonuses and stock grants make me ok with that
| :) Management is a great 9-5 job if you do it right, and if
| you're a people person it's super easy. Lots of potential
| career growth if you're willing to put in the face time and
| play politics; your knowledge is less important than your style
| the further up you go.
| tafox wrote:
| Are you openly bragging about making more money while working
| half as much as the people you are supposed to be responsible
| for?
|
| I would be embarrassed to write that.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| The knock on management from a lot of folks I've talked to
| is that managers end up working harder for less money --
| this is actually the case at the line manager level, but if
| you can get past that things improve quickly.
|
| Personally, I think it's a suckers game to look for meaning
| or purpose at work. I'm there to do a job, get paid, then
| use that money to find my own purpose. If you want to use
| work as your creative outlet, great -- but you'll probably
| be frustrated.
| slumpvaldperson wrote:
| I think a lot of people are in a similar position but not
| as open and honest about it. I feel refreshed reading it,
| rather than that it's something to be embarrassed about.
| Edit: better english
| eurekin wrote:
| To grandparent's defense - I find management genuinely
| essential and quite impactful.
|
| It's a rare occurrence that developers on their own can
| communicate well with any kind of stakeholder. It might be
| anecdotal, but I find a high correlation between best
| technical and worse communication skills. I've seen people,
| who might be seen as typical 10x developers, cause they
| were so productive, be extremely bad with speaking about
| development in general. I've seen product owners literally
| gnashing their teeth in anger, but holding it up, since the
| guy really delivers - despite the bad "style".
|
| Also, seeing already quite a fair share of stakeholder
| meetings... The part about style couldn't be closer to the
| truth. The non-technical people act, as if they didn't hear
| "99% percentile uptime is so so" or anything similar - at
| all! What they do hear instead are the speaker's emotions.
| They want to feel secure and good about going forward.
|
| I've seen big budget moves based mostly on that: how well
| the project was sold to them. Technical merits were
| irrelevant. Whole teams disbanded, despite being quite
| productive, because someone got management excited about
| the new thing (also completely inapplicable to the problem
| at hand, but with good marketing: e.g. AI, cloud)
|
| I find the grandparent just frank. It aligns pretty well
| with my anecdotal experience. I also think managers should
| be well compensated, since so much is at stakes (whole
| team, departments).
| foogazi wrote:
| > I would be embarrassed to write that.
|
| And working twice as long for half as much
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| @OP I hope you get quality advice from veterans who frequent
| these forums.
|
| I have some tangential questions for you and maybe others.
|
| ---
|
| As a programmer, how can I avoid the pressure towards management?
|
| What is that pressure and why do people succumb to the pressure?
|
| How much is that pressure external and how much is internal?
|
| What form does the pressure take? What advice can help withstand
| the pressure?
|
| ---
|
| I work in a medium sized silicon valley tech company.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've done both and am not sure which I'm better at. I can 100%
| say that I found more pure joy in programming, but probably
| have had a much larger positive impact on the company in a
| leadership role.
|
| The ultimate control against the pressure is "no, I don't want
| a management role" or "I don't want a management role higher
| than team lead" or whatever. No one will fire a good engineer
| because they don't want to go into management.
|
| Part of the pressure is on pay; part is on control; part is on
| boredom/frustration with doing the same thing, especially if
| you're doing the same thing and think there are bozos higher up
| in the company making bad calls.
|
| I've often said that once I have a totally secure retirement,
| that the ideal job from a happiness standpoint for me is a
| principal (or maybe even one step lower) software engineer role
| somewhere. I don't want to just travel and certainly not just
| golf and watch TV.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| This is my experience, and your mileage may vary:
|
| Multiple times in my coding career I have felt stalled and/or
| like I was regressing.
|
| Early on, I worked on a programming language, gosu (https://gosu-
| lang.github.io/) which ended up not really going anywhere. Once
| the work on it was done, I returned to more mundane web
| programming for a while (over half a decade.)
|
| A long while after that, and unexpectedly, I turned a jQuery
| function I was noodling on into intercooler.js
| (https://intercoolerjs.org/). After a year of that I returned to
| mundane web programming for quite a while (over half a decade.)
|
| Unexpectedly, a year ago, the country shut down. I was at home
| and decided to see if I could remove the jQuery dependency in
| intercooler.js, and so created htmx (https://htmx.org/).
|
| When creating htmx and removing some attribute/functionality that
| was in intercooler.js, I realized that a small programming
| language would be the ideal replacement, so I created hyperscript
| (https://hyperscript.org/) I had not expected to work on a
| programming language again, but now I am.
|
| So my career has been some very exciting technical projects
| punctuating long stretches of pretty basic, boring web
| development, where the most exciting thing is me wondering if I
| can figure out what the deuce is wrong with my CSS.
|
| My takeaway, at least in my career, is that patience is a virtue,
| and the interesting stuff tends to come up at irregular intervals
| and in unexpected moments and ways.
| tarruda wrote:
| When you are working on "mundane web programming", are you
| employed or just freelancing? If you are employed, do you quit
| your job to work on these more exciting projects?
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| I have been in both situations over the last two decades.
|
| I don't quit to work on these projects, I usually work on
| them sporadically during work hours or, during intense
| periods that rarely last more than a week or two early on,
| full time. htmx was done during the first few weeks of the
| covid shutdown, for example.
| lukaesch wrote:
| Have you considered to start freelancing? You could build a
| personal brand as a specialist for an industry, tech stack or
| <niche of your choice> you feel passionate about and decide on
| your own which projects/clients you want to work.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| Any advice on marketing and getting contracts? Say,
| hypothetically someone was in a niche that could be useful, but
| locally there is only one company and other than that it's kind
| of a vacuum.
| asien wrote:
| Hey iamcirou,
|
| I'll be honest , you're analysis is perfectly right.
|
| This is just my opinion , but I think the industry has evolved
| from what is was 20 years ago.
|
| With the rise of social platform , access to knowledge has become
| universal.
|
| Today anyone can proclaim themself an << expert >> on any topic.
| Trust me on this , I have seen people telling me they knew about
| something and when you scratch the surface you realize they know
| very little... Add to this the widespread of IT Trainings
| everywhere and you have made << IT consulting / Software Dev >>
| become something trivial...
|
| While someone who was a consultant 20 years ago was worth a lot
| for his own company and valued by his own peers/superior/customer
| his now considered as not much than a cell inside a spreadsheet
| or a unit of work for a given task...
|
| There is no surprise there and I think it's not even specific to
| you or consulting. It's the same everywhere if you are working in
| large business ( Fortune 500 / SV Unicorn / Big Fours ...)
| mmaunder wrote:
| One of the best ways to make yourself much more hireable and to
| give yourself job security is through continuing education.
| Consider certifications in cyber security, dev or ops certs on
| AWS or other popular fields that are hiring. It will also give
| you a big boost in self confidence and bring your skills current.
| akeck wrote:
| Any career change could take time, or even create an employment
| gap while you skill up for the next thing, so, in addition to
| what others have said, I would also stockpile savings.
| xfax wrote:
| Look into Technical Program Management as a career track.
| valeryz wrote:
| 6 years of TPM'ing in BigTech. I'm looking to come "back" to
| Software Engineering where I could do more of the "real TPM"
| work than in my current Senior TPM position.
|
| I'm finding that this role is being diluted by Program Managers
| with very little if any technical background. (Sometimes they
| learn enough of basic scripting, and suddenly get the T). But
| this is not the same as an engineer that had built stuff for
| years.
|
| These people are indispensable in handling the organizatioal
| chaos, but are less efficient in preventing it, and driving the
| overall vision, especially if a problem being solved is deeply
| technical and strategy and tech issues are intertwined (they
| always are in e.g. scalable infrastructure).
|
| I'm finding that deep technical and strategic organizational
| vision increasingly belongs to just very senior Software
| Engineers, who may stop coding, start working more with people,
| but actually never convert to TPM.
| dm03514 wrote:
| The problem is that, at same time I feel that coding can't be a
| lifetime career:
|
| Is this actually true?? I'm concerned because I read that you're
| making decisions based on this assumption and I'm not necessarily
| true this assumption is inline with reality.
|
| I'm 36, and have been moving away from coding for the last couple
| years too, I'm deeply concerned because engineering seems to earn
| more across the board than project management.
|
| My strat is doubling back down on coding, by starting to read
| engineering and algorithm blogs and books in my free time, and
| finding little toy projects and scripts to do.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| > I'm deeply concerned because engineering seems to earn more
| across the board than project management.
|
| Where I live (Sydney, Australia), front-end contractors earn
| (in AUD) $800/day, back-end $900/day and project managers
| $1000/day. There's a range, of course, but that's the gist of
| it.
| smoe wrote:
| I have taken a bit of a different approach. For the the first
| 10 years I have been focused purely on coding while dabbling a
| bit in UX and Design while rejecting any management
| opportunities given. The last 5 have been a mix of the prior
| and management, product owner, growth, founder. I plan to
| continue this while staying at smaller companies where your
| responsibilities are what is currently needed and very hands
| on, not strictly what your title says.
|
| This I feel gives me the most flexibility for the future. I'm
| not necessarily concerned about not finding a job in
| programming until I retire, but I like to make life decisions
| (e.g. where and how to life) first and job decisions second.
|
| I haven't done a whole lot of programming in the last 1.5 years
| or so, but so far I'm not feeling that I'm falling much behind
| given that I'm doing around 15 hours of mentoring, code reviews
| and problem solving sessions with programmers per week.
| xfax wrote:
| Look into Technical Program Management as a career track. The
| right blend of technical, management and leadership IMO.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Start a company or maybe an open-source project.
|
| You'll need to code, probably to improve your knowledge and
| skills, but also to manage projects.
|
| I think the usual distinction programming vs management is
| harmful and is only relevant because big companies need the
| specialization of middle-managers.
|
| This is not the only way.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Also, old coders can be extremely valuable as experts and
| mentors.
| Quixotica1 wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation. If you are good at talking with
| people and managing them, then companies will naturally try to
| coax you into positions where that's what you do. A lot of people
| can code, and naturally a smaller subset can code and manage
| people well. I believe that all you can do is be as honest as
| possible with your company without making ultimatums. See if they
| are receptive to changing your role so that you are doing more
| coding. I feel your issue though because it's easy to think "but
| I started making a lot more money when I started managing people,
| if I go back to coding, will my pay still be justified? Will
| future raises/promotions be forfeited because I go back to
| coding. Is coding "going back"? Is this furthering or regressing
| my career? Etcetera.
|
| My only advice there is if you've successfully managed for a few
| years and you make the switch back to coding, to go back to
| management will not be hard, at your company or at another. Good
| luck
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| i would like to get a 6- or 12-month follow-up from OP.
|
| i think concern about age is very warranted.
|
| i think you should try to casually talk to your manager(s) about
| going back/down to a role where you can do more of what you want.
| give back some salary if you need to.
|
| if that fails, then start looking around.
|
| then raise the issue again with your manager(s) as a more serious
| issue -- i.e. you really want this.
|
| being burned out is affecting your home life, too, so your
| wife/kids get to experience your depression.
|
| my new pet cause is a 4-day work week.
|
| don't know if i'll be able to achieve it this time around, but i
| feel like it would offer some protection against the dread of a
| boring 'dead-end' job.
|
| one company i just talked to has 'mental health fridays' -- one
| friday off a month. seemed like some kind of important admission
| (of guilt) -- or a commentary on the state of work in 2021.
| endymi0n wrote:
| Welcome to the paradoxical dichotomy in IT: In order to be a top
| notch (line/product/project) manager, you need to have relevant
| experience in engineering itself. Also, the higher value for any
| company is engineers that are great at multiplying themselves by
| keeping a whole team aligned with the organization's goals.
|
| But in order to be a great engineer, you need have lots of
| curiosity and an affinity to tinkering, none of which you'll get
| higher up. And on top of that, engineering expertise has a half
| life of just a few years nowadays, so engineering managers
| without at least some hands-on exposure to recent technology get
| less valuable over time.
|
| One of the better approaches I've seen is that some of the best
| people I've ever worked with, they've jumped back and forth
| between manager and engineer multiple times in their career (even
| Bill gates did, famously).
|
| The key here is to step up while stepping down: Go to a lower
| level position -- but in a smaller and better org with a better
| culture and build something up from scratch. That way of spiral
| learning lets you get better as a manager as well as an engineer,
| when you miss the benefits of the other side too much, just
| change it every few years. It's the path I've chosen myself as
| well.
|
| The second path is side projects. I have kids and little time for
| that right now, but the other threads are covering that topic a
| whole lot better.
|
| The third path to stay sharp is doing some prototypes, tracer
| bullets and related stuff yourself every once in a while. I enjoy
| that as well. Just don't do the mistake of putting yourself in
| the critical path ever or neglecting your core duties over
| tinkering.
| iamcirou wrote:
| Hi endymi0n, thank you. The first one is a very interesting
| approach, unfortunately I can't work on side projects right now
| because a baby is coming in next months so the 'spiral
| learning' approach could be suitable for me
| mberning wrote:
| Two suggestions
|
| 1. Get a role inside a large org. Like Fortune 50 large. They are
| starved for talent and generally love people that can code but
| also have a broader view of things. You will see many 50+ year
| old people in these orgs still contributing technically. And you
| can have many job titles during your career there.
|
| 2. Look at setting up an income generating portfolio. There are
| many stocks and ETFs that pay a monthly dividend. If you can save
| up a modest amount (for an engineers salary) over the next 10
| years you could see your portfolio paying you 2k or more per
| month. This can give you a backstop and some confidence to put
| yourself out there as you age in your career.
| Nic0 wrote:
| "if it's clear that you can perform all your responsibilities at
| a high level, you are no longer in the right job" A quote from my
| today's reading (HBR).
| nijg wrote:
| You want a job where you can cover both coding and management but
| you actually prefer to just code. Are you wanting a touch of
| management just because you'll get a higher salary?
|
| Like the other commenter suggested, it really is best to seek a
| more leadership role within technical work: architect, tech lead,
| product owner.
|
| Does your company provide training opportunities? Find skills
| gaps that your team has and volunteer to fill them. Find gaps of
| responsibility that you can help with and eventually take over.
|
| If money is the core of your issue, communicate to your manager
| your career path and back them up by identifying those gaps you
| see. It helps to frame your problem in a way that you're solving
| for your company and get buy-in from someone who should be
| supporting your success - your manager.
|
| If your company doesn't support your transition, well get
| whatever training you can get on technical skills and leave.
| beforeolives wrote:
| > what will happen in 10 years from now? Maybe company will
| prefer younger coders to hire and I will not be able to find a
| job anymore?
|
| I think that people vastly overestimate ageism in the software
| industry. And experienced engineers are far more valuable than
| someone who is just starting out. In the worst case, if the
| industry looks very different in 10 years and your prospect
| aren't that great, you can move to project management or some
| other management position at that point instead of settling for
| it now.
|
| Get a developer job if that's what you prefer to do; I think that
| you're overestimating the downsides of choosing that option.
| kamaitachi wrote:
| I'm in my mid-50's and coding full-time for a living.
|
| Twice in my career, I've found myself in senior management roles
| (CTO in an EMEA organisation, and Software Eng Manager in a
| medium sized tech company).
|
| In both cases, it's fair to say I wasn't having fun in those
| roles. I stayed in each for 4-5 years. And in both cases, I left
| the role to return to a pure coding role (I went freelancing, and
| eventually ended up as an employee in a company in both cases).
|
| The adjustment was tough. Luckily, I'd been coding in my spare
| time, so the tech transition wasn't too hard.
|
| But finding myself suddenly in a position of almost zero
| influence was tough.
|
| I suddenly wasn't setting the agenda. I also found myself
| disagreeing with my supervisors' decisions but I had to temper my
| replies (I knew I had more management experience than some of
| them, but I needed to stay in my box, to a large extent).
|
| In some aspects, it's an ego problem. As a senior manager, you're
| invariably in a highly visible role, and that brings a certain
| level of ego boosting.
|
| Also, in my case, there was the various visible attributes that
| comes with a senior role - company car, personal assistant,
| international travel, visibility up the org tree, etc.
|
| Luckily, I ended up in a financial trading company so my
| compenation now is probably where it would be if I had stayed on
| a management track in other companies.
|
| Do I regret my decisions? At this stage, no (my most recent
| "reversion" was nearly 7 years ago). I'm happy writing code and
| not being involved in the politics and BS of management.
|
| But there are times I also miss some aspects of management.
|
| In terms of it being a long-term career choice? I feel it's
| easier to find roles as a freelance developer than as a freelance
| manager (or management consultant).
| asdev wrote:
| I feel like we are seeing a post like this every week. Contrary
| to sentiment here, writing CRUD apps for FANG is indeed not the
| dream and a path of fulfillment.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It is a way to a stack of money. Which may not give you
| fulfillment but it does you options.
| asdev wrote:
| of course it's a way and it pays well. but once you've become
| debt free and have some savings in the bank, it loses it's
| appeal exponentially. this leads to burn out, lack of
| motivation, people questioning their career choices/decisions
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I think I've had the benefit of having had very labour
| intensive jobs in my past. Working in an office, or better
| at home is a real treat. It does get to me sometime. But I
| can think back to literally digging ditches landscaping and
| I think to mysef I can totally handle this a little while
| longer.
| foogazi wrote:
| OP doesn't seem to be financially independent just yet:
|
| > I have family, I can't risk to lose my job
|
| Maybe building FAANG CRUD apps can offer something here
| derwiki wrote:
| I agree that it loses its value exponentially, but not the
| appeal.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Project management is one of those skills that you need to hide
| if you want to remain an engineer: being a good PM will just make
| you nominated to be the PM any time there isn't one (which is
| half the time in dev jobs because technical PMs are underpaid and
| overworked).
|
| So be a bad PM if you want to remain a developer. Manage your
| tasks and nobody else's, and intentionally so. It kind of sucks,
| but the primadonna attitude a lot of senior developers take is
| basically because it lets you escape the PM responsibilities that
| get you sidetracked from an engineering career track.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| One approach is to save as much as you can so that you don't have
| feel trapped by a job you can't afford to lose.
| bookboy345234 wrote:
| > I like coding (that's why I started this job, I also consider
| myself good at coding) I like to learn and explore new things.
|
| Choosing managerial track is far more dangerous than being
| developer in the context of job secruity. Managerial roles vary
| from company to company and you can not show what you learned as
| a manager, since its mostly depends on the team members which you
| do not have much control. Once you leave the organization or if
| the company goes down, managers go down with it and very hard to
| find jobs because most people who don't like coding are competing
| for the manager jobs. There are lots of people in that category.
|
| On the other hand Managers are paid much more than developers i
| hear, but i doubt its not more than 1.5x of a senior developer
| salary. In my opinion is not worth the risk. If you are a
| developer you can constantly learn and stay relevant.
|
| I might be totally wrong, willing to hear the other perspective.
| If you feel i am being not polite to managers please understand i
| am not good with managing people and hence probably i downplay
| managers role to feel superior. Its possible this is the case.
| nojvek wrote:
| Good managers are rare.
|
| In my experience the best managers deeply understand the
| business and deeply understood what motivates people and what
| they're good at. They are expert match makers of problem ->
| skill and help bring the best out of people. They are servant
| leaders.
|
| Managers have a lot of leverage. An experienced manager who
| understands their art is worth their weight in gold.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I would echo the common sentiment here that personal projects
| could help you in your development, and break away from monotony.
| At the very least, learning something along the way and
| demonstrating it can increase your marketability if that's
| something that concerns you. This is my current strategy. I'm not
| exactly anxious about my future, but I think it's reasonable to
| hedge bets with lifelong learning.
|
| Another primary driver for my starting side-projects, which I
| swore I wouldn't do because "I already program enough at work" (I
| think this is fair when I'm burned out from it but I feel that
| less and less often as I improve), is that I want to be more
| creative and less consumptive in my free time, with something I
| would value.
| 12xdev wrote:
| You should stick to project management.
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