[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Software Engineer hitting 40: what's next?
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Ask HN: Software Engineer hitting 40: what's next?
I've been working in software engineering for 18 years. I worked
mostly as individual contributor (now as a Senior Staff Engineer),
also I was an Engineering Manager for couple years. Now I am
interviewing after a few years at the company, and I am hit by
harsh reality. For the context, I am in Europe, not in the US. I
like technologies and programming, I want to further improve my
skills in designing and developing reliable and maintainable
distributed system, make better technical decisions. Also, I want
to keep learning and playing with new techs. I am now interviewing
for the roles like Staff / Principal Engineer, My expectations for
the roles like Staff / Principal Engineer are that while staying
hands-on, say for 30%, I will primarily use more my skills in
architecture, engineering, and communications to focus on large,
important pieces of functionality, technical decisions with big
impact, etc. I expect that I would report to a Director or VP level
manager, so that I could be exposed to a big picture, collaborate
with and learn from a professional who operated on strategic level.
In reality, I am now interviewing for Staff / Principal roles and
see a few problems that make me rethink my carrier plans. First,
the definion for the most of those positions looks Senior Engineers
with a few more years of experience: so you are limited to the
scope of a single team scope, report to an Engineering manager,
just be a worker at a feature conveyor, just be faster, mentor
young workers, maybe get some devops skill. I feel limited in
impact in such roles, my borders and carrier are defined by
Engineer Managers, who are usually less experienced in engineering
and leadership topics than I am. The work is also very repetitive,
there is not much meaningful progression, next level. I think those
titles are created to cover problems caused by diluted Senior
titles: an illusional career progression candy for ICs with some
salary increase. I saw a few Staff / Principal roles that put a
very high bar on technical expertise, when only 3-4 percent of all
the engineers have such levels, and again usually limited to a lot
of coding and a single team scope. They usually have long
exhaustive interview process. An important problem with Staff+ IC
roles is that there is a low salary limit as well, and you will
face much more competition for top roles. Mostly salaries top at
the level of a director of engineering. It is typical for a company
to have 10 directors, but only 1-2 IC with a similar compensation.
I want to work hard, and see meaningful progression: in salary, in
impact, in respect. I would like to ask for advice. I believe
there are qute a lot 35+ engineers here that faced similar problems
and made some decisions for their careers. Now I think to plan
switching to a EM track or to Technical Product management. Thank
you!
Author : man-next-door
Score : 302 points
Date : 2021-11-27 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
| downvote_magnet wrote:
| I'm 40, went through the job search cycle this spring and can
| share my experience.
|
| First: I've been working in tech for ~20 yrs. First 6-7 as an IC,
| then 8 as a dev manager, then 5 as a senior IC (I'd grown weary
| of middle management and wanted to have fun coding again) before
| beginning the latest job search.
|
| Of FAANG I interviewed with 3 - Amazon, Netflix, Facebook.
|
| Amazon's process was the least worst IMHO. Programming questions
| seemed less gotcha, less Leetcodey, altho major negative demerits
| for forcing candidates to memorize Jeff Bezos' "leadership
| principles" and demanding they share canned anecdotes from their
| career how they demonstrated them. The biggest problem however
| was the hiring manager was the very last interview and he ended
| up being an aggro jerk with little or no visible social skills,
| the kind of horror story you read about on HN. Shouldn't he have
| been the first? No offer and I would have rejected one anyway,
| especially because their comp sits behind a 4-year vesting cliff.
|
| Netflix was odd: I applied for a senior full stack role only for
| the hiring manager to tell me mid-interview the job was actually
| a front end role, dashboarding Netflix's internal tools. Why
| misrepresent it then? They ended up ghosting me, but no more
| front end for me, ty.
|
| Facebook was by the far the worst, and I interviewed 2x for 2
| different roles. YMMV but 2 Leetcode q's read off by bored, mid-
| level employees. Not a single question about anything else. Maybe
| that's a fine process for college grads but for someone with
| decades of experience? As a former hiring manager I honestly
| found it comical.
|
| I interviewed with 6 other companies before landing at my current
| gig as a Principal Engineer for a global media company. None of
| them made me offers but I wasn't too passionate about pursuing
| them. Often I didn't believe in the business model (e.g. "AI to
| solve customer support!", "ML for more accurate real-estate
| appraisals!") but maybe I just sucked too? Idk.
|
| When I interviewed for my current role my hiring manager seemed
| really smart and had 10+ yrs of experience beyond mine. He also
| gave no coding tests (!!) and instead just had me speak to a lot
| of other senior people.
|
| I'm six months into the role and so far, so good. No job is ever
| perfect but I'm happy I made the switch, and I feel like it's a
| good pathway into an executive role at a startup or some other
| company.
|
| My general advice would be to keep at it, be patient. In some
| ways it's just a numbers game. Or maybe more like dating, where
| you can go on 500 bad dates but number 501 could be the one.
| Don't take an offer just for the money if you don't get a good
| vibe from the people. Also a huge salary becomes less and less
| important the older you get, find something that makes you happy.
|
| Good luck.
| freeverse wrote:
| I've also been frustrated by the inconsistency in the
| roles/expectation for a Staff+ engineer. At a previous employer,
| as I advanced up the ladder, management repeatedly changed and
| strongly committed to an org structure and processes which made
| it extremely difficult for an IC to have impact beyond a single
| team. By the end, I was a principal, but reported to a line
| manager, had zero access to the
| planning/prioritization/roadmapping beyond my immediate team, and
| was effectively just the sr engineer to whom they handed messy or
| complex projects. Le sigh.
|
| I've come to the belief that in a broad range of circumstances,
| high level ICs aren't especially critical. There's quite a lot an
| engineering org can do with sharp senior engineers working on
| relatively autonomous teams overseen by a couple tiers of
| managers who may have little understanding of the technical
| domain. Adding some ICs who e.g. report to a VP and jump back and
| forth between areas can be seen to complicate processes, planning
| etc. We want technical impact above the level of a single team,
| which often means cross-cutting concerns or improvements which
| pass through several systems. But in many cases, even without a
| technical IC who has a technical view of the larger picture,
| narrowly-scoped teams can still come to a decent if sometimes
| convoluted local optima.
|
| My conclusion is if you like building stuff, but you get bored of
| building the same stuff, and you don't want to people-manage,
| there are basically three options:
|
| - pursue a staff+ role at a large organization which can't afford
| not to have those engineers contributing at a higher level. If
| not FAANG, now there is a tier of slightly smaller public or
| late-stage private companies who can't avoid having high-level
| technical experts -- but competition is pretty fierce
|
| - some form of consulting which allows one to move between
| technical projects
|
| - keep changing fields to do sr level engineering in an
| unfamiliar area
|
| - retire early, and putter on open source
|
| This year I moved from a principal role to a staff role which
| lets me explore some areas of technical interest which weren't
| used at my previous company. If staff doesn't let me have
| sufficiently broad impact, at least I get to explore a new
| technical area. And perhaps it will be my last job.
|
| _But_, an option which I haven't really seen, but which I must
| exist out there somewhere, and would love to hear about is if
| there are some niche companies that actually appropriately value
| engineers with many years of experience. If one believes that
| these experiences let us anticipate upcoming issues, design
| better solutions, pick up new tools and frameworks faster etc,
| and requires less from people managers, then shouldn't there be
| room for a company which disproportionately hires very
| experienced engineers, compensates them appropriately, and
| produces better/faster/lighter solutions?
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| Sorry to hijack the thread, I am wondering for those of you
| FAANG/Unicorn engineers. What is next to you after this?
|
| Context, I am also a FAANG engineer earning FAANG salary but
| still faced with the reality that in order to increase salary
| (more so due to inflation) I just have to Leetcode and re-
| interview every year to renegotiate.
|
| Until what point do you stop Leetcoding/re-interview every year?
| I think at some point I will hit a salary plateau, what to do
| after this? For an average (majority) of FAANG engineers, what
| are their salary plateaus? I probably need to just aim for that
| and then stop Leetcoding/re-interviewing after that.
| md_ wrote:
| Do you mean you re-interview and then stay in your current
| role, getting a raise from the competing offers? Or do you mean
| switching employers?
|
| In any case, most FAANG have fairly fixed salary ranges for
| each level. Now's a time of big salary increases, as you note,
| so there's more flexibility, but you should expect this
| strategy to fairly rapidly hit the maximum for your level
| unless you get promoted.
|
| So, if it's all about money, two strategies:
|
| 1. Switch employers, get a big initial stock grant + bonus.
| There tends to be more flexibility on the initial grant than on
| salary itself.
|
| 2. Get promoted.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| A very good friend of mine who was a semi famous video game
| designer in Hollywood for many years, said as soon as you hit 40,
| go work for the government. He works for the government, because
| of the stability, the benefits, all the things he was finding
| that after 35 years in the industry, he was just too old.
|
| Over many conversations he conveyed to me that the technology
| industry is a young person's industry. Once you hit 40, you've
| got to find a way to progress to owner, senior management, or do
| something else.
| [deleted]
| danbmil99 wrote:
| 50
| m4rc3lv wrote:
| I became a teacher in software engineering when I was 46. In our
| country there have been and still are lots of vacancies for
| technical teachers. I find it very fullfilling to work with young
| persons (students) and it is easy to keep up to date with new
| software eng. techniques because you are in an environment with
| som many technical persons (colleagues, students, workfield)
| rschachte wrote:
| Was it a massive pay cut?
| wpietri wrote:
| I suspect that depends a lot on location. A friend moved to
| Europe and software dev salaries there haven't undergone the
| massive rise we see in the US over the last 30 years.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I can't speak for the original commenter, but my dad is a
| software engineering dean with decades of experience. Yes,
| it's a massive pay cut.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Most certainly. But all the stress was also cut. There is
| very little stress in academia. Most of it is caused by the
| administration.
| phlakaton wrote:
| In our company there are, informally, two ways to operate at the
| staff level and above:
|
| - Be an expert in a single domain, eventually up to the point
| where you are pushing the state of the art of that domain forward
| with conference presentations etc.
|
| - Be someone who takes a broader perspective on efforts and
| ensures that sound technical choices are being made and
| organizational/ technical roadblocks to getting those technical
| choices implemented are resolved.
|
| Either way, your role is as a force-multiplier, and you are
| having a broad impact on the org. Cross-team leadership is
| perhaps more assumed with the second role than the first. But it
| is rare I think to come into an engagement having built up the
| networks you need to operate at that level, so a year spent as a
| senior engineer and building up those networks might not be so
| bad if the fit is right.
|
| Hope that helps!
| man-next-door wrote:
| You are right, I am focusing on the second option, and to be
| able to do it, a company should have an appropriate setup.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Totally off topic -- but why does HN render the text of these "HN
| Questions" with such a light font? It looks like they've been
| downvoted 10 times, or something. It makes it hard to read, and I
| can't understand the reason for it.
| detaro wrote:
| AFAIK: To discourage use of them, since HN wants the focus to
| be on link submissions.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Great response, thanks! I like the HN questions -- but I
| understand maybe that's not their thing. :)
| ldbooth wrote:
| The variety of Ask HN is a positive feature this community
| has over a pure aggregator, IMO.
| balaji1 wrote:
| There seems to be a few other undocumented features like
| these in HN. Or maybe they are documented somewhere and I
| dunno :)
| city41 wrote:
| If they are discouraged, why do they have their own entry in
| the header[1]? I always thought the light text was just to
| separate them visually from the comments.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/ask
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Right -- what a good observation. @dang -- any opinion?
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| "@dang" doesn't seem to work. You're best off email
| hn@ycombinator.com to get their attention
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I'm not sure this is correct. The Ask HN posts that get voted
| up are usually high quality.
| rackjack wrote:
| Text-only posts are down-weighted by whatever ranking
| algorithm HN uses, so only the high-quality ones will rise
| to the top (usually).
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I'd like to know this too. My brain constantly registers it as
| (incorrectly) being as a result of having been downvoted.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Hmm, I had assumed that they were all getting downvoted!
| detaro wrote:
| submissions can't be downvoted.
| [deleted]
| mcrider wrote:
| I think its because the user is newly created (i.e., green
| username).
| [deleted]
| hermitcrab wrote:
| There are lots of options apart from the standard salaried
| career. At the age of 39 I'd had enough for working for other
| people and started my own bootstrapped 1-man company, selling
| software products online. I am still at it 16 years later.
| man-next-door wrote:
| I was thinking about it as well. May I ask how you figured out
| what products to build? Did you stick to the same business
| domain, learned about their problems, and then built a product?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >May I ask how you figured out what products to build?
|
| I built products that I wanted. That probably isn't a
| commercially optimal approach.
|
| Probably better commercially to pick a market, embed yourself
| in that market and learn what they want. You might end up
| building something you are less interested in though.
|
| >Did you stick to the same business domain, learned about
| their problems, and then built a product?
|
| I have 3 products now. In each case I released something
| bare-bones that I thought was useful then iterated like crazy
| on user feedback. I didn't know that much about each domain
| when I started (but I do now!).
|
| If you are interested I've written quite a bit about my
| experiences at: https://www.successfulsoftware.net
| bjornsing wrote:
| What kind of software do you sell?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Desktop software for Windows and Mac.
| stego628 wrote:
| Try a consultancy. I work at one and there's huge demand for
| senior engineers with workload that's just what you're after, as
| long as you have cloud experience. Pay is good too.
| MasterScrat wrote:
| I asked a related question recently on Reddit which got many
| interesting comments and insights:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/o6d481/h...
| leet_thow wrote:
| I'm 42 and have stopped paying attention to titles and all the
| traditional organizational paradigms that are losing relevance.
|
| I feel like the ability to work from home in my sweats on simple
| problems as a senior engineer and receive a 75th percentile
| income relative to my neighbors in one of the best neighborhoods
| in my new home state is the most societal progress I will ever
| experience in my lifetime. I'm a lifelong bachelor by choice. Why
| bother striving for anything career wise when I am on track to
| retire comfortably to focus on my mostly free hobbies no later
| than the age of 50? For a house with a 3rd bedroom I don't need?
|
| No, best to appreciate what I have and leave the striving for the
| next generation of engineers.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I feel bad for people who aren't saving and investing a decent
| chunk of their income as a dev.
|
| I think you can be a productive dev well into advanced age, but
| I think once you get to 40-ish the career becomes more like
| treading water until you retire.
|
| And if you're the kind of person who doesn't like meetings and
| wants to go back to being an IC, you might not have that option
| anymore because you can't take a paycut.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I feel bad for people who believe that age beats talent.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| GP did not say this.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I didn't reply to GP, did I?
| WJW wrote:
| Age doesn't beat talent but experience can. Not only that,
| but you can be experienced and still have all the talent
| you had when you were young.
|
| There is a big tendency for young, talented devs to assume
| they are the smartest person and/or the best coder in the
| room because up until now they've always been (even in
| college), but at some point in their progression that stops
| being true. I'll even go so far as to suggest that if you
| are still the best coder in the room you should probably go
| out and find a better room.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There is a correlation between experience and talent.
| That's my point. Everyone crying about being unemployable
| as an engineer over 40 is fooling themselves. 90% of the
| software dev jobs out there are not at FAANG companies,
| and at the end of the day, clients and corporations care
| about getting shit done. The guy with the 20 year track
| record beats the fresh graduate the vast majority of the
| time.
| hamburglar wrote:
| FAANG companies hire old people too. I'm nearly 50 and
| have 30 years experience in the industry and feel quite
| well valued at my large cloud factory. The opportunities
| for learning never stop and my decades of stepping in
| shit in various ways is seen as a thick callused hide of
| wisdom. :D
| notacoward wrote:
| That's sort of my attitude too, though I'm a bit older. I was
| able to retire, a bit earlier than most, a little over a year
| ago. The main reason I actually did was a lack of significant
| overlap between what I enjoy doing, what I felt needed doing,
| and what the company insisted engineers at my level should do.
| I wasn't willing to give up all enjoyment on one hand or my
| professional conscience on the other, so I gave up the reviews
| and paychecks. The prevailing attitudes in this industry make
| me not want to work in it.
|
| People who have never reached either that level or that
| longevity will surely say I should have stayed in, played by
| the rules better, and built up political capital so I could
| make more positive change some time in the future, but you know
| what? I had already paid those dues many times over, and I
| wasn't interested in paying them yet again. For all but a few,
| that promise of a rosy future is just bait that employers use
| to justify their BS in the present. I'm not _that_ much of a
| sucker. Now I 'm comfortable and my time is my own, and that's
| the only victory condition I care about.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I'm also just gathering money at this point, doing simple stuff
| at work with no stress.
|
| Highly recommended for a comfortable and enjoyable life unless
| your ego needs to compete with others to feel worthy.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Sounds great, if you can retire at 50. In the EU you can't (or
| at least not in Sweden where I am), so you have to think about
| how sustainable this approach is past 50... and to me it
| doesn't really feel sustainable.
| askonomm wrote:
| I feel like as a software engineer, in most of the western
| world, if you actually save money (and invest!), and don't
| make stupid financial decisions, you can probably retire by
| 50.
| swix wrote:
| Don't just live for the future. Life happens now, not at
| retirement. In my experience talking to people who has
| retired, many are bored and are struggling with purpose.
| Sure, there are certainly many exceptions. I just mean,
| don't forget to live right now, this is it, it happens now.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| If you've been doing it for most of your career, certainly.
| But a lot of people start their careers later or make dumb
| decisions with money for a chunk of the time, those things
| can totally push retirement well past 50.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| And then the student loan payment hits.
|
| Graduated in 2004 (right after the dotcom crash) with $70K
| in debt, mostly private loans. I didn't get that usurious
| gorilla off my back until 2014. In hindsight I was
| dramatically underpaid the first 5 years, but still.
|
| I made that financial decision at 18. First in my family to
| graduate college. Nobody knew better to tell me not to do
| that.
|
| A lot of other people are in the same boat.
| iso1210 wrote:
| If you're pulling a 6 figure salary then sure.
|
| If you've been earning on a typical career - say PS25k/yr
| starting in your mid 20s, PS35k-PS45k through your 30s,
| perhaps getting upto PS60k by the time you're into your
| 40s, you won't have saved enough to pull even PS20k a year
| for a few decades.
|
| https://uk.indeed.com/company/Precision-
| Microdrives/jobs/Sof...
|
| https://uk.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&fccid=0de0
| 1...
| nly wrote:
| That second job (PS70K senior) isn't bad. It's remote, so
| you could easily live somewhere dirt cheap and be better
| off than someone in London on PS100K+ (the difference in
| take home pay is only PS1450/mo, which could easily be
| the difference between a 2 bed at PS2K/mo in London vs
| PS550/mo in, say, Durham... also buying property outside
| London would be way more doable)
| MrTortoise wrote:
| problem is that salary growth in last 5 years has been
| crazy
|
| A senior engineer with 10 years exp 5 years ago made
| PS35. Now someone out of a 6 month bootcamp can ask for
| that.
|
| That doesn't even get into all the other roles that have
| popped up liker product / delivery which dilute engineer
| contributions and narrow their skillset - which someone
| in their 40's has.
| alexandargyurov wrote:
| Imagine that (PS70k senior), but instead of somewhere
| else in the UK, it's somewhere in Europe.
|
| In Munich, Germany (one of the priciest cities in
| Germany), the overall average rental price is EUR700 for
| a one-bed apartment[0]. Compared that to London, a one-
| bedroom apartment rent is going to cost you over PS1000!
| EUR1178.48 euros![1]
|
| In Eastern Europe, you can have a very good quality of
| life for even cheaper. The only problem is the language
| barrier.
|
| I live in Sofia, Bulgaria, and pay EUR340 euros for a
| 2-bedroom flat in a pretty nice area of the city. A
| coffee costs around 2 lv (about EUR1), average pint
| around 3.80 lv (about EUR2). With a London software
| engineering salary, I save a drastic amount of money
| compared to London, and can usually afford to go to more
| restaurants, bars and outdoor activities (Love that I can
| ski just 20 mins away in the mountains!)
|
| I assume it would be similar for people who can work
| remotely for a San Francisco company but live in a
| different state?
|
| [0] https://www.expatrio.com/living-germany/costs-living-
| germany...
|
| [1] https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-
| land/improv...
| zvr wrote:
| Ahem. EUR700 in Munich gets you a room in shared
| accommodation. EUR1200 would still be a pretty good deal.
| alexandargyurov wrote:
| That's pretty similar to London, I wasn't aware Munich
| had got so expensive!
| xupybd wrote:
| I think you underestimate the difference in pay across the
| western world.
| nly wrote:
| It's definitely not feasible for most Software Engineers in
| Europe without extreme sacrifice, and fairly low
| expectations wrt to standard of living in retirement.
|
| Retiring at 50 is extremely risky in terms of sequence
| risk[0], so you'd want a low withdrawal rate on your pot.
| You're also likely to want a higher income initially while
| you're still young enough to enjoy it.
|
| So let's say your target is EUR2M for a EUR60K/yr income
| until you die, after a 25 year career. That gives you a
| couple years of fucking around after college / some bad
| years / gaps.
|
| To achieve that over a 25 year, investing in to a smooth
| 7%/yr bull market, you're going to need to invest
| EUR2,500/mo. That's something along the lines of EUR50K/yr
| of gross income (assuming 40% tax).
|
| Most software engineers in Europe probably don't even make
| EUR50K/yr... and we haven't even taken in to account taxes
| on gains, raising kids, buying property, or just enjoying
| life throughout your career!
|
| [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sequence-risk.asp
| robocat wrote:
| Sequence risk matters the most in the first decade. So
| long as you have a backup plan where you can restart
| working, even at reduced rates, then you can protect
| yourself against sequence risk. Older and in an economic
| downturn means that finding work could be difficult, so
| one would probably need to keep the backup plan "warm":
| for example continuing to do a day or two of consulting
| work or a non-technical role, preferably in an industry
| that is counter-cyclical.
| franciscop wrote:
| > So let's say your target is EUR2M for a EUR60K/yr
| income until you die
|
| > Most software engineers in Europe probably don't even
| make EUR50K/yr
|
| These two statements do not mix well together, if someone
| doesn't make 50k/yr it's unrealistic to expect to retire
| with 60k/year.
|
| Let's see more realistic numbers. You make 50k/yr,
| getting 35k after taxes. COL is around 25k, but that
| varies wildly; with a partner and each one's COL is
| lower, but with kids and it's higher. Of those 25k/yr,
| 15k are for rent. You save 830/month, which gives you
| 630k after 25y, or 25k/yr at a safe 4% withdrawal rate
| (gross, so not enough).
|
| But also let's say instead of paying rent you get a
| mortgage at that price, so when you own the place that is
| reduced drastically. Suddenly you find yourself with a
| COL of 12-15k/yr net, making 25k/yr gross from what
| you've saved previously.
|
| Sure it's tight, but these numbers are without extreme
| sacrifice that you mention. Get lucky and make 60-70k/yr,
| or find a cheaper place, or inherit something (a lot more
| common in EU that USA I'd think), and it now seems
| possible.
| rsanek wrote:
| The bond tent [0] is an elegant option to deal with
| sequence risk. It does mean though that you'll need to
| save a bit more to offset the years your money is out-of-
| market and not making those 7% returns.
|
| [0] https://www.kitces.com/blog/managing-portfolio-size-
| effect-w...
| trulyme wrote:
| When you say "you can't", I assume you mean retire
| officially? I imagine that having a few million euros in the
| bank (or in different assets) would mean that work is
| optional.
| jstx1 wrote:
| You don't just get a few million through work. Salaries
| aren't high enough to save that aggressively.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I make like $320k, my wife makes $70k. Our rent in the
| bay is $2800/mo and we spend about $4000/mo on other
| expenses.
|
| I just moved to the bay from the enterprise world, so my
| net worth is 400k. At this rate, assuming very
| conservative raises and 6% on all investments --
| including already reserved stock units -- I'll be worth
| $2.2m in five years (age 40). $7.5m by 50.
|
| And that's just assuming I hit $400k-ish in the next few
| years and stay there for the rest of my life, and my wife
| gets no significant raises. If I get higher, which is
| entirely possible, I'll make even more. Or maybe at some
| point I'll try for a startup and go for the really big
| money. Maybe not.
|
| Of course, many of those assumptions could not work out.
| But the kind of exponential advantage of saving a large
| fraction of your paycheck eventually overcomes any
| disadvantages. Worst case scenario is tech goes bust and
| US stock market turns into Japan's in the 80s, but in
| that case I'll still be better off than most because I
| have a lot of savings and I'm not addicted to the
| paycheck.
|
| I think the plan will be to do this for a few more years
| and consult part time. Full retirement would be too
| boring.
| bjornsing wrote:
| If you were in Sweden you'd be making $120k and your wife
| $50k. Your marginal tax rate would be about 70%. You'd
| have a net worth of say $200k, but that would be tied up
| in your apartment/house.
|
| A net worth of $2.2m is pretty much unheard of here. The
| only people I know with that kind of money are founders
| who successfully exited their startups.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Sort of tangential to the point that you're trying to
| make, but if I were in Sweden I'd probably be okay
| working longer because I could actually travel outside of
| 1-week segments once a year like I have to do in the US.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the US you should be at 4 weeks or more of vacation
| per year by the time you have 20 years in, plus a couple
| more weeks of paid holiday. No engineer gets one week per
| year, even their first year two is typical and it builds.
|
| The above isn't universal. Quality of life is one thing
| companies compete on so the only companies that give you
| one week are start ups (where it is understood you are
| taking a risk in hopes of big payoff from your options),
| and game companies where the dream job gets people accept
| abuse.
| spiderice wrote:
| This is the most out of touch thing I've read on HN in a
| while. When did we start talking about whether couples
| bringing in $400k/year could retire at age 50. You are
| clearly an outlier, even when compared to software
| engineers in the states, let alone Europe.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I know it's an outlier because a few years ago I was
| making $85k in Houston as recently as 2019. I studied
| whiteboarding and moved. Now I'm a FAANG engineer.
| [deleted]
| hamburglar wrote:
| Careful predicting the rest of your life based on 2 years
| of the best success you've ever experienced. Something
| similar happened to me 5 years ago and I'm operating on
| the assumption the crazy pay can disappear at any time.
| If you luck into a way to suddenly retire in 5 years,
| always assume there's someone standing behind you willing
| to do it for less. Many money faucets eventually turn
| off.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| The beauty of saving that much is I don't depend on it.
| lumost wrote:
| At present trajectory this is a reasonable outcome, in
| the case of a major correction saving your money will
| also mean you benefited from the bubble.
|
| There used to be stories from the .com bubble of people
| who only knew a little html getting six figures. On being
| told this around '08 everyone would nod and think that it
| was ridiculous - after all fresh college grad backend
| engineers could be hired for just 30k at the time on the
| low end in the US.
|
| Flash forward to today and we'd think a front end
| engineer or designer with technical knowledge for those
| rates would be a steal even after adjusting for
| inflation.
|
| I don't doubt techs impact, or that the big tech should
| be the most valuable companies in the world. But I would
| be surprised if software engineer became the highest paid
| profession on a permanent basis, which with current
| salary progressions is a given without a correction.
| thisarticle wrote:
| Ooof, you realize how few people are in that position
| salary wise right?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The context of the subthread was not being able to do it
| in EU/Sweden, where $320k/year incomes are less common.
| akavi wrote:
| My friends who spent their 20s at FAANG would disagree
| with you.
| bjornsing wrote:
| In the EU?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I know it's a little off topic but why is this? Do you mean
| this is the case due to salaries or is there some other
| reason?
| filleokus wrote:
| Not OP, but salaries (esp post-tax) in Sweden are "low"
| compared to e.g the US.
|
| If you make 1M SEK/year (~100k USD) you are in the very
| very very top of IC's in Sweden, and your salary post-tax
| is roughly 68k USD.
|
| Of course you can save a good chunk. Save roughly half, and
| still have the median post-tax salary.
|
| (And you can save in a less taxed private retirement scheme
| which can be drawn from at age 55, but at the same time
| there are implications of not working at the end of your
| career for the government sponsored pension)
| franciscop wrote:
| If you invest 50% of your take-home pay, you can roughly
| expect to retire in 16-17 years:
|
| https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-
| shockingly-si...
| bjornsing wrote:
| It's a double whammy: lower salaries and higher taxes.
|
| The whole society is really structured for people to keep
| working until 65 or so. E.g. taxes are really progressive,
| so saving in a high income year and living off that money
| in another year (with no taxable income) is super
| expensive. There are tax exceptions for retirement savings
| but you can't access that money until 60 or so. Also, the
| state pays your base pension, but you can't access that
| money until 63 or something.
| fjfaase wrote:
| I just turned 60 and I am still working as a software engineer. I
| live in the Netherlands. In the past decade, I have been working
| 24 hours per week on average. The past two years I worked on an
| application that is used only within the company, which is a
| mechatronics oriented company. I am closely working together with
| process and application engineers and over the past two years, I
| have developed quite a lot of domain knowledge. Some of my
| younger colleagues definitely are better at some software
| engineering tasks then I. Although I have no management
| responsibilities, I do coach some of the younger software
| engineers in an informal manner. I have saved enough to quit
| working and I noticed that my requirements for work have changed.
| The working environment is now the most important aspect. Some
| seven years ago, I suffered a mild burn-out due to toxic working
| conditions. Since then, I twice changed jobs. I am not getting a
| top salary, but it is enough to live a quiet and happy life.
| codr7 wrote:
| I recently got off the web dev hamster wheel and applied for a
| position doing embedded development in C in an established
| company after 25 or so years of startup and consultant madness.
|
| I look forward to writing code and solving interesting long term
| problems again.
| max_hammer wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| Did you learned C for the new role or had experience working in
| embedded ?
|
| Did you had to grind leet code for interviews ?
| codr7 wrote:
| No experience with embedded since Uni, but plenty of lower
| level C/++ for side projects with code on Github.
|
| These interviews were thankfully of the more constructive
| kind, I didn't do a single test.
| nodemaker wrote:
| This! I am beginning to think more every day that C/C++ is
| about the only stable, rewarding and fun career in tech devoid
| of petty politics, full of high quality colleagues and tons of
| fun problems to solve. Ideally want to be an entrepreneur but
| C/C++ dev is not a bad fallback option.
| m0zg wrote:
| Mid-40s here. I've built up a skill stack that pays like
| lawyering, and went solo. 3 years so far, no regrets. I work
| about 24 hours a week. I make a lot more per hour than I did at
| Google, but less overall, and it's fine. I get to actually enjoy
| my life and I'm not going insane with stress. If I don't want to
| work, I don't work. Previously I'd take sabbaticals between
| significant job changes, and I find that I can't actually stay
| without work for more than 6 months. Not because I need money or
| whatever, but because I just can't sit on my ass and do nothing
| at all.
|
| I'm in the US though. I'm aware European software people are
| pretty much wage slaves, and they don't have much of a choice but
| to work until they croak. But in the US if you are capable, and
| you play your cards right, and don't blow all your money on
| unnecessary bullshit, you can be financially independent by ~40
| years old, after which you can downshift and enjoy life, if you
| let go of the idea that your total comp will always go up, or
| that you can make all the money in the world.
|
| Move to the US maybe? There's a dearth of quality software
| engineers at the moment, and people move around a lot I hear.
|
| Also protip: level designations such as Staff or Senior Staff or
| whatever aren't even comparable between similar companies within
| the same city. I largely ignore them. A senior SWE at e.g. Google
| can be paid much more than a director elsewhere (and be more
| capable than a director elsewhere, as well). Look at how much
| you're getting paid, and whether the work environment is decent -
| those are the only two things that really matter in a job.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> I want to work hard, and see meaningful progression: in
| salary, in impact, in respect.
|
| You seem to have the mindset that you can receive some form of
| personal fulfillment from your career and that your employer is
| there to provide that to you in return for services rendered.
|
| In the perverted corporate world in which most companies operate,
| it is in their best interest to keep you dissatisfied for as long
| as you expect that fulfillment or happiness can be achieved by
| working for them.
|
| If you want salary, impact, and respect then you should probably
| continue on the management track but you'll have to accept that
| the impact and respect components are a fabrication.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| A few comments. There are only so many senior roles so as you are
| promoted there are more folks fighting for fewer seats, and this
| is why a lot of people move into management type roles as they
| get older. I also feel that SW development is a younger person's
| brief nowadays as the prevalence of python means it's more about
| googling and less about SW engineering. It reduces the need for
| senior people but these younger folks will get older too.
|
| There are a number of companies where there are older folks in
| senior SW roles if you look for them. I find that it's harder to
| work with younger folks as they are less likely to have families
| so have this mentality to work longer and then go out on the
| town. Not interested.
|
| Two euros.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| I'm over 40 and in the US. I also just did a job search. I left a
| midsize company as a Lead Dev and interviewed for staff and
| principal roles in order to get back to more technical work.
| Here, in the US at least, I found a couple roles that were at
| that senior-plus level and don't involve a lot of meetings. I
| took a staff role at a much much larger company and it seems
| great so far. Keep your eyes out and maybe you will find a few of
| these roles around.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> I want to work hard, and see meaningful progression: in
| salary, in impact, in respect
|
| Here's the deal, you're 40, you write code for money, and you're
| asking what's next.
|
| What's next is that your brain is going to be slowly
| deteriorating, so yeah there's going to be some choices.
|
| Like do a job that doesn't involve writing money for code, do a
| job that involves being a people person. One of those. I couldn't
| do that. I don't "get" people, maybe you do. Good luck with that.
|
| Another choice would be to go back in time and invest money when
| you're in your early 20's and none of this is an issue. Time
| machines are great. I'm a time machine. I came back here to tell
| you kids to invest their money in index funds so that half a
| century from now, everything is going to be OK. It's going to be
| beautiful.
|
| People hate time machines.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| > What's next is that your brain is going to be slowly
| deteriorating, so yeah there's going to be some choices.
|
| You wound me. I'm about to turn 40, and I'm finding my brain is
| sharp but my body is shit. I have to deal with gout and daily
| pain. Fuck me. Can I have your time machine, so I can exercise
| more and eat less?
| christophilus wrote:
| I'm about the same age + experience as you are. I've learned that
| what I like best is the nuts and bolts of programming. My
| favorite jobs were low-bureaucracy business where I have a ton of
| control and few meetings. I'm currently on a team of 2.5
| developers with one meeting per week. It's great.
|
| My advice is to think about what you've enjoyed most in the last
| twenty years, and optimize around that.
| rc_mob wrote:
| I'm noticing a theme in all these comments: we all hate
| meetings and they make the job suck.
|
| And I agree, meetings are often ridiculous and suck a lot more
| time out of your day than the 30 minutes that you actually
| meet.
| tschottdorf wrote:
| I'm close to a 35+ yo engineer and have been with my current
| employer for over six years, mostly based in Europe. There are
| multiple ICs, myself included, in positions like the ones you
| seem to be looking for, and we are hiring. I know you're asking
| for advice and not for leads, but maybe the data point that I
| consider these reasonable goals is advice enough and perhaps
| you'd like to chat about the company behind it. Reach out at
| tobias@cockroachlabs.com if you're interested.
| playing_colours wrote:
| Good point! I suggest the topic starter to apply at the
| companies that build products for us techies to use. I live in
| Germany and we have many more remote options nowadays - New
| Relic, Elastic, Snowflake, Aiven, etc. It will be fun and you
| can master some specialisation that can make you more valuable
| and be a meaningful progression.
| a94d5dc743 wrote:
| Next is 41
| gdsdfe wrote:
| Well if you don't want a boss, you need to switch to
| entrepreneurship, maybe start a solo sass ... I don't see a way
| around it. Edit : need a cofounder? :)
| lettergram wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat albeit different age and life trajectory.
|
| I think the easiest thing to do (if money isn't #1 priority) is
| joining a startup. Gives you the most breadth and ability to
| impact and learn.
| pram wrote:
| IC duties beyond senior are pretty arbitrary at most companies,
| you might be worrying about it too much honestly. Principal seems
| to be a terminal position for people who have 1) been
| consistently productive 2) been at the company a million years.
| These people were typically already doing more "strategic"
| architectural implementation/design work anyway.
|
| Last year I went from Staff to Senior taking another job. I make
| 30k more and do essentially the same thing. If you want more
| money just optimize for that and stop caring about title imo
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Agreed. Also if you're operating at a high level at a company
| you should be defining your own role to some extent.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| What kind of company expects a Senior Engineer to have 20+ years
| expeerience?? you must work for some corporation or large
| company.
|
| In startups and tech-focused companies seniority comes with
| skills, not years on the job.
| austincheney wrote:
| I am 42 and blessed with 2 separate careers in unrelated
| industries. A famous person that went through a similar
| experience is Admiral Grace Hopper.
|
| I am a technology principal in my part time job and it's very
| rewarding when I'm not playing senior manager or director.
|
| My primary career is largely dead. I am a JavaScript developer
| and I have no interest in tripping over beginner things and
| framework nonsense. I would rather program and focus on building
| better products in a world where most JavaScript developers are
| focused on tools and how to write code.
|
| I spend a lot of my time thinking about open source and
| decentralization.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I'm 39 and in the USA. I've had similar experience to yours.
|
| I'm considering targeting the C suite given my social,
| communication, and strategy skills. I would be a little sad to
| give up coding, but since I do plenty of coding in my free time,
| I don't think it would matter much.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| What is a C suite?
| wmij wrote:
| It is the "chief" type roles in a company - CEO, CTO, CFO,
| COO, CMO, etc.
| adjagu wrote:
| Most likely referring to management. People that tend to have
| Chief somewhere in their position title.
| superfrank wrote:
| > First, the definion for the most of those positions looks
| Senior Engineers with a few more years of experience: so you are
| limited to the scope of a single team scope, report to an
| Engineering manager, just be a worker at a feature conveyor, just
| be faster, mentor young workers, maybe get some devops skill.
|
| In my experience, this isn't what I've seen staff engineers
| doing. The expectations you laid out at the top are much more in
| line with what I've seen staff engineers doing.
|
| The staff engineer's I've known are basically the technical
| version of a VP or a director. They're often not focused on
| individual features, but rather new products or large scale
| architectural changes. The mentoring they do is often mentoring
| strong developers into future leaders at the company.
|
| The staff engineers at my current company are currently focused
| on how to integrate multiple products where each product has
| three to four teams of engineers working on it. At a previous
| company, I can remember them being focused on whether we stay
| with on-prem hosting or move to the cloud.
|
| I'm not sure where you're interviewing, but to me it sounds like
| they may not be big enough to need what I would consider a staff
| engineer, but they just have seniors that they wanted to promote.
| baskethead wrote:
| I'm 50 in Silicon Valley and going through dozens of interviews
| right now. I decided to quit during COVID and now am trying to
| renter the workforce. I have 24 years experience and worked at
| companies you've all heard of and I honestly have great
| experience. I'm still a coder and code in my spare time because I
| enjoy it. I still maintain friendships with people I worked with
| over 20 years ago, we recently had a reunion lunch and it was
| nice to reminisce over the dot com days.
|
| I'm so far 0/10 on interviews. The bar is so high now and the
| expectations of perfection in a 45-60 min interview are so
| ludicrous that I can't find a job yet. I'm LeetCoding about 3-4
| hours a day, focusing on medium and hard questions. I went to
| sleep last night at 1am after struggling to understand a hard-
| level LC question that took me about 2 hours to work through.
|
| I know the drill, I'm not shirking away from studying. I've
| conducted hundreds of interviews myself. I'm old enough to have
| been through every single interview style that coders have had to
| endure since the Microsoft interviews of the 90s. But the sheer
| breadth of knowledge you need to know, plus the expectations of
| making perfect decisions in a limited amount of time is utterly
| ludicrous. It's like people have forgotten that you can't design
| Twitter in 45 mins or think about every single possibility. or
| that some of these coding questions that are being asked are PhD
| level problems, so if you've never seen it before, it's going to
| be pretty hard to solve. Or that people can make honest mistakes
| and get on the wrong track for 10 mins out of a 4 hour interview,
| and then you get rejected. Or people also seem to forget that the
| interviewers themselves are so inexperienced at interviewing that
| they confuse their candidates with poor instructions, or they
| expect the candidates to guess what they themselves think the
| right answers are.
|
| The most frustrating part is when you're given a relatively
| "easy" question but you go down the wrong path, figure out your
| mistake, and then correct it and solve the coding question in the
| allotted time , and then be told that I "didn't perform as
| strongly as they hoped".
|
| If I were told "study X,Y and Z. We will test you at LC hard only
| on this." I could bang it out of the park. But I literally have
| to know every single topic in CS and every level. LC literally
| has thousands of questions. My brain can't remember all of these
| solutions. I've been studying for 2 months solid and finished
| only 200 LC questions because some questions take me all night to
| understand and I'm exhausted.
|
| The biggest insult is that a company I worked at before needs me
| to go through a full interview loop even though I have great
| performance reviews only a few years prior and my code is still
| running there. Not that I would return, because I left that place
| for a reason, but the idea that an interview is a better judge of
| my abilities than the years of performance reviews is completely
| mind blowing to me.
|
| Everyone knows that interviewing is broken but it's not broken.
| It's mentally ill. It's crazy. Interviews don't test "how good of
| a performer will this candidate be?" It's "how well will this
| person do on these random questions that we don't know if it
| actually correlates to work performance."
|
| I was on an interview loop for my company where someone had a
| GitHub. When we suggested that we could check out their GitHub to
| see their coding, someone objected saying that we don't know if
| that person actually wrote the code. The confidence people have
| that on-site interviews produce the best example of how smart
| people is a reflection of how insane things are.
|
| Expectations are far too wide and as a candidate you need to know
| literally everything otherwise you won't "perform strongly". But
| it's really just random chance. Coding interviews should be
| longer and less random. Give time for the person to mess up and
| get back on the right track. Isn't that what you want in a co-
| worker? Systems design questions should be a long conversation
| about building systems, not just "what points did the candidate
| mention that I was expecting them to."
|
| Coding interviews are more of a hazing than indicator of future
| performance. And as more people study, the bar gets higher and
| higher until it will reach absurd levels. I have staff or senior
| staff level experience but I'm applying for E5 level positions
| because I would rather get into a company and work my way up than
| try to come in at a level where the expectations are mentally
| ill.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| I hear you on the ludicrous breadth of knowledge that is
| expected. I recently went through the interview loops of
| several large tech companies. This time around I decided to
| study leetcode only a little bit and to lean more into my
| experience during the interviews and it worked out better for
| me. Here's the biggest key to interviewing at senior+ level, I
| think. In the past, I think my tendency had been to assume that
| the interviewer was looking for one right answer and to try and
| meet them where they were. This time around, I would openly say
| that it depends on which context you're talking about. If
| someone asked me to design Twitter, for example, I could do it
| as a CRUD app with a web front-end, a microservice that's
| essentially an adapter to a SQL DB of some kind, pretty easy.
| So I would just say that. "If you are just starting out, this
| could easily represented this way and it could support you into
| thousands of users..." Then I would leave it on them to ask
| more questions about how to scale it up. I'd mention that you
| could carry the DB farther by using read replicas if you accept
| that not everything is in real time. Then we'd start to
| eventually talk about potential solutions for getting more
| realtime data like Firebase, but we'd talk about where in the
| stack is that really necessary or appropriate and at what
| scale. I found pretty good success this way, rather than
| starting with the most complex solution, instead starting with,
| basically, the simplest, and easiest to get going initially.
| empressplay wrote:
| This is pretty much true, but if you're doing a coding test,
| don't just provide a naive solution full stop -- if you can
| _also_ provide more scaleable solution(s) or at least a
| discussion of how things could be made more scaleable in the
| readme, you'll do better
| stephen_cagle wrote:
| My pops and I were talking about this. We have a theory that
| the real reason these leetcodes are done is to allow large
| organization to discriminate in whatever way they want without
| opening themselves to discriminations lawsuits. I don't actualy
| believe this is the "conscious" reason, but I think this may be
| one of the reasons that leetcode style interviews are popular.
|
| I can get everyone but the least skilled interviewer to pass if
| I provide enough assistance in the interview. Similarly, I can
| fail anyone but the strongest algorithmic candidates by being
| unhelpful in the interview. The interview allows enough "smoke
| screen" that I can basically end up passing/failing in a manner
| that is pretty detached from their "objective" algorithmic
| skill.
|
| Just a theory.
| elahieh wrote:
| Your theory has been seen before in other contexts -
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
|
| _The Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, the
| most prestigious mathematics school in Russia, was [around
| 1975] actively trying to keep Jewish students (and other
| "undesirables") from enrolling in the department._
|
| _One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the
| unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral
| exam. I was told that these problems were carefully designed
| to have elementary solutions (so that the Department could
| avoid scandals) that were nearly impossible to find. Any
| student who failed to answer could easily be rejected, so
| this system was an effective method of controlling
| admissions._
| knuthsat wrote:
| The only place where I really met high expectation is in
| finance. The amount of ten-seconds-for-the-answer-or-we-stop-
| the-interview questions was enormous.
|
| Last 5 places I interviewed, 2 didn't ask LC at all, and I
| still failed at 4.
|
| Also, for LC, you should work on it for 15-30 minutes and then
| look at the solution. It's the most efficient way. If you don't
| even understand the task, just don't do it. Similarly, sites
| like codeforces allow you to group tasks by algorithm and to
| sort them by number of people that solved them (and you can
| look at the solutions). This also simplifies the knowledge
| acquisition.
|
| As for being a principal/staff engineer. This is all new to me
| and I have no idea how much these individuals code or what
| exactly they do (although I'm currently starting a principal
| engineer role in a company of around 300 engineers). So I
| assume either I'm silly or the title inflation is rampant.
| Although, the interview required operating systems, networking,
| algorithms, hardware, people skills, low/high level programming
| language knowledge that I guess I have. The questions were:
| "How does a UI library work?", "Describe this networking
| protocol?", "How many syscalls are triggered by npm install?",
| and whatever other question that they ask you to go as deeply
| as possible as you can.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Refuse these kind of on-the-spot tests and save everyone a lot
| of time.
| genezeta wrote:
| Similar age and circumstance but not in the USA.
|
| The saddest part for me is the companies that just throw you a
| take-home exercise without even bothering to phone you first.
| You apply to a certain position and then, say a week later -or
| sometimes more-, they simply send you an email with some
| programming task to develop.
|
| Frequently they are _not_ small tasks but full projects which
| require multiple days of work. Just a few days ago: delivering
| a full web application to manage "map layers", with a DB, a
| back-end, and a "user-friendly front-end with a nice design";
| testing included and all put into Docker containers, and a
| working demo somewhere published automatically from the
| repository.
|
| And I mean, it's not just the assumption that you will spend
| however long it takes you on this for free, but that you will
| do it without even having had a simple conversation with them
| before.
|
| ----
|
| Anyway, what I really wanted to say was: Good luck in your
| search. Stay sane.
| empressplay wrote:
| This does have the effect though of filtering out candidates
| who were lukewarm on the position to begin with (eg they were
| just throwing applications around en masse) because now, yes,
| there is that investment to be made in proceeding with the
| application. And the coding test tends to become the focus of
| the rest of the interview process, assuming the company goes
| forward with it. And good companies will give fairly
| comprehensive feedback on your submission, so there's that.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Expectations are far too wide and as a candidate you need to
| know literally everything otherwise you won't "perform
| strongly". But it's really just random chance. Coding
| interviews should be longer and less random. Give time for the
| person to mess up and get back on the right track. Isn't that
| what you want in a co-worker? Systems design questions should
| be a long conversation about building systems, not just "what
| points did the candidate mention that I was expecting them to."
|
| One reason for this is that large tech company have horrible
| diversity metrics and are trying to avoid getting sued for
| discrimination (bot just by candidates but also by the
| government). If every candidate is judged on the same robotic
| criteria then that makes a discrimination claim harder. A
| second reason is to avid managers building fiefdoms or
| employees having much more loyalty to their manager than the
| company.
|
| Startups have a wider range of interviews but they also pay
| much less. Although you could get lucky with an late-stage
| startup that hasn't fully solidified it's interview processes
| yet.
| daviddever23box wrote:
| Focus on understanding the financial aspects of the business
| you're in, not just the ground under your feet.
| RGamma wrote:
| Side question: How do you think your age of 40 plays into this?
| Is it about ageism? 40 is not... old?
|
| And 18 years experience is a lot. Something wrong with the
| companies you interview for?
| Matthias247 wrote:
| > My expectations for the roles like Staff / Principal Engineer
| are that while staying hands-on, say for 30%, I will primarily
| use more my skills in architecture, engineering, and
| communications to focus on large, important pieces of
| functionality, technical decisions with big impact, etc.
|
| > Now I think to plan switching to a EM track or to Technical
| Product management. Thank you!
|
| I think you should refine a bit on what you are really looking
| for. Roles with 30% coding and a TPM role are extremely
| different. Is the most important thing to you large scope? Deep
| technical work? Or a high compensation? All of them are
| available, but potentially at different companies and not all at
| once. At Amazon a principal engineering role usually comes with
| the huge scope you described - but many engineers on that level
| will not be 30% hands on coding due to other responsibilities
| taking up time. I heard its a bit different at the other big
| companies, where the scope might be more on the team level as you
| described. For startups there is likely nothing in common.
|
| If you like technical work and think you add a lot of value there
| - you might want to stay on this path (whether its the wide or
| deep one). The management path will be very different.
|
| One thing you might want to consider for the principal IC path is
| that it will require significant investments to stay on top of
| this role: Technology is constantly changing - we have new
| programming languages, new tools (containers), new environments
| (cloud), new paradigms (devops), etc. In the most senior roles
| you will always be expected to be on top of those things and know
| more about them than the average senior engineer who you can
| guide. So I think you definitely should bring in a far amount of
| curiuosity to learn new things at a very deep level to keep
| staying successful.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I'm almost 40 as well, and I've reached "senior principal
| engineer" within FANG.
|
| Ignoring titles, the problem with high level engineering roles
| (beyond their difficulty) is finding problems that meaningfully
| grow you technically as you can reach a practitioner within the
| field. These roles are rare because most businesses don't
| actually need nor benefit from them.
|
| The other challenge is that the title inflation really messes
| with people. For example, a key aspect of higher level
| engineering is not just technical but understanding
| organizational shit as well. For example, it's now just about
| execution but planning and thinking about execution in context of
| 50 to 1000 people.
|
| Take the Amazon curve: SDE I - 0 SDE II - 1 (an intern) SDE III -
| 5 (a team) SDE IV/Principal - 25 (a big team) Senior Principal -
| 125 (an org) Distinguished Engineer - the company
|
| Using the people scale and how much you impact an organization
| lets you know where you are within the FANG universe (and the
| FANG generally are in alignment with titles and pay-bands). This
| represents another challenge is that being a high level engineer
| requires a tremendous amount of trust from management to
| influence everything under their empire.
|
| What I recommend is scoping the places where the frontier is
| being pushed which align with what you want to work on. Second,
| test the waters if they have a technical hierarchy which can
| support you. Third, put the problem first rather than titles/comp
| and be willing to build trust within the organization.
| Influencing over 5 people requires tremendous trust.
|
| The unfortunate aspect is that the duality of building trust can
| make it exceptionally rare to achieve that level. It's not a
| trivial level because it requires both the technical AND people
| skills. The only way I've seen to short-circuit it is to be
| absolutely a beast on the technical front, and this can be done
| via an open source project of exceptional merit OR building a
| company.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| censored
| md_ wrote:
| This is the least useful answer I can imagine anyone giving to
| the original question.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| All ego aside, I probably AM one of those "Principal Engineers
| who are really more Senior++". I reached my plateau somewhere
| between 35 and 40, and now that I'm in my mid-40's it looks like
| more of the same between here and retirement.
|
| However, most of these "ageism" or "life is over after 35" things
| are absurdly doom and gloom. So I'd like to offer a different
| perspective that may be helpful to younger folks.
|
| Hitting a plateau in your mid-40's is not... that... bad! First
| and foremost, I have two children in middle of their formative
| years, and that's where my focus primarily lies today.
| Maintaining a healthy marriage with my spouse, and avoiding the
| mistakes of my dysfunctional boomer parents. On evenings where my
| son has hockey practice and my daughter has dance, and so me and
| my wife have to work together to get them both to their
| respective things, I am simply NOT going to bail and make my wife
| have to choose between them because something came up, or I'm
| having to work the same hours as the VP's and C-levels in order
| to fit in. I have finally achieved that mythical "work-life
| balance", and I enjoy it.
|
| Secondly, even if you lack the clout to DECLARE what a company's
| tech stack is going to be, you can still find yourself learning
| new tech stacks every few years. I spent the first 15-20 years of
| my career in Java shops, and felt like I had no agency in the
| matter. That's just what I happened to stumble into as an entry-
| level dev out of college, and from there no one would hire me for
| anything else. But awhile back I was playing with .NET Core, and
| thought, _" I'd like to work with this"_. So I just went and
| found a job doing C#. It was easy to find, and I was making
| slightly more money as a C# newbie than I was as a Java veteran.
| This past year I decided that I wanted more exposure to data
| science and machine learning. So now I'm in a Python shop for the
| first time in my career, and I'm charged with giving direction
| and mentorship to younger developers who quite frankly are much
| more knowledgeable about Python. All of these things are
| exciting, and keep me fresh and on my toes and engaged with the
| field.
|
| In a lot of discussion threads, where people bemoan that they've
| reached their 40's and "can't find a job anymore", I have to
| assume the issue is that they keep looking for substantial
| promotions or raises over their previous jobs, and are simply in
| denial about having reached a plateau (or if they _haven 't_ been
| willing to continuously learn new tech, may be in decline). Yes,
| most companies are NOT being realistic when they talk about
| having "parallel career tracks for managers and IC's". Rarely
| does the title "Principal Engineer" REALLY put you on-par with a
| Director or VP. It is what it is. Management will always be what
| people "advance" into, and individual contributor roles will
| always be for those "who did not advance". At some point in your
| career, you will likely have to make your peace with that,
| because there simply aren't enough TRUE "Principal" jobs (as
| described in the original post) for more than 1 out of 10 of us
| to reach.
|
| But I really don't think that "Senior++" is such a bad fate. I'm
| in the top 5% of U.S. household incomes, I have wonderful work-
| life balance, and I enjoy my work and feel like I am continuously
| growing. At some point, you need to take... the... win, and stop
| trying to convince yourself or let unrealistic social media
| convince you that you're a loser.
| vjeux wrote:
| It seems like a senior (E7+) position at Facebook fits what you
| are looking for. Let me know if you want to chat about it.
| vjeux@fb.com
| vanusa wrote:
| Given the interview experience at that company described in a
| sibling comment - why should we bother?
|
| _Facebook was by the far the worst, and I interviewed 2x for 2
| different roles. YMMV but 2 Leetcode q 's read off by bored,
| mid-level employees. Not a single question about anything else.
| Maybe that's a fine process for college grads but for someone
| with decades of experience? As a former hiring manager I
| honestly found it comical_
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are you working from Europe or US?
| vjeux wrote:
| I'm personally working from the US but a sizable part of my
| org (Client performance and reliability) and my previous org
| (React Native / React) are in Europe. As a French person, the
| European side of fb is dear to my heart!
| seibelj wrote:
| Only big companies will have the resources and need to hire
| someone who makes architectures and rarely gets their hands
| dirty. It sounds like you want to be an architect that primarily
| designs big systems from the ground up. There just isn't a lot of
| need for this - the design is the beginning, and after the system
| is running it's about keeping it running and improving it. Plus a
| lot of these roles are internal hires from talent the CTO knows
| already, as there are so few of these positions and they need to
| be trusted.
|
| However this sounds like something FAANG companies have positions
| for. I just think they will be very limited and very hard to get.
| jrockway wrote:
| This is really not true. Every software-focused startup that's
| ~30 people and growing need someone to guide the way for the
| less experienced engineers. Systems design is a part of every
| software engineer's career, but experience there can be pretty
| limited. (Most people try to simplify the field down to
| 1-person projects, because they started programming with
| 1-person projects. That very quickly fails to scale, and
| needing to make 15 1-person projects work together is a common
| demand.) So you need to learn it "on the job", and you need
| someone around to help. That's exactly the position that the OP
| is looking for, and looking around at job listings, it is quite
| in demand.
| throwawaypren21 wrote:
| 50+ principal engineer here. My perspective is US-centric, but
| I've worked closely with engineers on teams & orgs globally, both
| in the past as well as my current role. Not FAANG+ but
| close/adjacent; large, cloud-focused tech.
|
| It's true that IC roles are less common at this level but they
| are definitely out there, especially in big tech. In the US
| anyway, it's basically a 2-tier system: $700K+ total annual comp
| or sub-$200. I didn't discover the former even existed outside
| the Bay area until the last few years, but boy am I glad I did.
| If you love what you do, in the right organization you'll have
| autonomy, creative freedom and potentially influence org-wide.
| And I'm not gonna lie, the money is _great_. (Side note to my US-
| based friends: at the high end, Salary.com, GlassDoor, etc is
| absurdly low). To the OP: if you 're feeling constrained by your
| existing environment, consider looking around. The last 2
| companies I interviewed asked virtually all design/architecture &
| leadership questions, no "leet code". There are definitely lots
| of opportunities from FB, Google, Apple & Amazon for PE roles in
| Europe so consider looking around. But that all assumes you
| fundamentally enjoy what you do (not talking structurally, actual
| system & technical leadership -- the building & shipping part). I
| work hard at times, but honestly these days I could do most of my
| job in a couple of hours per workday. I wish you the best.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| The comp targets are not normally 700k+, it just has happened
| in the last several years because stocks have appreciated so
| much. A total comp target of 400-500 is much more common, base
| should be well over 200k/yr, though.
| throwaway_60757 wrote:
| I'm much earlier in my career (30s) and just starting to hit
| the staff level in my midsize tech company.
|
| Do you have any advice for positioning a career to those first
| tier of jobs over the next ten to twenty years?
| throwawaypren21 wrote:
| Mine is certainly not the normal path, and there were several
| significant projects which only peripherally advanced my
| career, so ymmv (greatly). But I guess my best advice is to
| find a niche. There are endless numbers of "Java Architect
| 2"s or whatever in the labor market, but _far_ fewer highly
| skilled engineers who understand deep business domains. Find
| your niche. You don 't have to be a manager to develop close
| relationships with customers/users and understand their pain
| points. Become seen as invaluable (or at least really hard to
| replace) by your peers and senior management. And, of course,
| most engineers are underpaid. In case you've not read it,
| Patrick's essay is required reading for comp and career
| development. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
| negotiation/ Good luck!
| throwaway_60757 wrote:
| That makes sense. Thank you for your advice.
| throwawaypren21 wrote:
| Also worth a read:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-
| pr...
| madrox wrote:
| I believe the challenge you're seeing has to do with the fact
| that those jobs are rare and even more rarely offered to
| outsiders. Principals that report higher in the org are usually
| people who have been at the company a long time and know as much
| about how the company likes to do things as they do the tech
| stack involved. You can probably easily get a job like that, but
| it would require a less glamorous role on entry and working your
| way into it by proving your value.
|
| The hardest part I've found being over 40 is mustering the will
| to prove value. The older I get, the more time I have to spend
| rebuilding reputation whenever I enter a new company.
|
| I think the best advice I can give is find a company you won't
| mind being at in 5-8 years so you can really learn how things are
| done there and can affect change.
| sombremesa wrote:
| > The older I get, the more time I have to spend rebuilding
| reputation whenever I enter a new company.
|
| This is very dependent on organizational structure. Some
| companies re-org so often that you're still "proving your
| value" several years into your job, whereas other companies
| will recognize a first class developer on week one just by
| virtue of their work.
|
| If you want to be at/near the top though, and really have an
| outsized impact, it's best to start off there. You could be the
| CTO of a tiny company with big potential.
| BatFastard wrote:
| I sleep a lot better at night when in a development role than I
| do as a manager role. Maybe its because I enjoy technical dreams,
| but I dont enjoy how to deal with troublesome personnel dreams.
|
| So if you love creating stay technical, if you like dealing with
| management issues take that route.
| HarrisonFisk wrote:
| The big tech companies (ie. FANG) all have huge demand for
| principal+ engineers and know how to scope and support them
| properly. The size means they have lots of them which reduces the
| snowflake nature of the role and makes career development, salary
| support, etc... more standardized. Since they are large, there
| can be some variance, but overall they are a good option if you
| are interested. I don't know where in EU you are, but most of
| FANG has roles in EU and some even do remote as well.
|
| Smaller companies tend to want principal engineers in theory, but
| as you are finding they can often struggle with how to utilize
| them properly. Often you see them playing a Chief Architect role
| or something similar which is more hybrid with PM than pure tech.
| So getting PM skills could help set you up for this direction as
| well.
|
| Finally, you have said you did management for a bit before, so
| you should know if this is an interesting path or not. This is a
| very different role, so I would recommend you do this only if you
| have the passion and desire to do this full time. Most principal
| engineers I know have done management for a bit and gained a lot
| of skills related to it, but ultimately wasn't what they wanted
| to do.
| notacoward wrote:
| The problem at the big (especially FAANG) companies is that to
| be effective you need to _really_ buy in to the company 's tech
| stack and development ethos. People who were promoted to those
| roles naturally do; you probably don't. In fact, if you have a
| lot of experience elsewhere you're likely to have opinions that
| conflict with the company zeitgeist, and that leads to conflict
| with its champions. Similarly, effective principal/staff/+ work
| requires a lot of strong connections to people in many teams,
| which again tends to favor internal promotions. This is not
| competition for its own sake. It means that when you're
| compared to your home-grown peers every review cycle it will be
| difficult for you to keep up let alone stand out (even for a
| while after the typical one-year grace period which isn't long
| enough at this level). This is discouraging, and in some cases
| can leave you in a permanent bind w.r.t. team trust or
| possibility of an internal transfer. Many thrive despite all
| this, but many also end up seeing it as lost time and
| opportunity. Quite a few end up going back to where they were,
| while others opt for a smaller company.
|
| P.S. I'd argue that, for all their advantages within the
| company, those internal promotions are usually _over_
| promotions. People 's attachment to that tech stack and
| development ethos, and lack of experience with any other, means
| there's an even sharper drop in their value going elsewhere
| than for outsiders coming in.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| To put a more positive spin on what you are saying, very
| senior ICs carry the company's technical culture. They have
| influence in shaping it, but they aren't hired or promoted to
| buck it. If you want that kind of influence you need to climb
| the EM ladder up towards VP Engineering or equivalent.
| However, in that case you don't get to spend 30%, or any,
| time programming. On the third hand you can go to a start up
| and wear a ton of hats, but you probably won't get high cash
| comp.
|
| Life is always about trade offs.
| notacoward wrote:
| Agreed. There's a lot of opportunity there _if_ people are
| willing to adapt to local norms, even if that means setting
| aside past (often hard-won) lessons. Some can. Some can 't.
| Most don't really know if they can or not until they try.
| That's all fine, but I do take issue with this.
|
| > you need to climb the EM ladder
|
| No. Many of these companies take pride in being "engineer
| first" but that's a false claim if engineers are
| discouraged from challenging the local orthodoxy too much
| and only high-level execs may do so. It's too easy for
| territoriality and NIH to set in, or for real progress to
| be replaced with mere churn. Didn't we learn these lessons
| with older tech giants like IBM or AT&T or DEC? They had
| the same pattern of people replacing one internal system
| with an almost identical one, because reaping credit and
| promotions that way was easier than fighting for true
| change. They had the same pattern of people who had learned
| those habits too well becoming DEs or fellows and using the
| same "guardians of the culture" excuse to enforce
| conformity for its own sake. And look where it got them.
|
| Obviously those who wish to challenge the status quo need
| to balance that with productive work within the existing
| paradigm, and strong claims require strong evidence (which
| a VPE is unlikely to have BTW), but that's exactly why
| there should _not_ be additional barriers. I was not the
| first or only person at Facebook to observe that the whole
| thing would come crashing down if not for an ever-changing
| cast of engineers determined to do the right thing
| _despite_ the effect they knew it would have on their PSCs.
| In a true engineer-first culture challenges to the status
| quo would be encouraged and engaged, but in my experience
| that wasn 't always the case. Corporate ossification wasn't
| only a problem for prior generations.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| EMs are engineers even if you don't respect them because
| they don't write code anymore. This is different than old
| school tech companies where managers were businessmen and
| engineers were thought of similarly to assembly line
| workers.
|
| The Dilbert dream of no hierarchy ( _vice_ a hierarchy
| made up of engineers) has never worked beyond small
| companies.
|
| A truly flat org is communism of corporate cultures---
| great on paper, a disaster in practice. The dysfunction
| at these places isn't because they haven't flat org'ed
| hard enough or because of evil, devious middle management
| subverting the purity of the system---it's because the
| idea is bad in the first place.
| notacoward wrote:
| Let's not turn this into an exercise in moving goalposts
| and constructing strawmen, OK? I never expressed any
| disrespect of EMs, nor did I propose a flat
| organizational structure. You specifically mentioned
| going up to _Vice President of Engineering_ level, which
| is quite different than a line EM, and I responded to
| that. Your absurd invocation of communism aside, that 's
| _way_ over on the old-fashioned authoritarian
| /hierarchical end of the organizational spectrum.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| That's where some decisions should be made. For example,
| creating a new programming language. The answer is almost
| always "no, that's a horrible idea" the determination
| otherwise should be made by the person ultimately
| responsible for all engineer execution.
| notacoward wrote:
| > That's where some decisions should be made.
|
| _Some_ , yes. Look at those goalposts go! Staff
| engineers are hired to bring skills and knowledge and
| perspective not already present. All I'm saying is that
| they should be able to exercise those assets, and all too
| often that is discouraged. I'm beginning to wonder if
| your accusation about disrespecting EMs is just
| projection of your own disrespect for higher-level ICs.
| [deleted]
| bradleyjg wrote:
| From my original reply: "They have influence in shaping
| it, but they aren't hired or promoted to buck it."
|
| I'm not sure we disagree that much, maybe over where to
| draw the line, or maybe over how we talk about roughly
| the same outcomes. I'm content to leave the discussion
| here. Cheers.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| If a flat org is communism, what is a top-down org? A
| dictatorship or authoritarianism?
| [deleted]
| m0zg wrote:
| > in to the company's tech stack and development ethos
|
| To be fair, at least in Google's case that's not difficult to
| do, because those technical decisions are grounded in reality
| and their infra and dev processes are some of the best in the
| world. And it's not like it used to be that you can't use
| your knowledge on the outside. The world is largely moving in
| that direction. In my estimation the rest of the world is now
| catching up to where Google was 10 years ago.
|
| A bigger problem is activism. You have no choice but to see
| the most insane, unhinged behavior and rhetoric imaginable on
| internal social networking website, and that'd irk some,
| especially older folks who tend to be somewhat more
| conservative in their views. Nowadays you also don't get to
| ignore it sometimes (unlike, say, 10 years ago), because some
| of it is seeping into official company policy. It's
| unprofessional, and dumb from management standpoint to allow
| this, but the asylum is run by the insane at FANGs.
| martincmartin wrote:
| _you need to really buy in to the company 's tech stack and
| development ethos._
|
| You need to be of the mindset that you're hired to help the
| company. The company has a certain tech stack and development
| ethos, so you're hired to help them with that. Just because
| you know there are better ways to do it, your job is still to
| help them do it their way.
|
| It can be possible to get them to change development ethos,
| but this is a big deal and uses a lot of political capital.
| If you can really convince most people that it's better,
| you'll be seen as a senior tech leader for sure. But if
| you're optimizing for the best performance reviews -- in
| other words, the incentives the company has set for you --
| then it's usually better just to work within the system.
|
| "To be a leader, you need to have followers." So leadership
| isn't having the best product, e.g. the way Google is a
| leader in search. It's more like class elections in high
| school, it's a popularity contest. Your job is to figure out
| what people are complaining about or advocating for, and do
| those. Most likely, everybody is used to the development
| ethos and just thinks it's the only or obvious way to do
| things. So nobody is really complaining about it.
| notacoward wrote:
| > your job is still to help them do it their way
|
| Mostly I agree with everything you say, especially about
| needing followers before you can lead, but I think this
| part deserves more discussion. At staff level (if not
| slightly before), "help the company" and "do it their
| [historical] way" are often not the same thing. As I said
| in another sub-thread, at that level you're hired to bring
| knowledge and skills and perspective that the org doesn't
| already have (or have enough of). Unlike lower levels,
| pulling in some direction is _part of the job_ in this
| case. I think EMs at all levels understand this and often
| support it quite well. The problem I 've seen is _other
| high-level engineers_ who never knew anything but the
| current way and believe that it 's generally the only way
| (except of course for the one part they personally
| understand and want to change). This sometimes leads to
| hiring people and then thwarting their efforts to do what
| they were hired for.
|
| > uses a lot of political capital > ... > optimizing for
| the best performance reviews
|
| That's the problem. These two should be aligned. You should
| reward what you want to see more of, and I think people
| using their best professional judgment qualifies. Relying
| on the continual presence of people who will _sacrifice_
| their own career /financial progress to make needed change
| (as I mentioned in another sub-thread) is not an effective
| or ethical strategy. I won't even say whether I believe I'm
| in that category myself, but I certainly saw other people
| who got tired of lying down across barbed wire so other
| people could run past them.
| balaji1 wrote:
| > Similarly, effective principal/staff/+ work requires a lot
| of strong connections to people in many teams, which again
| tends to favor internal promotions.
|
| This might be a smaller factor for doing effective work
| itself, the number of new faces at all levels at big big
| companies might offset this. And generally, ppl working under
| this principal/staff+ engineer usually follow along.
|
| But promotions would require connections to many ppl in many
| teams.
| GordonS wrote:
| It sounds like you'd be happy in a role as a "Technical Lead",
| "Architect", "Cloud Architect", "Application Architect" or
| "Solution Architect".
|
| These are commonly used job titles for very similar roles, where
| you're leaning much more towards architecture and design, but
| some degree of hands on is still a must.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > my borders and carrier are defined by Engineer Managers, who
| are usually less experienced in engineering and leadership topics
| than I am.
|
| Why is reporting to someone less experienced than you
| undesirable?
| dcow wrote:
| The power inversion doesn't work out. They wield the power but
| you wield the knowledge and experience. It's a constant battle
| trying to get them to take you seriously. You might as well
| just do it yourself. Instead, report to a VP or director. They
| may not listen all the time but that's their domain. And
| because you report that way, the other managers are more likely
| to listen because you are on the same tier. Plus you get a hard
| separation so the inexperienced managers don't boss you around
| and you can work on work on what you need to. Some dorectors
| like having an engineer or 5 in the pocket. It doesn't always
| work this way but that's my general impression.
| mavelikara wrote:
| When senior engineers adopt this attitude, they are
| implicitly supporting aegism. Younger engineering managers
| are forced into a position where they have to pass on resumes
| of older engineers. Damned if they do, damned if they don't!
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Only if the young manager is planning on resisting all the
| advice shared by the more experienced engineer.
| mavelikara wrote:
| No. That is not how I read this thread. My understanding
| is that the _possibility_ of the young manager rejecting
| advice is enough for older engineers to not consider
| positions reporting to those managers.
| [deleted]
| tigerlily wrote:
| Friend, it's time for you to find a business partner and become a
| founder.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I decided early on to stay on the technical track. I had mentors
| who sampled the management waters and explained the pros and
| cons. For me, a long-term technical track was the better choice.
|
| If you stay technical, work on 'building the brand' and team-
| building skills. You can't be the 'super tech' worth the huge
| paycheck-- nobody is that good. Period. It's the team builders
| that get big things done.
|
| So write some Call for Papers submissions, work on giving great
| technical presentations, and look for any way to add value to
| your projects. (Many of these will involve gathering and
| rendering metrics. Look for valuable metrics nobody is
| reporting!)
|
| Good Luck. As you grow out of the 'IC' role, you will have to
| find new ways to get job satisfaction. They are out there-- just
| different than 'working code' all the time.
| dominotw wrote:
| > I want to work hard, and see meaningful progression: in salary,
| in impact, in respect.
|
| yes go for EM-> senior EM -> director.
|
| Coding has no minimal respect, very limited impact and deadend
| salary progression.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| > Coding has no minimal respect, very limited impact and
| deadend salary progression.
|
| Let me know where you've worked so I can avoid these places.
| I've worked for plenty of orgs where tech and those in tech add
| massive value and impact and therefore are held in high regard.
| creamytaco wrote:
| I was making, on average, 600k a year at Google, 5 years ago. I
| hear it's a lot better these days.
|
| The "deadend salary progression" allowed me to retire at 40.
| yusufaytas wrote:
| The harsh reality of staff/principal engineering positions is the
| number of opportunities. There are a handful of companies that
| are big enough to have roles beyond senior engineers. In those
| big corporations, there are a few roles available and they are
| rarely open. Therefore, moving from one company to another is
| just so damn hard. There are more senior manager/director level
| roles than a principal engineering role where you oversee
| multiple teams or a department. If you want to make it to
| management, your best bet might be your own company or a startup.
| Happy to hear about your findings.
| md_ wrote:
| I see quite a lot of recruiting for staff/senior-staff/pricipal
| roles, both within FAANG and without. It's a bit harder to know
| what this actually means outside of FAANG, but my (very first)
| impression is that plenty of midsize companies have roughly
| similar positions to the better known FAANG staff+ roles.
| indymike wrote:
| > I will primarily use more my skills in architecture,
| engineering, and communications to focus on large, important
| pieces of functionality, technical decisions with big impact,
| etc.
|
| You are at the level where the choice is either become a
| technical expert, or become a leader. If you want to become a
| leader, you'll need to put the same effort into your people
| skills you've put into your technical skills. You'll also need to
| increase your visibility to non-technical leaders.
| rlonn wrote:
| 41?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| As an experienced report you can help your junior eng manager
| grow. When you're being hired at staff eng level -- a role partly
| defined as being a _model employee_ -- this should be made
| explicit as an expectation by your skip-level and /or CTO.
|
| You should be the best possible direct report, one that helps
| your eng manager learn in the best possible way and which sets an
| example to the more junior ICs in your team and org. You'll
| probably begin at the very beginning, by letting them close the
| most senior hire of their career to date, as a hiring manager.
|
| The flip side: this is largely useless in a big org. The flip
| flip side is that it is invaluable in a high growth environment.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Why not contracting/consulting? Or starting your own
| startup/project? You can focus on the tech and role you want,
| have minimal meetings, avoid office politics, work the way you
| want, and define your own path. I understand salaried positions
| have distinct pros though.
| gfodor wrote:
| Contracting dials engineering work all the way up on some
| things but all the way down on others. You're basically a hired
| gun. If you consider building software a creative pursuit you
| want to be connected to personally, and working on teams to be
| at least partially about teamwork and camaraderie, you lose
| most of these kinds of dynamics being a full time contractor.
| It was a surprising moment for me when I did this for the first
| time when on launch day my boss gave me zero credit for the
| work and showered public praise on my employee peers. Of
| course, I was paid well, but part of the cost of being paid so
| well is being seen, by nearly everyone, more as an expensive
| machine that writes code than a team mate.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > If you consider building software a creative pursuit you
| want to be connected to personally
|
| You mean you think this isn't possible while contracting?
|
| > my boss gave me zero credit for the work
|
| > being seen, by nearly everyone, more as an expensive
| machine that writes code than a team mate.
|
| It really depends where you work and who your client/boss is
| I think, the same as if you're an employee. I've had
| contracts where they want you to be part of the team and
| others where you're kept outside too.
| ceautery wrote:
| A pattern I've seen a lot of is people joining a young startup as
| the founding engineer, and then move to an engineering director
| role once the company gets a good round of funding. Eventually
| the startup will push them out, where they'll either turn a side
| project into a business, or make a lateral move as an engineering
| director somewhere bigger.
|
| I chose to keep being a software writer, and lean into mentoring.
| I'm 50, and don't have trouble with respect or salary. I don't
| know European employment law, but over in the states it's common
| for higher performing devs to shop their skills around every
| couple of years to find a better salary.
| barefeg wrote:
| Why do they push the founding engineer out?
| ceautery wrote:
| I don't think it's planned, it's just how things tend to turn
| out. At least for the three startups I've worked with.
|
| If you're really good at cranking out code before your
| fledgling company runs out of money, that doesn't necessarily
| mean you're good at people management or leading. At a
| certain size, your company is going to need those skills
| more, and won't want to keep someone around at a C-level
| salary who's just slinging code.
|
| The founding eng directors I've met all separated for
| different reasons. One took a buyout after the company was
| purchased, another had a side business that became profitable
| and helped find his own replacement, and the last one had his
| role downgraded when the company hired a CTO, and just got
| another job.
| convolvatron wrote:
| often its because the founder has a very different picture of
| why the company was founded and where it should be headed
| than the new vc-installed management.
|
| its very much 'we love your passion' until its 'turn it down,
| we're trying to make money here'
| voakbasda wrote:
| I just described that very arc to my partner as one possible
| new direction to take my career. I have 30 years full stack
| experience with embedded systems, and I am at a point where I
| want to look for founding engineer positions. If my team grew
| bigger than I could manage myself (while still being able to
| keep my hands in the code), I would happily step down to an
| engineering director role. In the improbable event that it was
| wildly successful, I would want leave before things scaled too
| far... only to repeat the cycle again somewhere else.
| mbtmbt wrote:
| Are you interested in Meta / Facebook / WhatsApp? We have exactly
| the roles you are looking for.
| ibains wrote:
| Our US based startup has engineering in India (20 engineers) and
| the biggest challenge is finding engineering leadership.
|
| It is hard to hire in the bay area, especially leaders who have
| experience shipping high quality products (systems), so we built
| the team in India.
|
| Many young companies like us struggle since a lot of the talent
| (definitely in the bay area) is locked up in the Faangs where
| poor fiscal/monetary policy in the US has inflated stock part of
| the compensation so much, that it makes no sense to leave.
|
| So it is hard find principal engineers to do great work because
| they choose to go to large companies and get poor work for money.
|
| The bar is high for us though, we'd look for engineers with
| specialized skills (compiler, database internals) and leadership
| on complex products. The middle is the dead zone (engineers with
| N years of experience wiring apps)
|
| Not sure about the European market, but maybe you can try to go
| to a smaller company?
| marcinzm wrote:
| Post COVID there's basically no reason to hire only in the Bay
| Area unless you work on hardware. Also, in my experience the
| issue with hiring managers is that they better know what to
| look out for in terms of bad upper management. The vast
| majority of startups have bad upper management in terms of
| actual management and company leadership skills. I've got less
| than 0 desire to work for a 25 year CEO who thinks they're the
| next Steve Jobs.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Can we leave it at poor management? I don't think the
| "reverse ageist" jab was constructive.
| marcinzm wrote:
| It's not ageism, it's amount of experience. Age simply
| provides a cap on how much experience you could possibly
| have. Or do you believe that managers and leaders gain
| nothing from practicing their craft longer and in a wider
| variety of situations?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Ya sound bitter.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I find this alot. I'm 40 -- say -- and I've been applying for
| engineering positions and get alot of "you'd be great for
| engineering manager and or senior x,y and z -- would you do
| that instead?". The general trend I see at the moment seems to
| be that companies have staff, but lack experienced leadership
| that can deliver products. I have a couple of patents and have
| delivered some products and this seems to make the difference.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| What makes you think the work is worse in fang vs some average
| startup? I find the opposite to be true in general case - lots
| of small companies out there don't care about actual tech.
|
| > Many young companies like us struggle since a lot of the
| talent (definitely in the bay area) is locked up in the Faangs
| where poor fiscal/monetary policy in the US has inflated stock
| part of the compensation so much, that it makes no sense to
| leave.
|
| This is just patently not true. Netflix is just one examples
| and there are many more. You just want top shelf talent at
| bottom shelf prices. If young companies struggle to hire the
| reason is they underpay cash or equity and just refuse to
| accept that simple fact.
| cebert wrote:
| Thanks for posting this question. I'm interested to see what
| responses you get here.
|
| I'm a little younger than you (35), but can see a similar
| situation nearing for me soon. I've gone as high as I can at my
| current company as an individual contributor. I also was a team
| lead for a year with four direct reports. I love coding and
| building things, but I'm really starting to think I need to start
| making the transition into management or technical strategic
| leadership before I'm viewed as being too old to be an engineer.
| I have good social skills, enjoy public speaking, and get along
| with a wide range of personalities, so this transition wouldn't
| be too uncomfortable for me. I can always code or do side
| projects on my own time.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Isn't a team lead a management position?
| bckr wrote:
| It's in the IC path. The teams being led will have some
| number of people-managers attached to them.
| ozim wrote:
| I think after you are 35 you don't want to see progression in
| salary but in life quality.
|
| Of course unless you were terribly underpaid or you spent all the
| money on whatever...
|
| I am going to be 35 this year and I was working on FIRE - while I
| cannot really drop the job for the rest of my life. I think I
| have enough, like flat with no mortgage in quite OK place so I
| don't have to spend most of my salary on renting. Now I am
| looking into cutting my hours, because with my current rate
| working 4 days I still could save money.
|
| I will probably stick with current company as long as possible
| because I hate interviews and then if I will have to I will take
| whatever job will be there if things go south.
|
| But that is me I like low fuss life, keep it small and steady.
| Happy that I can get some beers over the weekend and play with
| some raspberry PI. No need to get a sports car at all :)
| Silhouette wrote:
| _I think after you are 35 you don 't want to see progression in
| salary but in life quality._
|
| As someone in that age bracket, but not working in the big US
| tech bubble we often discuss on HN, I don't entirely agree. I
| have other commitments now that I didn't have in my 20s, things
| that can cost a lot more money, yet which have improved my
| quality of life greatly and are of immense value to me.
|
| For a 35+ year old developer here in the UK, even a good one,
| if they're still working most as a hands-on employee they will
| probably have spent the majority of their career earning a
| salary that is above average by UK standards but less in TC
| than a new grad with zero experience would get at a FAANG in a
| US tech centre from day one. Almost no-one with that kind of
| role has been earning FU money here, and we're still doing
| better than most of the world outside the US. For a long time,
| if you wanted more you either went freelance or started your
| own "real" business.
|
| Today that situation is changing, slowly. Upward pressure from
| the crazy amounts of money in the industry both in the US and
| increasingly in other places as well, combined with demand for
| decent developers outstripping supply, means salaries that were
| almost unthinkable even five years ago are starting to become
| viable and a whole scale of technical roles above "senior" is
| starting to appear at larger companies. We're still nowhere
| near US levels, but someone recently asked me whether I'd
| consider taking on what we might call a senior staff or
| principal level role at a UK-based tech company where I'd been
| consulting, and the kind of salary they were asking about was
| at least 3x where the salary ceiling was for most UK developers
| just a few years ago (which many of those developers would have
| hit well before the 10 year mark).
|
| So while the argument above might work in parts of the industry
| in the US it's not necessarily the case in other parts of the
| world, where new options have been opening up for highly
| experienced developers in recent years that could break through
| a long-standing ceiling and make a huge difference financially.
| linspace wrote:
| Congratulations, you have completed the game. Now you are asking
| for easter eggs, hidden maps and how to unlock the next
| difficulty level.
|
| My advice as someone in a similar life phase is to play something
| different. I understand you want money but all that chatter about
| roles, levels,... It bores me to death, which by the way is not
| that far. Pick something you actually like because most probably
| you are not going to get much further.
| alchemism wrote:
| > you are limited to the scope of a single team scope, report to
| an Engineering manager, just be a worker at a feature conveyor
| </snip>
|
| I am in your age demographic. My current title is simply
| 'Engineer' without modifiers, but in the business hierarchy I am
| on the same line as VPs, so I interact with them as peers; and
| they are. The Directors, Managers, etc. that report up to my
| peers do not take orders from me, but I can override their
| decisions on concrete technical matters.
|
| What I've found is that in a non-startup (ie corporate)
| environment your row in the org chart determines your level of
| agency, not the title as it appears in your HR file.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I am near the 40 mark, and have never managed anybody by my own
| choice. Have mentored several. I have no interest in a managerial
| track, nor in being paid to do things that are not related to
| code, data quality, or other high value business needs. I have
| designed some very important systems and processes but shy away
| from calling myself an "architect". I have been the chief tech
| liaison with multiple partners, my bosses relying on me to not
| only code, but also set expectations and meet partners' business
| goals while protecting our own interests. I love hearing hearing
| about "new" frameworks and concepts from the young 'uns, and will
| use them if the team's vote is to adopt them (sometimes despite
| my opinion), even though half of them at least turn out to be
| short lived. It's all good. Sometimes I am pleasantly wrong and
| learn new ways of doing things.
|
| My point is, I worry less about my "career goals" and spend my
| time learning about my employers and how to produce high value
| for them, whatever form that takes. I have never worried about or
| feared for my job.
| msoad wrote:
| This attitude works only if your team is not toxic and others
| in your team are not taking credit for the work.
|
| In my company, if I try to do a lot of work it will backfire. I
| will out that my work is being celebrated by some no-talent PM
| and promoted by my sneaky manager without my knowledge. They
| then bring in all the "high priority" issues from "the top" to
| me to fix.
|
| I learned that those people don't understand how software is
| built so I'm just coasting and doing the absolute minimum. Less
| credit stealing and less high priority feature requests from
| the top.
|
| I still get Exceeded Expectations rating every year. Because I
| pretend my work is so difficult and takes so much time...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The only meetings I usually call are to discuss cool things
| I've added to the code base and I make damn sure management
| is in on the invite. Leave a paper trail, never be shy about
| letting people know what you've done.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I get it. There are definitely bad companies to work for. But
| there's a difference between working at a company where
| things are fundamentally just for value producers even though
| there are some bad actors who can't be removed, and a company
| that is ultimately spiraling downward because there's no
| capable leadership at the top to keep people focused on what
| really matters to the business.
|
| I'm not saying to subject yourself to torture: just recognize
| every day how you can actually deliver value for other people
| and the bottom line, and do it. Even if you're not getting
| credit, suggest to a higher up that you might not be able to
| do X effectively anymore because Z is in your way, and see
| how fast things change. It is a big difference if "X" is
| "deliver the feature we promised the 500K client" or "get the
| nightly report automated on time" than if it's "rebalance the
| cluster" or "streamline the CI pipeline".
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Put "Project X by msoad" in the header. ;-)
| raffraffraff wrote:
| My situation is similar, except I'm mid 40s and more on the
| infrastructure side. I'm on a 6 month break from work, and have
| zero worries about finding my next job. I don't care about
| titles. I have no particular career goal. I just want to do
| interesting work and get good pay and benefits.
| arewenotmen wrote:
| I'm a 'Principal Software Engineer' - to the extent that inter-
| org comparisons work, this is what a lot of places call 'Staff'.
| I'm in my late 30s and I work in the UK for the BBC. I'm embedded
| in a product team.
|
| I think lack of definition, or the perspective that an advertised
| role is just senior+ software engineer, is probably fairly
| normal. Unsurprisingly employers do a bad job of describing
| something that ideally ought to be flexible and self-directed.
| Our ads would probably look a bit like this too, but the jobs
| themselves are varied. The question should be whether you can
| actually do what you see fit, in role. You will need to explore
| each specific opportunity to try and fathom this.
|
| I think you could do with some of that flexibility yourself
| though. You have quite a specific ask (who you would report to
| etc) and I don't think all of it is material to enjoyment. Given
| that your other options are doing something that is specifically
| *not* what you describe, like line management or product, I think
| you should ask yourself what you're willing to compromise on here
| in order to be happy.
|
| I know you're talking about your ideals but it also seems to me
| to be a rigid (and may I say somewhat cynical) idea of what value
| you might bring or be able to bring. Try thinking about it as
| more responsive to a problem space with an element of self-
| development. I feel like at present, if you talked about it on
| these terms with an employer, you're presenting them with a set
| of assertions and constraints - 'I want to do architecture
| whether you like it or not, I will not do mentoring'. My role has
| presented me with new aspects which I didn't know I liked, and
| it's helped me develop as a leader and particularly an empathetic
| leader.
|
| My job is mostly about figuring out how I can provide the most
| value right now, and then doing that, and it's constantly
| morphing. When I started, I decided the best use of my time was
| firefighting and putting a neglected house in order with some big
| technical rework pieces. Now we have a junior-heavy team and
| until we have a critical mass of seniority, it's mostly skilling
| them up. There's lots of strategy and a little architecture too
| but there's only so many hours in the day.
|
| I like my job a great deal. I keep doing this line of work
| because I like engineering, problem solving by whatever means,
| improving the engineering culture, and helping people. You could
| have this too if that's what you want - don't let your own
| barriers and conditions prevent it.
|
| Can't help you with compensation though - I definitely don't make
| a huge amount of money. Doesn't really bother me.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| They take you out the back and shoot you.
|
| https://youtu.be/RTnG3pCiP7s
| StreamBright wrote:
| Creating your own consultancy is one way out of this. Hiring few
| junior devs and mentor them to become good at what they do is
| pretty rewarding both in revenue and your social impact.
| mooreds wrote:
| Came here to say this.
|
| You have the skills to consult. Pick an area that:
| * you feel is likely to grow * you like * you are
| good at * you feel is underserved
|
| and start writing and speaking about that (even at a local
| meetup). After a month or two, reach out to former colleagues
| who might have the problem you want to solve and ask if they
| know anyone who does.
|
| Hiring junior devs will give you the opportunity to mentor but
| may force you to wear your sales and/or PM hat more than you'd
| like. You can start down this path by subcontracting and see
| how it feels.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Develop leadership skills if you want the the role you describe
| below. That can't be granted in a promotion and doesn't happen
| automatically with age
|
| > My expectations for the roles like Staff / Principal Engineer
| are that while staying hands-on, say for 30%, I will primarily
| use more my skills in architecture, engineering, and
| communications to focus on large, important pieces of
| functionality, technical decisions with big impact, etc. I expect
| that I would report to a Director or VP level manager, so that I
| could be exposed to a big picture, collaborate with and learn
| from a professional who operated on strategic level
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Having reached 40 and living through the pandemic, my priorities
| have changed from trying to climb the greasy ladder to ensuring
| I'm doing work I enjoy, and having a good work/life balance. I
| have people far younger than me who have been promoted above me,
| but seem to constantly annoyed by the type of work they have to
| do. Constant meetings being one of them.
|
| I know I'm underpaid for my experience and skills, but I try and
| be a leader in my field, and try a train as much as possible. As
| others have said here, the extra time I have at home gives me the
| energy to work on other projects (hobby, etc).
| emerged wrote:
| I turned 40 recently and have gone the route of very flexible
| employment (~16 hrs per week remote) at Sr software engineer
| salary. This gives me the freedom to do basically anything I want
| for more than half the day with very low stress. For the past
| decade nobody at my several places of employment has had reason
| to know how few hours I work because I'm always the top
| performer.
|
| I'm intending now to build software outside of the day job until
| I'm bootstrapped into doing that full time. I feel this is a
| setup which absorbs risk while giving both future opportunity and
| a high quality of life in the meanwhile.
|
| I'm tempted at times to go for some super high paid position
| which I'm very qualified for, but it always comes back to a
| preference for near total freedom to live my life.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| How do you get away with working so little? You don't have
| meetings? Or people pinging you during the day?
| xwdv wrote:
| 1) Finish your work 2) get a job that doesn't require tons of
| meetings 3) use slack on your phone
|
| If you meet these requirements you can cut out all the
| bullshit from your day and just focus on the meaty part that
| you actually get paid for.
| brundolf wrote:
| Be careful about doing personal work in those extra hours
| though. Personally I wouldn't risk it.
|
| As an alternative, I know some companies will let you
| voluntarily cut down your hours in exchange for a pay cut.
| With tech salaries being what they are, you could make a
| comfortable living while only working half-time in many
| cases. And that way you don't have to worry about what
| legally counts as "on company time".
| xwdv wrote:
| As a remote worker they have zero way of knowing what I'm
| doing when I'm not working.
|
| Doesn't even matter anyway, I'm no longer at an age where
| I fantasize about making big money from building
| pointless side projects. It's kind of juvenile to think
| these sort of half-serious side hustles will ever be
| anything more than a waste of time in the long run. I'm
| content with drawing a big six-figure tech salary with as
| little effort as possible and funneling cash into my
| growing portfolio of investments, which is what will
| actually make me richer without going through the
| bullshit of starting a company and providing customer
| support. Reading up on companies and analyzing which ones
| will be the best investments is actually something I
| enjoy doing.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'd like to hear more about people who have officially
| cut down their hours for pay cut at what sorts of
| companies, and how they negotiated it!
| samvher wrote:
| I work Mon-Wed at 60% pay. I built some key
| infrastructure for the organization I work for, which
| gives me some leverage. I basically just told them this
| is how I want things from now on and that was ok. I'm not
| at MAANG level compensation though (more like European
| public sector).
| emerged wrote:
| There is some risk there, although California has pretty
| favorable laws to protect you. I wouldn't work on any
| project which is even tangentially related to the day job
| or touch any company resources while working on side
| projects. I'd also never sacrifice my performance at the
| W-2 for side work. They get absolute priority.
|
| Work in good faith and read up on your rights, but yea
| even with all that you could unwittingly get yourself in
| some form of trouble. I've weighed the risks and feel
| comfortable but YMMV.
| brundolf wrote:
| Varies widely by state; in Texas I had to fight and turn
| down offers to even get a contract that would give me
| full rights to the stuff outside of work-hours. So I'm
| not going to toe that line.
| jmatthews wrote:
| enforcing even a basic non-compete in Texas is roughly
| impossible unless you steal existing clients or IP.
| emerged wrote:
| In your shoes I'd be working remotely for a California
| company from Texas because the labor laws from California
| will apply to you. It's not a choice for me, but I'd love
| that.
| emerged wrote:
| Extremely strict time management and focus. If I go upstairs
| to put in a load of laundry, that's a 5 minute time slot I
| put back into my work time slots. The vast majority of people
| are very inefficient with time management, spend tons of time
| bike shedding, etc.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| I usually have a minimum of 15-20 hours a week JUST with
| meetings. And I can't just tell people I refuse to go to
| these. And then I also have my own tasks to do.
|
| I really have no clue how many people I see claim working
| 15 hrs total a week when that's already the absolute bare
| minimum for me.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| zackmorris wrote:
| I was going to write a top-level comment, but yours hit the
| nail on the head. For me, the biggest change after hitting 40
| is that I can establish boundaries now.
|
| I'm currently at 30 hours per week, 3 days in office and 1-2 at
| home. We hear a lot about F-U money, but not an F-U approach to
| making it happen. I feel that reclaiming 1 day per week for our
| personal development projects in one of the first pillars of
| F-U money. I'm only working now so that eventually I won't have
| to work for money, so that I can begin the real work of
| building an automated solarpunk future.
|
| I spent most of my 20s and 30s practically killing myself for
| projects, either at work or independently. When I hit 40, my
| health crashed and I went through the worst burnout of my life
| for the year of 2019, before COVID-19 in 2020. It felt like the
| part of my brain that handles problem solving and decision
| making died. So I lost almost all executive function and could
| barely get out of bed. I had to relearn how to make todo lists
| and strategize, and rebuild my resilience.
|
| Turns out that I had developed food sensitivities to the
| staples I had been eating, specifically Mexican food (my
| favorite) and dairy. When the immune system becomes sensitized
| to certain foods, it disrupts serotonin, which can lead to
| depression. Diets high in legumes and nightshades, without
| supplementation (B vitamins, minerals, fiber, probiotics,
| yogurt, etc), are higher risk because of how the anti-nutrients
| in them bind to the vitamins and minerals we need. I think this
| is where the stigma around vegetarianism and veganism comes
| from, but I digress.
|
| Anyway, I discovered ADHD and autism TikTok and went through a
| healing and growth process the last 2-3 years, like a lot of
| you I imagine. Which mostly involves shadow work and addressing
| the low hanging fruit like diet, meditation, inner monologue,
| etc.
|
| Now I see the healing and growth that the world needs to do,
| which it has not done, because powerful forces work tirelessly
| to prevent it and maintain the status quo.
|
| My point with all of this is, there can be anxiety with
| breaking the 40 barrier. I think it's helpful to flip the
| mindset from "I'm anxious about this" to "I'm excited about
| this". The body and mind can't tell the difference, because
| they are strongly rooted in this reality. But our higher selves
| can observe and nurture, transmuting negative energy into
| positive energy over time.
|
| I've found that after 40, I have much deeper wells of assistive
| energy and empathy. I've come to understand that we're all one.
| So now I see zero-sum games and people scrambling for a piece
| of the pie, which is mostly a waste of time and even kind of
| embarrassing to witness in these times. Better to think more
| broadly. Not so much "how will I make it through this", but
| more "what can I do to help" and start there.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Diets high in legumes and nightshades, without
| supplementation (B vitamins, minerals, fiber, probiotics,
| yogurt, etc), are higher risk because of how the anti-
| nutrients in them bind to the vitamins and minerals we need.
|
| Half doubting, half curious: do you have more information on
| this?
| jmatthews wrote:
| solar punk is a new term for me, I should have intuited it
| but yeah. Good stuff.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Are you saying your employer is not aware you work 16 hours a
| week?
| gitfan86 wrote:
| I've done this for most of my career. Put in between 5-35
| hours a week depending on what came up and still achieved
| "top performer". I also like the time and freedom. I think it
| would be hard to do this at a FAANG.
| danbmil99 wrote:
| This reminds me of a slide I saw at some talk. It was presented
| as a totem pole, and your goal is to move up on the pole. It
| was called the "TKVP Totem Pole", from bottom to top:
|
| Vision
|
| Product
|
| Knowledge
|
| Time
|
| What do you get paid for on this stack? IF you are selling your
| time by the hour (and billing honestly) you are at the bottom
| of the pole -- T.
|
| The next step up is to be paid more for your knowledge (wisdom,
| expertise) than for your time.
|
| P is for product: at this point, we are talking about a
| startup, rather than a role at a company. At the base of
| things, most viable startups grow out of the experience of
| spending time and applying knowledge to customer's problems.
| When you find yourself (say as a consultant, or even job-
| hopping every 1.5 years) solving the same puzzles again and
| again, you might start to think about automating,
| consolidating, productizing these patterns and selling them to
| customers as a product or service. Even an IC at a FAANG can do
| this by, for example, convincing their manager to open-source
| useful utilities. Guess what -- now you can re-use that code at
| your next job!
|
| At the top of the totem pole is Vision. That is where (as a
| startup founder) you sell the vision of what your
| product/service could become, if you had some rocket fuel in
| the form of capital and networking support.
|
| Of course this climb is not for everyone to take solo. As a
| talented IC, you may decide that instead of the safety of a
| FAANG job, you might consider throwing your chips in with a
| startup that has ascended this ladder to somewhere between P
| and V. Just make sure you get an equity package that fairly
| compensates you for the career risk you are taking.
| Silhouette wrote:
| That's an interesting perspective but I suspect it fits
| reality better if the P and V levels are in moonshot startup
| territory. If you have the skills and knowledge to be
| successful at those levels, your product/vision is something
| good, but you're operating in a smaller market without huge
| amounts of investment funding, you might still make more
| money and sometimes exert more influence being at level K but
| working with clients who are already established in larger
| markets and in need of wiser and more knowledgeable input to
| grow further. Think of a rapid growth scale-up where most of
| the technical staff are relatively inexperienced or a
| multinational spinning up a new division that wants to build
| a solid foundation for its next big thing. The right
| technical advice and strategic leadership can be worth a
| fortune in that kind of environment.
| msoad wrote:
| I'm at Staff level and work about this much. Pay is great too!
| I'm just so freaking bored. Bootstrapping something on my own
| sounds good actually, maybe I should try that.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Given role titles, it sounds like you are at Google and
| interviewing at Microsoft. In my experience, Microsoft is more
| aggressive at pushing you into management. Google seems to have
| more opportunity and culture of people working in a purely
| technical capacity to at least L7. At Microsoft, it felt much
| more like 65 was the glass ceiling. On the flip side, it also
| felt like managers at Microsoft were more involved in the
| technical decisions.
|
| This was my experience anyway. Others may have seen things
| differently.
| dbrueck wrote:
| I'm mid-40's, and at every medium-to-large company I have worked
| at, each promotion == more meetings, more bureaucracy, and less
| coding. Developing software is where the fun is, so for me the
| best route has been working at very small startups.
|
| Essentially no meetings and I design and build stuff all day
| every day and it's great.
| city41 wrote:
| I'm also mid forties and am in a similar boat and mindset. I
| also just want to build things. I have found whenever I talk
| with a company about possibly working there, they are
| considering me for hands off architecture/leadership roles
| which I could do but don't prefer. My solution so far has been
| freelancing, which has been working well. I can also see myself
| heading towards startups for similar reasons.
| datavirtue wrote:
| This. I joined a senior-only contracting firm. I'm leaving a
| big client to go to a startup client. My choice. All I do is
| build things. FTEs eat all the shit and suffer the meetings.
| I do not.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is the path I've chosen. I don't want to control other
| people, just myself and my code. Sure I don't make as much as a
| manager but I'm a simple man with simple needs. I mostly
| consult and rarely have any issue with finding new work after
| the old contract is up.
| indogooner wrote:
| Yes this is one way bu the salary gap is too huge and most
| startups when they start growing start hitting same problems.
| There may be handful with top class leaders who are better but
| from my limited experience they have been very rare or may be
| my network is too small.
| city41 wrote:
| If salary is important to you as you get more senior, then
| you need to play the mainstream game. Which mostly means
| going into management, architecture, consulting, etc. For
| those of us who don't really want to go down that route, I
| think sacrificing salary is a common concession you need to
| make.
| WJW wrote:
| For me, getting better at managing my personal finances
| made a huge difference. It is way more feasible to do
| things you like while sacrificing (some) salary if you have
| managed to build up a nest egg. It doesn't even have to be
| a lot of financial skills, even just the concept of "wealth
| is cumulative money in minus cumulative money out, so if
| you spend as much as you earn you'll never get richer" is
| very useful to internalize.
| Syonyk wrote:
| The best thing you can do is work out the concept of
| "enough" and "satisfaction with what you have."
|
| I've watched far, far too many well paid tech workers
| over the years just go down the road of "Oh, my paycheck
| is larger, so I can afford this [insert luxury item
| here]." Cars and houses are the big road to ruin.
|
| You get a taste for $1.5M houses, and $150k+ cars,
| well... you're going to be working the rest of your life.
| Figure out early on that a cheaper house (exact value
| depends on the area) and a $20k car get you around just
| as well for a lot less money, and you can go far.
|
| An awful lot of industries exist by trying to convince
| you that enough isn't enough. You _deserve_ better. You
| have to buy the new one every year... because! Etc.
|
| And it's nonsense, but it's both very profitable to them
| and a great way to drain out your money without ever
| realizing where it goes.
|
| Get a grip on all that stuff early, and it helps a ton.
| I've made tech worker money for many years of my life,
| and have a 9 year old car, a 24 year old truck, and a
| range of esoteric and cantankerous motorcycles, the
| newest of which is around 8. They all do their jobs just
| fine - we just did a long road trip (2500 miles) in the
| car (Chevy Volt) with zero issues.
|
| I mean, sure, I could get loans for $100k class cars,
| but... why? What do they do that my current stuff won't?
| Well, phantom brake, apparently...
| eclipxe wrote:
| The quality of life difference Autopilot makes is worth
| $100k+ (though you don't need to spend that much anymore
| with the Y/3). Your dig at the end about phantom braking
| is kinda interesting, but I think you are underestimating
| how much of a different Autopilot truly makes.
| Syonyk wrote:
| I just drove 2500 miles over a week and a half with
| nothing fancier than cruise control in terms of
| automation - though I will admit, it's the _fancy_ cruise
| control where I can tick the set speed up or down with a
| lever, instead of having to rely on the old coast
| /accel/set controls (I've got one of those too, and it's
| a bit more hassle than it's worth in a lot of
| conditions). Most of those miles were on the sort of two
| lane state highways that apparently are exceedingly prone
| to phantom braking events on current gen Tesla hardware,
| and I had... ah, yes, _zero_ of them. Same goes for weird
| failures to hold lane, or anything else. I was in the
| loop, and didn 't have to monitor automation that was
| going to be fine 99.9% of the time and try to kill me the
| rest. Going through Salt Lake during the edge of rush
| hour, "randomly standing on the brakes with no warning"
| would have meant someone was in the back seat with my
| kids after having totaled the car. I'm sorry, "random
| braking events" are simply not OK on anything resembling
| a regular basis, and at least some people, in some
| conditions that resemble what I drive, are reporting them
| very regularly.
|
| But to your main point, I honestly don't know what a
| difference Autopilot makes. I've dorked around with an
| older version for half an hour, and it drove like an
| autistic student driver. "This is the center of my lane
| and I will be in the center of it, because this is the
| center of my lane." "What about the trailer over there,
| not really parked entirely off the road?" "This is the
| center of my lane..." etc. It was quite frankly
| terrifying to see, because it had no awareness of
| anything resembling the environment around it except the
| lane lines. I have no doubt it would have clipped the
| trailer (parked... oh, a foot into the lane, because the
| shoulder wasn't wide enough for the rest of it) had I not
| taken over, and at that point, I may as well drive it
| myself. As I've suggested to various people over the
| years, let me know when Autopilot can handle a sprayer
| coming down a two lane highway, and reasonably figure out
| what to do about a cow in the road, and I'll pay
| attention. Right now, it seems alarmingly unable to
| reliably figure out that the road is clear with anything
| resembling a useful level of accuracy.
|
| However, the point remains: I've chosen not to spend the
| money on that, which means I don't have to worry about
| spending money on it down the road. The Hedonic treadmill
| is very much a thing, and so by deliberately not
| adjusting my standards higher, I can live on less money
| going forward. I pity the people I know who have huge
| salaries for a while and buy $200k luxury cars, because
| I've seen, in a somewhat close friend, exactly what
| happens when those salaries aren't a thing anymore for
| one reason or another. The end result is prolonged pain
| and bankruptcy, because after you've driven a 700hp
| German luxury saloon, going back to something cheaper and
| slower (and more affordable) is really hard. I've enjoyed
| driving those briefly, but I've never owned one, so that
| my car is a bit of a gutless wonder cresting mountain
| passes at 8k ft, well... so it is. I can hold highway
| speed, I just can't run in massive excess of it. Oh well.
| Stupid-cheap to run for everything else, low maintenance,
| no complaints.
|
| I could come up with justifications for spending all
| sorts of money, if I really wanted to - and my point is
| that the ability and willingness to _not_ do that is a
| very useful skill. Humans are great post-hoc
| justification machines. Always have been, always will be.
| And knowing that, working around it, etc, reduces an
| awful lot of stress in life.
|
| You claim a car that will more or less stay in a lane is
| worth $100k. Well, OK... I spent not an awful lot more
| than that on a house and have been slowly upgrading the
| property over the years as we have money. Though I might
| have to drop a chunk of change into some appliances here
| soon, the service life of modern appliances seems to be
| about 5 years before major surgery, if you can get the
| parts.
|
| I lived for a while in Seattle, and heard people go on
| and on about how amazing Autopilot was. I just rode an
| ebike in the rain, and spent the savings on good rain
| gear. One cost $100k. One cost... oh, I think that was a
| $1500 build, it was a _nice_ commuter build. I think I
| got the better deal.
| WJW wrote:
| Regardless of how much better (or not) Autopilot is than
| manual driving, this comment is a very good example of
| the point GP was trying to make. If you get a taste for
| 100k cars because you convinced yourself you can no
| longer live without Autopilot, you will now need to find
| that much more income to pay for all the cars. That is
| money that could also have been spent "sacrificing
| salary" so you could have more interesting work, take
| time for a sabbatical or retire earlier.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > but the salary gap is too huge
|
| Well... if the money is a means to an end, and if that end is
| highest quality of life, there's a good (but obviously
| personal and highly subjective) argument that optimizing
| around salary doesn't necessarily translate into max quality
| of life (though it sure helps to some degree).
|
| But yes, the gap itself can be quite large but it deserves
| some context too: IME the large companies do start to pay
| absurdly well as you get higher up the chain, but startups
| still pay >=5x the US median income, so it's not like you're
| choosing an impoverished life or anything.
|
| And if you can't get a startup to pay as much as you'd like
| but you do believe in the company, then use it to your
| advantage and negotiate for a much larger slice of the equity
| pie and/or start your own company.
|
| Just food for thought of course.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Also an old fart. I am doing my best to remain a developer.
| Spending my work days in meetings and managing people sounds
| horrible to me.
| [deleted]
| ajb wrote:
| Is your startup engineering led? My experience of a non-
| engineering-led startup is that there are more meetings than in
| a big company.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > Is your startup engineering led?
|
| Yep.
|
| > My experience of a non-engineering-led startup is that
| there are more meetings than in a big company.
|
| Ditto. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it may have something
| to do with the fact that meetings are often the anxiety
| outlet for people who don't directly produce value. (Oof,
| that sounds harsh. And yet...)
| ajb wrote:
| In our case the problem was the opposite. There were enough
| people that coordination was needed, but the CEO didn't
| want any managers, so ICs need to track things and attend
| meetings while trying to get stuff done
| nathias wrote:
| If you wan't impact and creativity go into crypto.
| davidhunter wrote:
| Out of interest, how are you searching for roles?
|
| I ask because we have (what I believe to be) a very interesting
| engineering problem to solve but a lot of the recruiters out
| there will plug the hedge fund and fintech jobs because those
| guys are willing to pay absolute top of market and therefore pay
| more in commission to the recruiter.
|
| I wouldn't get caught up thinking about titles because they mean
| different things to different people. There's really interesting
| work out there for someone of your experience and increasingly
| more interesting startups in the Uk. You just gotta look a bit
| harder for it.
|
| We are searching for a 'principal software' engineer to join our
| team. I think we have a different engineering setup to many
| startups because it's very multi-disciplinary in nature: plant
| science, ml/optimisation, software engineering, sensor/embedded
| tech. So our idea of a principal swe is someone who spends some
| of their time as an ic and some of their time helping others to
| upskill in software engineering - this could be junior swes or
| senior plant scientists. I know that for other companies
| 'principal engineer' could be a product owner role or it could be
| a chief architect role or it could be more of a floating mentor.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I think if you want to have high impact, agency, and autonomy as
| an IC late in your career you should work on your math skills
| with an eye towards a research scientist / core algorithm
| designer position. The other option is to be the founding
| engineer at a startup, but that's probably only good in your 40s
| if you want a divorce
| zz865 wrote:
| I think low expectations is the best outlook. After 35 you're
| less desirable, sure you have experience but its not with the
| things employers are looking for. Eg right now the hot skills are
| tech that's only been around for 5 years, so you dont have any
| advantage over a 30 year old. Its worth doing some management
| jobs but they generally suck, my view is to keep as IC and just
| be happy with getting paid less than you used to make. If you are
| less fussy on money there are more choices out there. If you want
| more money get a side hustle.
|
| Yes people will tell you can be pricipal dev or whatever but the
| pyramid narrows quickly, its only for people who are really good
| tech and people wise. That might be you but most devs assume
| they'll get there when they wont.
| dafelst wrote:
| You do know that experience with a particular technology is
| only a tiny part of the equation here, right? A veteran with 20
| years in the industry has seen a LOT more stuff than someone
| with 10 years in the industry, irrespective of the tech stack.
| To call the two equivalent is very short sighted, especially at
| the Staff/Principal level where that person is ostensibly
| responsible for making high impact decisions.
| zz865 wrote:
| Yes I've been doing this for 30 years. I also know all the
| interviews I've done lately nobody has cared about what I did
| 20 years ago.
| dafelst wrote:
| I'm in my 40s and haven't experienced that - perhaps you're
| not looking in the right places
| zz865 wrote:
| Perhaps I did suggest principal level isn't worth it.
| Most of my friends have taken the first 10-20 years off
| the resume - or have dramatically shrunk it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sure, but a younger hiring manager probably doesn't
| appreciate that. Business owners (at any age) never
| appreciated quality.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The issue with being an EM is that it's a totally different job
| than being an engineer. There's overlap as you get to staff+ but
| there's also a lot of things that don't overlap. It's also, when
| done properly, a fully non-technical role. In general trying to
| still be technical will make you a bad EM that is hated by the
| team. Directly you will have very little short term impact except
| occasionally preventing disasters. The impact will be through
| your team and you'll be spending most of your time preventing
| future issues for the team. So it's very medium term and indirect
| impact if done well. Your team may respect you but they probably
| won't as much as you think they should given the effort you're
| putting in. The rest of the company may respect you but will
| still try to use you as a punching bag every so often. In the end
| you're the shit umbrella for the team. In my experience as an EM
| it's almost expected that you have the self-confidence to not
| need much external validation.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Will there be a "just hit 50, what's next?" installment to
| follow?
|
| I too, just want to build things--too many legos as a child (and
| adult), I guess. I work at a smaller company where the software
| side is pretty small (5-ish), so I enjoy a huge amount of
| autonomy.
|
| Having interviewed around a little, I find a lot of places that
| have a hole, and they're just looking for a peg to fill it.
|
| I already filled the hole at my current company, and wpuld be
| leaving a much larger holder if I were to leave.
|
| My problem is that I'm somewhat anxious financially; a number of
| people depend on me for the salary and benefits I bring home. So
| while many people tell me I would be a strong consultant type,
| the insecurity frightens me. I'm good at at inventiveness,
| initiative, entrepreneurial behavior _when_ it's under the
| umbrella of someone else's money and I feel secure.
|
| I've graduated to tech lead, semi manager, three times, and never
| really liked that. I just end up frustrated with those that I'm
| responsible for. I work better in a "we're all dribbling the same
| ball" context.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| I think you could benefit from moving to a larger group for a
| few years. Keep all the connections from your current team and
| you'll all find each other again one day.
|
| While I dont move around nearly as much as some in the
| industry, I do find value in moving every 3-5 years. Not really
| for the salary but more for the different perspectives it
| offers. You'll learn so much and look back at your small
| software team one day with fond memories and chuckle about how
| big the world outside that team is and how the values from a
| small team are hard to find. Make it something you seek out and
| appreciate, not just something you do every day.
| auspex wrote:
| Look into sales engineering or solution architect roles.
|
| They are great late stage careers and typically involve a lot of
| architecture and consulting type work.
| vvpan wrote:
| I started going to psychoanalysis and the analyst asked me: so
| why do you work in programming? I had to contemplate that for a
| long while. Answers that I came with were not at all what I
| thought. I had to really go back in memory to early days of my
| tech onboarding (teenage IRC years). I think it's a good exercise
| to go through. I think OP is one of the better examples of why
| it's a good idea. Because here is somebody hitting 40 and the
| life decision they are making is not whether to stay on the same
| path, also not contemplating what other things they could
| possibly do with the rest of their life (which statistically-
| speaking is probably another 40 years of fully conscious adult
| living) but to "see meaningful progression: in salary, in impact,
| in respect". So why are you in software?
| convolvatron wrote:
| someone asked me that in an interview context and I mumbled
| something about problem solving. but that question stuck with
| me and mulled it for quite a while.
|
| for me its about agency, and creativity. i dont just want to
| solve your problem, i want to build you a beautiful palace
| using solely force of will that completely obviates your
| problem.
|
| at least now i understand a little better why I can't function
| in devops land.
| moooff wrote:
| I am in similar position. I recently turned 40 and I'm a
| Development Manager but the role is moving me away from all the
| technical stuff I really like. I work in a classical industry
| position so no interesting FAANG Stuff only boring (but
| important) business software to keep up and running with my team.
|
| The problem is that i originally did a PhD in Computer Science
| (Machine Learning / NLP) in 2010 and had papers at SIGKDD, ECML
| etc. So this business software thing is terrible boring for me
| but in Germany it was reallly hard to find interesting - well
| paying positions - at that time in this field.
|
| And now i have no idea what to do next, because i fear that all
| my experience as a "Development Manager" will not be accounted
| for if I apply somewhere in a more deep technical role like
| FAANG.
| [deleted]
| progre wrote:
| 44 here. I have actively started avoiding architect/product owner
| roles . Instead I'm consentrated on knowing the product (how it's
| used by the customers and admins), the tech stack, the code base
| and the devops pipeline as good as I can by doing a whole lot of
| feature building and bugfixing. Result is that the work is more
| rewarding than ever. Architect and PO come to me to discuss
| features. Admins come to me with weird bugs. I get to code a lot
| and think a lot. I hope I get to do this til I retire.
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