[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Any experienced engineers took a lower posit...
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Ask HN: Any experienced engineers took a lower position as a
"vacation"?
Have any experienced (10+ years) engineers gone down to say working
as a mid-level engineer at a FAANG company just to keep getting
paid but work at a lower responsibility, as a 1-2 year break? Was
it beneficial? Was it just tedious? Did it hurt your career?
Figured I'd ask as I can't be the only person who thought of this
as a way to still earn but handle the burnout from working a tough
engineering job.
Author : Justsignedup
Score : 15 points
Date : 2022-01-18 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
| jstx1 wrote:
| Stress doesn't scale with seniority. There are laid back
| positions out there at every level so downlevelling yourself
| seems pointless. Especially since there's a reasonable chance
| that you'll take a paycut and get nothing in return for it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I highly doubt this, at least at any occurence to reasonably
| allow one to get such a job. I have yet to see any easy jobs
| that are senior or higher. Even my current midlevel job sucks.
| mxuribe wrote:
| I tried this...and got as high as director (which i know isn't
| that high)...but i started as a lowly full stack web dev...and
| even tried moving laterally across to product management, and
| then to director, etc...and nope...life did not get
| easier...and i even tried at different orgs...I'm so burned
| out...i'm thinking of leaving tech altogether.
| GoToRO wrote:
| You may end up working more. Companies that pay less do so
| because they are inefficient. This means people work a lot more
| but in very inefficient ways. I've found that companies that pay
| more usually have figured out how to use the workers to produce
| real value instead of having them use 3 different tools to ask
| for a device f.e.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'm about 7 years in the industry and removed all the full stack
| stuff from my resume. I haven't been noticing a significant
| salary delta between jobs that ask you to do front end, back end
| and dev ops at the same time and more pure back end roles, but I
| have noticed that I get leaned on harder than my peers have
| specialized.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yep, my company changed from dedicated roles to full stack,
| then to devops. There was no salary range adjustment.
| fvavsc wrote:
| I hate this.. this removes any opportunity for deep work
| instead you are constantly context switching. Your cognitive
| load is through the roof, and you feel like you can do
| nothing well.
|
| My company did same, but they didn't hire any devops, they
| just started calling us devops and fired sysadmins, told us
| to figure out Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines. Our velocity is
| less than 50% compared to before but I am sure on paper it
| looks like company saved tons of money.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Exactly what I told my managers.
|
| Exactly what my company did.
| leros wrote:
| I would guess that a typical good engineer could half-ass their
| job and still get good reviews. You might lose star status on you
| team and lose out on promotions, but I bet you could work half
| the hours and not get called out for bad performance.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| What is mid-level FAANG a downgrade from . . ? Mid-level FAANG
| seems like it'd be a huge "upgrade" in compensation and scale for
| most developers, and would be the crowning jewel of their career.
| Wiseacre wrote:
| Yes I believe that is the point of this particular humblebrag
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| You might find this is not an easy thing to do! Would you want
| someone on your team who you even suspected viewed their role as
| a vacation? Would you hire someone like that above someone who
| was ambitious and keen to prove themselves?
| iwwr wrote:
| I dunno, if they get their stuff done with little supervision
| and bring in a little maturity and experience, I would call
| that professionalism.
| krasicki wrote:
| You can be even more creative than that.
|
| Almost thirty years ago, my wife and I were in the process of
| adopting our two sons (now in their thirties). I had defined my
| career at the time as a Software engineer for hire (consultant).
| Technical projects, then and now, really require full attention
| and devotion to getting things done so I had to find a way to
| step out of that for a while without losing too much money or
| technical chops.
|
| I found a position as a Technical Writer having Software reverse-
| engineering skills which was a step off of the more intense
| technical treadmill. Over time I found that experience
| complemented my original trajectory as companies are always
| looking for better communicators.
|
| Given the rate of change, managing your career in consideration
| to your life goals is worth curating.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...I found a position as a Technical Writer...
|
| That's quite a clever move...I would have not thought about!
| You got me thinking; thanks!
| ceras wrote:
| Depending on your definition of mid-level, some FAANG companies
| wouldn't allow this: companies are sometimes "up-or-out" for
| entry-level and mid-level engineering, and require engineers to
| get to senior engineer after about 5 years of total of relevant
| experience or risk getting fired.
|
| At such companies, someone applying with 10 YoE will only be
| considered for senior engineer or higher roles. But you could go
| from staff to senior if you wanted.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| I took a part time job at an airline. After we load the bags on
| the airplane, the airplane leaves and there is no more stress. No
| long running projects. No big egos. The pay is rough, but would
| highly recommend.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Are you at a regional airport or a larger one? Is it tough
| being in the belly of the plane on a regular basis?
| d--b wrote:
| It's unclear what you mean here. You are a large system
| engineering lead with a lot of pressure, and would like to go
| back to making sketchy internal tools for HR to relief the load
| for a while? That kind of thing?
|
| I've not been in that position, but if I was, I think I'd rather
| take a 6-month break and do nothing than spending 2 years at a
| desk doing meaningless work.
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