Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?

1) if you haven't already take a vacation. 2) What do you want to do? What do you want to focus on? You used to have a lot of different tasks that you probably did a good job at given your constraints but probably didn't excel at. You're now being given the chance to specialize and focus on only a few things. As others have said, your co-workers probably haven't thought too much about growing your career. Once you decide what you want to do have a talk with your vp of engineering and possibly your early co-workers. Your vp should be willing to give you the opportunity to grow especially since you already have a lot of technical knowledge and general company knowledge. Also they presumably hired the vp because he has experience with bigger companies our more mature companies. Take the time to soak up some knowledge. While not a first choice, don't be afraid to leave for better opportunities. You've proven that you can build up a product and accept general responsibilities.

It took me awhile to realize that management is, generally, not a skilled profession. Not saying that certain skills can make you better or worse at it, but that you don't need them to be effective.

In a skilled profession, not having them means all the difference. You can't wire up a house without the skills. You can't build a web app without knowing a whole lot of stuff, at least not within any time frame someone would pay you to make one in.

It doesn't mean that management is stupid or boring. It means that you can bring more of yourself to it because there's not this huge body of best practices that you have to adhere to in order to succeed in it. There's lots of room for eccentric practices, The Office showed that exquisitely.

You can carve out a place for yourself. If your days are taken up by meetings, take your laptop to those meetings, listen with half an ear so you can still contribute, and code whenever you can't. Don't ask for permission, you're a manager, you're busy. You're always busy, you decide what you're busy with.

There's this hierarchy I've noticed of office workers. You can be paid to do stuff other people tell you to do, I call these drones.

You can have responsibilities, in which case you can justify doing anything so long as it fits into the responsibility and you can make your bosses believe that. I justify posting on HN this way.

If one of your responsibilities is someone else in the company, then you're in management, and you have a lot more latitude to order your day, if only because you can simply order your subordinate to take care of your responsibilities. You generally use this power to think and strategize about how to improve your department's role in and contribution towards the company.

Once you get promoted into management, this is how you're expected to spend your days, but you don't have to. You can still code if you want to, so long as you're meeting the additional responsibilities that are thrust upon you by managing others. They're your responsibilities, you can meet them however you see fit. That's what management means.

If you don't know how to do this, you might get stuck attending pointless meetings. If you do, then you can avoid most any meeting that you weren't personally asked to attend by someone you report to. If you're at a meeting, your job is to contribute to the shared understanding of whatever business situation they're having the meeting about. If you can do that while coding, so much the better, you're multi-tasking.

Even if you don't have any direct reports, even if you don't have any responsibilities, you can create them. You can't make people report to you, but you can sort of take responsibility for them if you notice they're slacking or whatever.

You can also take some role the company needs filled and start taking it seriously. There was this great segment in The Office where Pam, as part of the sales staff, starts taking on "Office Manager" roles, and eventually leverages it into a newly defined role and salary, in hilarious fashion.

You don't have to use subterfuge to gain responsibilities, you can simply ask your boss for one or notice something that needs attention and tell your boss you're taking care of that from here on out. If your boss notices you taking responsibilities, then they'll start to re-categorize you from a drone to someone who can take charge of something. Managers call this "initiative".

Maybe not even the cofounder.

This is seriously one of the best comments I have read on HN. Thank you! What I think is important is very often no one tells you these things, and programmers are often systematizer types - if they're not explicitly told "this is how things work" they are slow on the uptake or conjecture reasons why you're not supposed to do them.

> Where did I fail to claim my part when the company was growing?

One problem I had in my youth was that I really wanted to be recognized for what I did without a lot of blowing my own horn. If I self-promoted, my victories felt hollow: was I getting kudos for my work, or for my self promotion? So I energetically avoided calling attention to my accomplishments.

Eventually I came to realize that this was a little crazy. I can't expect managers and clients and investors to automatically appreciate all the stuff that it has taken me years to learn to do well. I've discovered that there is a reasonable level of taking credit that is neither sleazy nor slighting of my colleagues. Being modest and self-effacing is good, but it can be taken too far.

So let me answer your question with some more questions: Do the executives know that you did these things well? Have you told them you wanted a position other than as a line developer? Do they know that you're unhappy? Are you regularly discussing your career plans with them?

If you, like I once did, find that stuff revolting, then I'd encourage you to find someone to help you practice those conversations. You shouldn't let your ego speak all the time, but it is ok to let it out of the cage once in a while.