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Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

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Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#31

Post by flashgordon »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #23

I've been in the industry for over 30 years (yikes!) and I can assure you that job satisfaction is transient at best. Start by understanding both what you want to do and what you really don't want to do and understand that over time, both of these will probably change. In most organizations, in order to make the most impact, you have to be at Management level. I think this is causing you some conflict, because you wa…

This is one of the best responses I've seen. Titles do matter - at least depending on what your goals are. If you want to have broad impact (say leave a legacy or have influence etc) you need a high up title or have your name be synonymous with a project/product used by the group whose respect yoj want to command. And lot the time those above you will have you cranking out things for them. I don't mean this in an evil way. I mean that they have okrs to take care off and you will just be a resource to them.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#32

Post by Seb-C »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #23

I've been in the industry for over 30 years (yikes!) and I can assure you that job satisfaction is transient at best. Start by understanding both what you want to do and what you really don't want to do and understand that over time, both of these will probably change. In most organizations, in order to make the most impact, you have to be at Management level. I think this is causing you some conflict, because you wa…

Thanks for the answer. That is definitely why I have such dilemma, because I know that I don't want to be in the management. Hence why I'm leaning more towards freelancing or creating my own business for now (easier said than done however).

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#33

Post by Seb-C »

zero_shift wrote: post #2

I'm nowhere near as senior as you (12 years). But I've reflected on this a lot recently. I love the technology and feeling like I'm building things, but staying hands on will always limit your scope. Taking the management path improves your scope but the work is - well - just less fun than programming. My answer right now is to try and build more things myself. Small apps, CLIs, retro games. Not libraries or much OSS…

Thank you. That is mostly what I have been leaning toward recently, and why I'm interested in freelancing. I want more time for my own projects, and freelancing seems to be the only way that I can find a better balance between money and free time.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#34

Post by Seb-C »

anonzzzies wrote: post #16

I have been programming for well over 40 years (I am early 50s) and have been writing software for money for 35 of those years (first company during high school, thanks to my chemistry teacher and my uncle, who were friends). Made a bunch of millions during the the early 2000s and kept building software, which I have always loved, since then. AI (well, LLMs) caught me off guard as it did with many people but now I ha…

I envy you for being in this position. I'm definitely interested in entrepreneurship, but it's not so easy to get started.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#35

Post by Seb-C »

another_twist wrote: post #8

Me: ~10 years so not as senior but senior still. When you are senior you know that reality is messy. Things break, networks fail, people push bugs and we are supposed to know how to get on with the chaos and keep pushing forward since solving the business problem is more important than anything else. I'd argue that you take a similar view to people management, its also a part of engineering just not the one you like.…

I've already kind-of tried some management, in the sense that some of my previous tech-lead positions actually involved managing the team as well. But that's really not something I enjoy or want to do.

> Also I question that you've never seen anything new in the past 5-10 years (not being rude here, I understand that someone with 20years experience has seen plenty already but definitely not everything).

That comment was meant to be in the context of web dev, I'm not pretending to know everything about all areas.

> For example, how much do you know about deep learning ? Are you on track with the latest trends in our inudstry ? Can you make a list of best practices to follow when building AI systems ? Maybe try looking into new areas for growth. It will be uncomfortable but worth it I think.

I have studied deep learning and neural networks, and found-out that it's not something I'm interested to work with. I am more interested into moving down the stack. Maybe systems programming, but also video games, because it involves low level concerns, optimization problems and a huge creative/artistic part. But yeah, I know that working in video games might involve lots of other sacrifices I'm not willing to make.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#36

Post by Seb-C »

itsamario wrote: post #4

I started in development because I had websites I made and ran but didn't profit and had expenses. There I learnt to be a sysadmin and went to MSP support. As a sysadmin I relied on networks more and more and became a netadmin and that evolved to network engineer then architect. I worked in startups and kept evolving until I looked down on those "professionals" that stayed dependent specialist. The back and forth to…

I definitely feel that about inefficiencies. I'm also frustrated at the general lack of care for quality, so I might want to find a niche where it matters and where mistakes have consequences.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#37

Post by Seb-C »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #26

It seems clear to me that you need to be leading now, not being a cog with no influence. I also resisted "being a manager, for a long time. It's like it was a dirty word and I thought it would be turning my back on what I was good at and enjoyed. But the truth is, you are no longer enjoying what you previously did and have not grown for 5 to 10 years. Being a leader is not being a line manager. Managing some people m…

Thanks for the insights. But I've already been at this kind of position in the past (tech-lead role involving managing the devs). I hated the management part and even had to recover from a burn-out of a huge and messy project.

Also I care too deeply about the quality of the software being developed and am very much perfectionist, which usually translates into lots of frustration for both me and the team.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#38

Post by Seb-C »

KiwiCoder wrote: post #29

I started programming on Zilog z80 when I was 11 years old, at school in NZ. I'm now 55, and I've been a programmer for all that time. I've worked as contractor, consultant, tech and architecture lead, people manager, independent limited company in the UK, published author. I started a charity. There's more, but you get the idea, I've seen many sides of this programming malarkey. Like you, at times, I reached a plate…

Realistically that is the balance I am hoping to eventually reach through freelancing (more money the freedom to work on things I like and try micro businesses)

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#39

Post by Seb-C »

captainkrtek wrote: post #7

I'm about 12 years in myself and can provide some thoughts on this, though I'm not 20+ years senior. My first few roles were in startups, where I got to be very hands on, learn a bunch, and mostly focus on the craft of software development and systems. I similarly felt I had a lack of higher-level understanding of business, management, product, etc. I then went to Amazon for 7 years and this is where I felt I develop…

What you say makes total sense. But for some personal reasons the social part of the job has always been my weak side and I'm just not interested in playing that game.

I've had fairly positive successes in the past when being a contractor. I feel like it's easier for me to have legitimacy and influence over the project that I'm doing this way.

> Lastly, make sure whatever it is you work on truly matters to the business, and understand how it ties back to the business and your customers. It can be fun (or necessary at times) to be off in the weeds on something that is technically interesting, but really unimportant to the bottom line and ultimately to advancing your career.

That's something I have also learnt from experience, and I am more often than not the one pushing for boring tech against the last fancy trends. But I have difficulties with the fact that focusing on the business means most of the time being the fastest possible, to the point that businesses would rather save 2 hours of implementation time now, even if it costs weeks of technical debt down the road.

Re: Ask HN: Senior people, how did your career evolve?

#40

Post by Seb-C »

Agingcoder wrote: post #28

Yes I did feel the same, and it boiled down to accepting I had to try something new that I thought I didn’t want or be happy with what I already had . You have several options I guess. - it’s very likely you haven’t mastered all layers of the stack - you maybe have mastered the parts you’ve come across though. Would you include Linux kernel development, program proofs, HPC , math-oriented software, compilers, firmwar…

Thanks for the insights. I have been in technical leadership positions in the past, but disliked the management part. I think that the other dilemma is that I don't like big companies, as I've only had negative experiences and I get frustrated because even the most tiny thing can take forever to be done.

> it’s very likely you haven’t mastered all layers of the stack - you maybe have mastered the parts you’ve come across though.

I was meaning that in the context of web dev. There are certainly other areas I don't know much yet.

> Would you include Linux kernel development, program proofs, HPC , math-oriented software, compilers, firmwares, fpgas, database internals ( I mean, writing a full database engine ), big iron infrastructure , actual research etc in the list of things you’ve mastered?

Definitely not (except partially a database engine), but I'd definitely like to move down the stack. I like systems programming, low level stuff and optimization problems, so that's maybe the main area that I should explore (and also one of the reasons I like game dev). Translating that into an actual job might be harder thought.

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