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Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

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Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#61

Post by aaronbaugher »

giantg2 wrote: post #55
JohnFen wrote: post #12

> Has anyone worked somewhere that they felt they could just do their job without worrying about the career advancement aspect? That's every place I've ever worked, to be honest, including tech megacorps. Lots of places will put a lot of emphasis on career advancement, but I've never seen anyone punished for not doing it. I'm not counting "won't get promoted" as a punishment, for obvious reasons.

My non-tech company seems to also have this up or out mentality. They don't have a specific timeline, but if you're a midlevel for too long like me, they definitely try to manage you out. I've had a few friends who are managers confirm this.

Yeah, you can run into it anywhere. When I was in the pizza delivery business in my early 20s, once you got into management, there was very much an up-or-out mentality. You couldn't just be a really good assistant manager; you were pushed to move up to manager and then to a bigger store and so on. It just seems to bother the climbers to see someone content to stay in the position he knows he's best suited for.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#62

Post by dowager_dan99 »

romanhn wrote: post #15

Lots of large tech firms have defined career ladders with a concept of terminal levels - typically senior level beyond which there is no up-or-out expectation of growth. I think small and midsize companies that focus on fast growth will often carry this expectation, so I'd avoid those. Alternatively: small non-startups or large companies beyond their prime (again, lack of company-wide focus on rapid growth is key her…

these are the first people to go in times of trouble or politics, which is a real shame because the bulk of work in almost all companies is done by solid, experienced workers, not rockstar hierarchy climbers

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#63

Post by thewebguyd »

Try to look for small/medium non-tech companies. There's quite a few out there that have dev teams but their primary product or service isn't software. The downside to that though is pay likely won't be as good as big tech, and sometimes they can be hit or miss with being able to work on exciting or new stuff.

I work for a medium-ish company (around 250 employees), and we're just a small team two devs, and a sysadmin basically and are pretty autonomous and there's no "up or out" expectation for anyone here.

There's definitely downsides - no one outside of our team has any technical ability whatsoever so communicating requirements back and forth is difficult, and a lot of the work is boring business CRUD and integrating SaaS products together, but it pays well enough and I love being pretty much autonomous on our small team. Most days it just fees like I'm a contractor.

All that being said, I'm almost 40 so I don't mind the boring enterprisey work. In my younger years this job would've burned me out super fast, just something to keep in mind.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#64

Post by dowager_dan99 »

seanw444 wrote: post #56
giantg2 wrote: post #52

Maybe just job-hop. Sure, you're a senior for 10 years at one company, then be a senior at another company for another 10 years. I know that's easier said than done, and could run into ageism as you get older.

I keep hearing about this "ageism" but it's never made sense to me. I would always want to hire an older, wiser developer, if I were calling the shots. Why is this a thing?

I'm 50+ and it's a thing, but not really different than any other bias lots of people here likey deal with. It's not legit but does make sense: any groups that you don't identify with are assessed differently based on the delta. Sometimes this is positive; most times negative.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#65

Post by jesse__ »

billy99k wrote: post #3

One option is to find a job that has legacy work. A good place to look is a non-tech company. IE: a company that might use tech to run the business (which you will support), but tech isn't their main product. These companies tend be using older software because they aren't really required to have the latest and greatest.

I've heard law firms are a good bet

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#66

Post by kingnothing »

seabit wrote: post #57

I've mostly worked as an IC and a manager in technical organizations outside of VC backed startup land. In those orgs I've found that most places consider 'Senior Engineer' to be a terminal level. By that I mean until you get to senior engineer it us up or out. In fact, as I manager, I've had explicit timelines on which I've had to get people to senior, or manage them out. Once you DO get to senior engineer they are…

I'm also a manager and came here to say the same thing. Senior is a terminal level at plenty of mature companies. If you're in the startup world, you'll probably face big pressure to take on a Staff+ or manager title, but you can certainly successfully push against that if you have good rapport with the leadership team. I knew several engineers with decades of experience who were very happy being senior engineers in that world. They had their niches and knew them well. One had been writing email systems since the 90s, for example.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#67

Post by dowager_dan99 »

david-gpu wrote: post #53

Qualcomm, at least until I left in 2017, had two parallel career tracks, one for management and another for individual contributors. Both had equal pay grades. It was up to you whether you wanted to follow one or the other. So if your concern is that you don't want to become a manager while still being well paid, that is an option. Other than that, the culture was pretty nice, especially in the Markham (Canada) offic…

Dual ladders is pretty common, though not equal pay IME, but I'd bet there's still a stigma attached to anyone who's not trying to move up one of those career paths?

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#69

Post by bradlys »

It's not about advancing. You're working in a stack ranked world where 2/3+ of your peers are on H1B visas are at risk of being deported (plus that's the culture of their home country). You could do the same job but just live in the EU and you'd be less likely to experience these woes.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#70

Post by dowager_dan99 »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

>> This outcome is inevitable, given enough time and enough positions in the hierarchy to which competent employees may be promoted.

So if you accept this, you need to find a place where there is no hierarchy: explicit, shadow or implicit.

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