Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?

> > I've learned to appreciate my job for what it is, and for the benefits that it provides in comparison to other jobs that I could easily obtain.

Part of why it works out so well for me is that I have enough clout to avoid things I don't want to do. IE, I don't want to be a manager. When my manager, (who's titled a director,) decided that I was going to become a manager, it basically went like this:

Me: "I don't want to be a manager."

My boss, "You're not going to be a manager, you're just going to do [everything that a manager does]. You need to grow in your career."

Me: "That sounds like you want me to be a manager."

I saw right through that and made it pretty clear that I wasn't going to be a manager, and I wasn't going to be tricked into being a manager without the title of manager. If I was going to be forced to be a manager, I was going to take that job I mentioned in my original post. It helped that I missed a meeting with upper management because a job interview ran long.

In part, it's not that I don't want to be a manager, I don't want to be a manager for the company I work for. I know too much of the code to be hands-off, and I'm remote. The culture is far too interrupt-driven in our office to be a remote manager.

I work at Amino. Here's a blog post from our hiring team that expounds on this a bit: https://amino.com/blog/a-letter-to-amino-candidates/

I'm fairly happy as a senior dev. This particular week is stressful because we're nearing a release. But outside of the extra hours I'm working for the next 2 weeks, I don't usually have to work more than 40/wk. I work on very interesting problems with very smart and interesting people. I make a lot of money and have great benefits. I live in a nice place and am close to my work, which is only possible because they compensate me well. I definitely want to change some things about my current situation, so I'm working on that.

I've been at my current job for 12 years. 6 years ago I was really annoyed with work. It seemed like we were in permanent maintenance mode, so there wasn't much fun stuff to work on, and I didn't have a lot of say in what I was doing or where it was going. I went and interviewed with competitors and a few startups. I was offered a job at a startup, but when I looked at the work, it was hardly any better than what we were doing, the product was doomed to fail (and it did), and I would have been doing longer hours for fewer benefits and working with people who were far less senior than me but who had very large egos. I ended up turning it down and instead talking to my manager about why I was unhappy. As new projects came along, I got to do newer things that were more interesting and came to love it again.

It's not all good. We currently have one or two people in our upper management who are not good at their jobs and who don't seem to care about their employees' well-being. But we're working on fixing that and the downsides are not nearly bad enough to consider leaving again. If they get worse, I may decide it's time to jump ship, but there's a good chance they'll get better and I'm actively working on making that happen.

I have a slack-line but get very little opportunity to use it. I'll start keeping it in the vehicle so I can bring it on kayak expeditions–adequate clothes-line and camp couch–and on the off chance I find a spot to use it.

I am looking to increase the impact, not reduce it. I know that I need more bone-rattling in my life and can't justify the purchase of a Juvent. Skateboarding provides benefits similar to that of a Juvent, plus I might learn how to fall (and skate).