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Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

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Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#61

Post by rcurry »

EsotericAlgo wrote: post #57
mattlondon wrote: post #23

Although I am not near retirement, I've found there is a sort of sweet-spot to be found doing "kinda" management stuff while still emphatically being a hands-on full-time coder. I.e. you can proactively do just enough project management, meetings, and architectural discussions so that people leave you alone the rest of the time to code, but you get enough influence to get things largely how you want them to be (i.e.…

I've found that showing any degree of drive and gumption in the undeserved organizational tasks ends up eating more and more time as the expectations and scope increase, rapidly pushing out the technical work. Finding the "just enough" part is challenging, especially if you're in an organization without a strong engineering culture where technical acumen is undervalued.

As I like to say - never let people know you’re good at something you don’t want to do.

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#62

Post by jedberg »

nnoitra wrote: post #54
jedberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. I don't know how old you are, but it's pretty typical in all careers. At some point you just hit the top of your skillset.

And to go above that? Grad school and Phd or just very specialized niche knowledge or moving into finance/quant jobs?

You can get a new skillset but that may not increase your pay, just your job options, unless you learn a higher paying specialty (like AI or ML or something).

Otherwise your options are manager or architect.

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#63

Post by brentis »

Great topic. The cognitive load of full stack development at > 45 to me seems unbearable. I love building products, but after doing the basics for the 1000th time gets old. I would imagine the appreciable parallel being similar to a backend dev having to do UI work.

At my age I no longer want to look at a monitor any more and want to think and have others build products, so went i to product.

The pay question is interesting too. You need to work to have a couple million in bank by 45 and the investments give you a lot of flexibility in not chasing senior mgmt. Also stay healthy, employed, and dont get a divorce (1/2).

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#66

Post by arcanus »

jlokier wrote: post #58
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

First, note you're likely to get some survivorship bias in these responses - older people who left the industry are less likely to comment on HN. That said, as a developer in their mid-40s, here's my take: 1. In general, mid-level engineering management jobs (which I consider Manager to Senior Director level) pay significantly more because they are shittier jobs . Sure, there is the rare soul that loves these kind of…

In my head, "director" is right near the top of the organisation, just under "shareholder", and above C-suite. So I'm intrigued by the "ton of managing up". Who are you managing up so much to?

At bigco, management track goes:

Manager -> director - > VP - > C-level

There are often levels in between, such as senior director or senior VP, but that is the rough hierarchy.

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#67

Post by wiz21c »

nnoitra wrote: post #54
jedberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. I don't know how old you are, but it's pretty typical in all careers. At some point you just hit the top of your skillset.

And to go above that? Grad school and Phd or just very specialized niche knowledge or moving into finance/quant jobs?

It all depends on what you lean by above. Going to management, at least for me, was a totally different job from coding (and I was not happy at it). It's 10% technical and 90% people management.

Architect is more technical but, still, I think there's a lot of people mgmt (explain X that he must code that way and not this way, and explain it again because he thinks he's smarter than you and know better, etc. this can easily happen twice a day :-( )

My solution, just for me, so far is to change skill set : going back to academia and learn ML/AI at top level. Big bonus : I got to learn again, math/algorithmic stuff, etc. which I love. And I'm not concerned too much about the pay (for example, a management job, super e,try level, paid 10% more but with at least 90% percent more stress for me, was absolutely not worth it)

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#68

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

First, note you're likely to get some survivorship bias in these responses - older people who left the industry are less likely to comment on HN. That said, as a developer in their mid-40s, here's my take: 1. In general, mid-level engineering management jobs (which I consider Manager to Senior Director level) pay significantly more because they are shittier jobs . Sure, there is the rare soul that loves these kind of…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#69

Post by jedberg »

jlokier wrote: post #58
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

First, note you're likely to get some survivorship bias in these responses - older people who left the industry are less likely to comment on HN. That said, as a developer in their mid-40s, here's my take: 1. In general, mid-level engineering management jobs (which I consider Manager to Senior Director level) pay significantly more because they are shittier jobs . Sure, there is the rare soul that loves these kind of…

In my head, "director" is right near the top of the organisation, just under "shareholder", and above C-suite. So I'm intrigued by the "ton of managing up". Who are you managing up so much to?

Generally a Director reports to a VP. Sometimes you'll have Senior Director in between.

Director is also the word for someone on the board of directors, do it's confusing.

Re: Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?

#70

Post by mrbonner »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

First, note you're likely to get some survivorship bias in these responses - older people who left the industry are less likely to comment on HN. That said, as a developer in their mid-40s, here's my take: 1. In general, mid-level engineering management jobs (which I consider Manager to Senior Director level) pay significantly more because they are shittier jobs . Sure, there is the rare soul that loves these kind of…

Your points just hit me directly. I consider myself pretty good with my problem solving skill and ability to learn. I feel like I am better as an IC than a manager. Yet, a few times, I got "convinced" into management role because whether manager left or they couldn't find people with enough knowledge for the position. I have always being able to say "nope". I've been working for 10 years, same big tech company but I switched to different teams every 2 years within the same organization.

Recently, I got into a honest discussion with the senior leadership and basically said "I just want to be an IC and next step would be Principal Engineer". So, they set up a role for me to do "special" assignments: I would pick something I think I could improve either efficiency or accuracy or brand new initiative for the business need. I'm mostly doing reconnaissance works where I would go in and see if this is something feasible to do. Once, I get a proof of concept working, the next step is to get a team of engineers (or current project's team) to discuss and delegate. I have to say I really like this experience so far. It has a feeling like doing consultant works with one big client!

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