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I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

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Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#231

Post by AdrianB1 »

nottrobin wrote: post #215

Does "director" mean something much lower than it sounds like? Or does "associate" mean something higher? To me, a "director" is someone who understands the business deeply, knows how to lead, take initiative, communicate very well, has years of business experience under their belt... They want to be a dev. Sure, they need to learn git, python etc. But these are not that hard at all. The harder part of being a develo…

Director is a rank with very different meaning in the industry; I know people with this rank at Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, in banks, FMCG and there is attempt from some companies to catch up with the naming of various positions versus the rest of the market, but it's gone wrong in some places, director being a pretty low position of what used to be mid level managers or worse. A "sales director" is many times just an inflated title to senior sales people with no budget to administer and no organization to manage, maybe leading a team of 2-3 junior sales guys. I know a bunch of IT directors that failed the interviews as entry level managers, so it is impossible to me to figure out what the real level of a rank is when the name is Director.

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#232

Post by ignoramous »

rebyn wrote: post #223
ignoramous wrote: post #89

Reminds me of a "self-demotion" that worked out well: That of a certain Allan Vermeulen [0] who, by some accounts, was the chief architect of Amazon S3 [1], and by all accounts, an engineer extraordinaire. Vermeulen managed the Platform Services group when he joined [2], and later moved to a CTO role with focus on the then very nascent Web Services initiative [3], but eventually "demoted" himself to an "AWS Engineer"…

Being a Distinguished Engineer is the highest there is for an engineer. He moved away from management and max'd out on the engineering track. https://college.lclark.edu/programs/entrepreneurship/firesid...

Yeah, and Amazon HR might be forced to create newer, higher rungs just for alv (and quite possibly a few others like James Hamilton and Eric Brandwine).

The "self-demotion" is real though, especially since, according to the (much disputed) book, The Everything Store, alv declined Bezos' offer to lead AWS, and the job then of course was Andy Jassy's (who took over from Colin Bryar) which laid the foundation for him to eventually become the CEO-elect of one of the most enduring companies of all time.

I mean, in an alternate universe, alv is the CEO-elect :) Imagine the scenes!

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#233

Post by kazinator »

carlisle_ wrote: post #228
kazinator wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's what personal anecdotes are. They are not something like "objective observations providing raw data, without any selection or interpretation". Anecdotes might not support the conclusions they are intended to support, but that doesn't make the anecdotes per se false. Anecodotes are, well, "anecdotal".

I mean, you gonna stick up for the guy that just got banned?

No, I'm sticking up for the idea that people's anecdotal experiences are valid, within their epistemological/cognitive limits, and not simply "false".

That doesn't depend on whether or not someone got banned.

That user unfortunately resorted to some behaviors that looked like antagonizing another user at the personal level.

His interpretations of some of his experiences are off the mark.

E.g. how some coworker hired interns in order to sexually victimize them is clearly not an example of women getting some sort of easy advancement or free pass. That the events happened is plausibly true; there is no basis for denying the raw facts of the anecdote. It's just not a relevant anecdote, really.

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#235

Post by epsilonclose »

jmd509 wrote: post #63

As a non-technical professional (yes we also peruse HN), I can't stress enough the value of having career conversations early and often with your manager. It's not just HR mumbo-jumbo. OP's story is just one example of a potential benefit. Most organizations actively try to support internal mobility (admittedly with varied success). Companies invest resources in hiring, training, and keeping you. Your manager, as a r…

I don't know. For a sufficiently large change, it isn't necessarily in your company's best interest to try to keep you happy. You have banked knowledge and skill in X. You have limited skill in Y but wish to learn. The loss of some fraction of X is always going to hurt the company more than your gain in Y will benefit them, so they are going to try to keep you doing as much of X as possible for as long as possible. If they were to let you switch to Y, they'd have to have already needed a junior person there, and they will now have to replace the person doing X. Maybe this is a small vs large company thing, but I think it is entirely possible to "typecast" yourself into a corner such that the best thing you can do if you want to pivot is jump ship.

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#236

Post by agumonkey »

carlisle_ wrote: post #98
Geminidog wrote: post #93

If she didn't get a pay downgrade to associate swe then she is not even remotely close to starting from scratch. The company is basically letting her learn a new field on their dime, which is fine, but this is basically a story less about her earning her skills as a software engineer and more about the charity of her Boss and the company allowing her to learn these skills. This is not an economic move for the company…

I find these anecdotes to be completely untrue. Women are often assumed to be less competent, and are often passed over during hiring for men of equal competence. I've seen some incredibly useless dudes sit back and rest and vest for months and months without any repercussions. I don't have an equivalent story for women because I work with significantly less women. Let's try focusing on the apparent and obvious biase…

Sexism is complicated, I've known useless women at work (crippled, not enough mastery or drive) and even abusive ones (charm as a pass to delegate their work to others).

I think one of the issue of work is that you have to be overly bold to crack through the process, even if you're an incompetent employee on many levels, you'll get there through tribal-ish reflexes. And I think masculine traits align with that, which make them get hired a lot more.

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#237

Post by hinkley »

> During these few years in which I’ve been coding in earnest on the side, I also found myself regularly discouraged and confused by the sheer number of possible things that I could learn or do.

AITOO who sees a huge disconnect between the number of viable technologies, the prereqs for job openings, and the notion that there is a 'shortage of developers'?

I'm not sure what changed, or when, but it definitely feels like there are tons of tools that can solve the same set of problems, and the tech choice is more down to preference than killer features separating complete products from also-rans. The odds that a company whose ad intrigued you uses almost none of the same tools as your current employer seems to be growing, and yet the ads that admit to on the job training or humbly ask for "or a similar tool" seem to be no more prevalent than ten years ago.

There are plenty of people, just not ones who believe in your goals and also have 3 years of Laravel and React Native experience. Or I think my favorite pairing so far, .NET and MongoDB.

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#238

Post by lucifersam »

geophile wrote: post #24

Good for you. I was in startups for 25 years, (except for a few years in an acquiring company), and I had this ongoing debate with myself and my bosses for many years: Should I stay on the technical side (developer, architect), or go into management? On one hand, I thought that I "should" go into management because ... that's what people do, right? On the other hand, I loathed management. Even as a team lead, meeting…

I have this dilemma at the moment. My company has a management and non-management track. I feel like the company is pushing me up the levels and that all focus across engineering is on getting promoted to the next level. My problem is now that I've got to Staff level I feel like I'm a manager even though my manager insists I'm not. I hardly ever get to code, and my calendar is full of meetings. I spend a lot of time writing planning documents and having meetings about spreadsheets and OKRs and to be honest I absolutely hate it. I've been trying to work out if it's like this everywhere, or if this is specific to my company. I spoke to a few people and they pretty much said "Yeah, the more senior you get the less you get to code". The articles I read about Staff Engineer level seem to imply it's more about architecture and planning. I'm really tempted to demote myself back to Senior and just stick there, but I'd probably take a salary cut and I also feel like I'd taint my career and be viewed as a failure. I thought we'd move forwards by creating twin tracks that means engineers don't automatically have to go into management to get ahead, but it feels like it hasn't changed that much. I know some people are great at that level of engineer role, and I can see why companies need it. I keep coming back to the question: why do we take people who are good at coding and say "OK, you're great at that so I'm going to promote you into a role where you hardly ever get to do it"?

For what it's worth, I enjoy mentoring and explaining things, writing docs, and being involved in design of systems and influencing technical strategy. It's nice to be making technical choices. But when you're more familiar with a spreadsheet than an IDE, something has gone wrong.

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#239

Post by carlisle_ »

kazinator wrote: post #233
carlisle_ wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you gonna stick up for the guy that just got banned?

No, I'm sticking up for the idea that people's anecdotal experiences are valid, within their epistemological/cognitive limits, and not simply "false". That doesn't depend on whether or not someone got banned. That user unfortunately resorted to some behaviors that looked like antagonizing another user at the personal level. His interpretations of some of his experiences are off the mark. E.g. how some coworker hired…

You want to argue that the guy espousing sexism through his anecdotal experiences has valid anecdotes?

Re: I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer

#240

Post by draw_down »

decafninja wrote: post #147

My current dream is to be "demoted" from senior SWE at a non-tech company to a mid level (or even junior! if possible) SWE at a mid to top tech company.

I know what you mean. Junior isn't the cakewalk it sounds like though, there's an "up or out" requirement that you advance to terminal level or get fired. So eventually you'd end up back at senior. Plus a lot of places use former interns in those junior roles so those positions are ironically very hard to come by.

But yes, I can identify with that. Being one level below senior for the rest of my career would be great if it were possible.

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