Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#1

Post by iamcirou » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 11:51 AM UTC

Hey HN,

I'm 35, working for an IT consultancy company and I feel my career is going at a dead end.

I did well with my career (maybe too much?) and after 10 years I'm far away from coding activities, more involved in project management and I'm not sure that this is what I want.

I like coding (that's why I started this job, I also consider myself good at coding) I like to learn and explore new things.

The problem is that, at same time I feel that coding can't be a lifetime career: what will happen in 10 years from now? Maybe company will prefer younger coders to hire and I will not be able to find a job anymore? (I have family, I can't risk to lose my job) Shall I find now another role or company that may be can offer me a job where I can cover for both roles (Coding and project management)?

I'd like to hear your point of view, maybe I'm missing something here. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#2

Post by Mave83 » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

let younger agile people Code, be an Software Architect if you like Code or manage coding teams. That is most likely better.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#3

Post by nullandvoid » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:08 PM UTC

I'm a little younger, but also try my hardest not to get dragged into more management (it's easy to happen).

Are you worried you're not going to be skilled enough in management - and therefore you're trying to get "ahead of the game"?

If not then what's your fear - code until you can no longer, and then take a few months off, re-train and go into management (as a skilled coder you'll already have a big advantage if you want to manage teams in tech). Life is too short to work a job you don't like.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#4

Post by brogrammer2018 » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:12 PM UTC

Same problem here, work in IT as developer, tech lead and PM, have not been promoted for years. I am staring to think IT consultancy software is full of dead end jobs.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#5

Post by ggambetta » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:13 PM UTC

Come to Google! No forced management track so you can code for as long as you want, no ageism (colleague just turned 60; I'm 40 myself), will probably let you support a family, great WLB :)

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#6

Post by theandrewbailey » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC

I'm nearly at your spot in my career, but I'm not in management. I'm transitioning from a senior programmer position into a technical architect and team lead. I'm going to help write requirements and how to implement them from a high level, then create tasks and assign them to team members (including myself) to implement. I might be mentoring others from time to time. Maybe there is a similar position where you are?

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#7

Post by clcaev » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC

I think 35 is quite young, I wouldn't worry about "aging out" for another decade or three.

Make sure to keep up with technologies as part of your day job. It's amazing how fast things, even SQL change. You don't need to own it all, just build situational awareness with an occasional deep dive.

Read other people's code. Look for projects that interest you and always be learning from them. Build things. Build your writing and presentation skills. You can always learn by helping to document the projects you use.

Look for industries that fit your interests. Programming is a dual-class: your domain of expertise and your technical chops. As you progress in your career, deliberately choose your domain. Immerse yourself that sub-field, identify high-value problems, and how computing techniques are used to solve them. Your success in later phases of your career is measured by how you are able to help a given community with problems that matter to them.

Critically, seek low stress: it's a long haul. Save. Avoid abusive employers and clients. Keep professional boundaries. Build and maintain a robust circle of friends. Finally, if you have children, focus on them now -- you won't get another chance later.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#8

Post by christiansakai » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:16 PM UTC

TIL 35 is old.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#9

Post by gameswithgo » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:18 PM UTC

I work at company (Olo) where at least two people I know of have asked to go back to developer positions from their manager positions, and have done so without any negative takes on it.

In my mid 30s I had a couple years where I kind of re-invented myself. I had been doing your typical C# backend stuff for like 10 years, just going to work, doing the thing, going home. Then for 2 years I spent some time learning other languages (F#, Nim, Rust,Go) doing coding challenge type things (Codingame, Advent of Code) and doing some open source work and game dev on the side etc.

Anyway it all kinda made coding fun again but when I next had a job search it opened a lot of doors. Knowing Rust and F# got me in the door at some very interesting places, and all the "leetcode" challenges made me able to interview very confidently.

Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

#10

Post by eurekin » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:18 PM UTC

I'm 36 and think I faced similar issues.

Was proposed a management role about 3 times. Somehow it felt like the end in general.

For my coworkers age isn't as relevant as simply coding skills. They want to be able to give me any task and be technically lead, if they don't know the technology themselves.

I've set a goal for myself: be able to do most of the coding related tasks - including devops, testing, deployment, monitoring - using up-to-date tech stacks.

During this weekend I've played around with self hosting and ended up replicating my company's development pipeline. It's quite barebone, but includes a git server (with working ssh clone urls), simple docker based CI pipeline, nexus repo and some management apps. All apps are proxied behind let's encrypt's SSL certificate.

I also added a simple google oauth integration so that anybody with google account could quickly set-up their own repos.

I don't remember last time I had so much fun to be honest. Also, as a byproduct, I hope, I gained the "hard to get unless you're in trenches" knowledge that is so valuable, when opportunity comes. It does come often in the place I work.

This is an example of the general approach I take: make sure to keep technical skills up to date using free time, by setting up goals, which are easy (for me) and fun - the end result should give the "I'm so happy with, what I made" feeling. It shouldn't be forced, because that would make me hate it in the long term.

I have a long list of things to try out sometime (computer vision, home automation, simple raspberry pi project, webapp to manage a game we play) and just pick something in free time.