Congratulations on making the jump to management, which is a socially acceptable job all the way to retirement.
I’m in my 40s and still coding. I wish I had your problem, which I’d solve by scratching my coding itch out of hours.
Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
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Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#32@OP I hope you get quality advice from veterans who frequent these forums. I have some tangential questions for you and maybe others. --- As a programmer, how can I avoid the pressure towards management? What is that pressure and why do people succumb to the pressure? How much is that pressure external and how much is internal? What form does the pressure take? What advice can help withstand the pressure? --- I work…
I’ve done both and am not sure which I’m better at. I can 100% say that I found more pure joy in programming, but probably have had a much larger positive impact on the company in a leadership role.
The ultimate control against the pressure is “no, I don’t want a management role” or “I don’t want a management role higher than team lead” or whatever. No one will fire a good engineer because they don’t want to go into management.
Part of the pressure is on pay; part is on control; part is on boredom/frustration with doing the same thing, especially if you’re doing the same thing and think there are bozos higher up in the company making bad calls.
I’ve often said that once I have a totally secure retirement, that the ideal job from a happiness standpoint for me is a principal (or maybe even one step lower) software engineer role somewhere. I don’t want to just travel and certainly not just golf and watch TV.
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#33Come 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 :)
I would love to work at google. I am an older coder and founder but I doubt highly I could pass the tests to even get an interview. :(
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#34I'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,…
I’m glad you have time for this! I’m 37 and haven’t had time for personal tech projects in years; family, home ownership and life have all gotten in the way. I’m on the management side (senior director equivalent), but I do make more than any of my engineers and I probably spend 50% less time working. I do a mix of people management, architecture design and executive communication, but it’s 95% stuff that falls into “important but not urgent” so I delegate most of what I can.
I don’t get the satisfaction of being happy with what I made, but the quarterly bonuses and stock grants make me ok with that :) Management is a great 9-5 job if you do it right, and if you’re a people person it’s super easy. Lots of potential career growth if you’re willing to put in the face time and play politics; your knowledge is less important than your style the further up you go.
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#35I, thankfully, ran into this problem when I was 28 and I'll just let you know my journey. The thing that I realized about my career is that the _people_ I was working with where "dead end people." They basically followed what society was telling them to do. If Google/Facebook/Redhat engineers invented some tech (today Google/Amazon/Microsoft), our team was just re-implementing it 5-10 years later. When I realized it was the people I had a decision to make — Try and change the people I work with or move myself to an area where people were still excited about the future.
I moved to Silicon Valley and have never looked back.
I've been programming since I was in high school (started on TI-81 in 1996), I'll be 40 this year and I still LOVE LOVE programming. BUT the only reason I do love it is because I've reached a level of mastery where I pretty much get to choose what projects I work on and the _people_ I work with. Steve Jobs said something back in the 90's that Ive heard other say about the variance in skills of developers vs other jobs[1].
You're burned out because you're working with low quality people and it's way easier to move yourself to an ecosystem where people are more excited about the future than it is to change your peers. (P. T. Barnum also says something similar to this in Art Of Money Getting, published in 1880 [2])
Also, contrarian advice — almost every one of my friends has switched to a manager track. I'm currently in the process of building my own company and most of them can't provide any value at this early stage. They don't read anything on how to become effective managers, they aren't socializing in any communities, they aren't attending any conferences on people management, not reading any books as life long learners, they say things like "I'm technical" and "I know enough to be dangerous", but they can't materially contribute to helping me build my product outside of testing and light UI feedback.
So my two things would be:
1. Move to a better environment (Doesn't have to be SV but some place where there is a community passionate about things you are).
2. If you're going to eject out of coding, eject to an owner, not to an employee.
[2] - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm#link2...
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#36> Maybe company will prefer younger coders to hire and I will not be able to find a job anymore?
32 here, but most of my professional circle is my age or older.
Programming is not Logan's Run and outside of maybe bold and snappy SV startups companies cannot afford to sneer at experienced professionals wanting to join - not in the current market at least.
My advice would be to talk to your superiors about this - perhaps they would be willing to put you into a coding role? If not, you can start sending out resumes and having interviews - it's not like you have to be jobless to make time for that.
Perhaps you have friends from previous college/pervious companies, who could help?
My experience is that switching roles is generally hard and will take time - you'll need to take that into account.
But it's not impossible and I have anecdata to support it.
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#37It's curious that modern life has brought this sort of angst.
I mean, long ago you would work in farming or as a blacksmith all your life and that would be it.
With such constant change nowadays, you can't help but feel that you are always on a tightrope. Late capitalism has made everyone expendable; you have to prove yourself constantly.
Also, inequality takes away some of your freedom. Sometimes I wish I could take some time off from IT and do something simpler like wait tables or walk dogs. But it just is not possible to take such a huge pay cut.
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#38I feel like we are seeing a post like this every week. Contrary to sentiment here, writing CRUD apps for FANG is indeed not the dream and a path of fulfillment.
It is a way to a stack of money. Which may not give you fulfillment but it does you options.
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#39Many times over, I have been working in companies where they had no other option but to call back coders from retirement to ensure migration and operational activities.
There are plenty of aging systems requiring coding skills and experience freshmen can't deliver.
Tech can be a lifetime career for sure, you only need to figure out where the demand is and navigate it...
Re: Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?
#40I'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,…
I’m glad you have time for this! I’m 37 and haven’t had time for personal tech projects in years; family, home ownership and life have all gotten in the way. I’m on the management side (senior director equivalent), but I do make more than any of my engineers and I probably spend 50% less time working. I do a mix of people management, architecture design and executive communication, but it’s 95% stuff that falls into…
Are you openly bragging about making more money while working half as much as the people you are supposed to be responsible for?
I would be embarrassed to write that.