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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?

#51

Post by asien »

Hey iamcirou,

I’ll be honest , you’re analysis is perfectly right.

This is just my opinion , but I think the industry has evolved from what is was 20 years ago.

With the rise of social platform , access to knowledge has become universal.

Today anyone can proclaim themself an « expert » on any topic. Trust me on this , I have seen people telling me they knew about something and when you scratch the surface you realize they know very little... Add to this the widespread of IT Trainings everywhere and you have made « IT consulting / Software Dev » become something trivial...

While someone who was a consultant 20 years ago was worth a lot for his own company and valued by his own peers/superior/customer his now considered as not much than a cell inside a spreadsheet or a unit of work for a given task...

There is no surprise there and I think it’s not even specific to you or consulting. It’s the same everywhere if you are working in large business ( Fortune 500 / SV Unicorn / Big Fours ...)

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

#52

Post by mulmboy »

forinti wrote: post #37

It'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…

Plenty of people live on the wage from waiting tables or walking dogs. Of course it's possible for you - it's just a lifestyle change.

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

#53

Post by gonzo41 »

asdev wrote: post #43
gonzo41 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a way to a stack of money. Which may not give you fulfillment but it does you options.

of course it's a way and it pays well. but once you've become debt free and have some savings in the bank, it loses it's appeal exponentially. this leads to burn out, lack of motivation, people questioning their career choices/decisions

I think I've had the benefit of having had very labour intensive jobs in my past. Working in an office, or better at home is a real treat. It does get to me sometime. But I can think back to literally digging ditches landscaping and I think to mysef I can totally handle this a little while longer.

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

#56

Post by nsb1 »

steve_taylor wrote: post #31

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.

Be careful though - this is the path I took, and it still comes with trade-offs. I started out as a developer and made the transition to management, where I now oversee a mid-size engineering department (~100 people). I never get to even look at code any more - there's just no time. Off hours I get to do what I want of course, but there are real life things competing for my time there. Unless you're single with no kids and no house to maintain, there will always be a list of stuff that needs to get done, and then you have to choose again. When I actually get a couple hours to myself to do some project coding, it's glorious, but it doesn't happen very often.

One piece of advice I can give is that if you do decide to go down the management path, own that decision and understand what it means. I spent a number of years trying to keep a foot in the code, and it was exhausting because I never had the blocks of time necessary to produce good output, and as a result, both my code and my management duties suffered. Learning to let go was very difficult, at least for me, but when I did, it was better for me and everyone I was managing. My job was supposed to be about making sure other people could do theirs, and as soon as I understood that, I was able to focus my attention properly.

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

#57

Post by eurekin »

tafox wrote: post #40
wayoutthere wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To grandparent's defense - I find management genuinely essential and quite impactful.

It's a rare occurrence that developers on their own can communicate well with any kind of stakeholder. It might be anecdotal, but I find a high correlation between best technical and worse communication skills. I've seen people, who might be seen as typical 10x developers, cause they were so productive, be extremely bad with speaking about development in general. I've seen product owners literally gnashing their teeth in anger, but holding it up, since the guy really delivers - despite the bad "style".

Also, seeing already quite a fair share of stakeholder meetings... The part about style couldn't be closer to the truth. The non-technical people act, as if they didn't hear "99% percentile uptime is so so" or anything similar - at all! What they do hear instead are the speaker's emotions. They want to feel secure and good about going forward.

I've seen big budget moves based mostly on that: how well the project was sold to them. Technical merits were irrelevant. Whole teams disbanded, despite being quite productive, because someone got management excited about the new thing (also completely inapplicable to the problem at hand, but with good marketing: e.g. AI, cloud)

I find the grandparent just frank. It aligns pretty well with my anecdotal experience. I also think managers should be well compensated, since so much is at stakes (whole team, departments).

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

#58

Post by derwiki »

tilolebo wrote: post #42

There are companies out there who value the experience of senior software engineers (and I mean real seniority, not the job title that you update to senior after 3 years in the field). Such companies will have a career ladder up to Principal or Distinguished engineer. You will have to share your knowledge, of course, but without having to give up coding and do people management, if you don't want that. I'm 39, happy…

Principal (even many Staff roles) at my company is reduced coding and many have direct reports, so YMMV. To stay coding, stay “senior” level.

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

#59

Post by endymi0n »

Welcome to the paradoxical dichotomy in IT: In order to be a top notch (line/product/project) manager, you need to have relevant experience in engineering itself. Also, the higher value for any company is engineers that are great at multiplying themselves by keeping a whole team aligned with the organization's goals.

But in order to be a great engineer, you need have lots of curiosity and an affinity to tinkering, none of which you'll get higher up. And on top of that, engineering expertise has a half life of just a few years nowadays, so engineering managers without at least some hands-on exposure to recent technology get less valuable over time.

One of the better approaches I've seen is that some of the best people I've ever worked with, they've jumped back and forth between manager and engineer multiple times in their career (even Bill gates did, famously).

The key here is to step up while stepping down: Go to a lower level position — but in a smaller and better org with a better culture and build something up from scratch. That way of spiral learning lets you get better as a manager as well as an engineer, when you miss the benefits of the other side too much, just change it every few years. It's the path I've chosen myself as well.

The second path is side projects. I have kids and little time for that right now, but the other threads are covering that topic a whole lot better.

The third path to stay sharp is doing some prototypes, tracer bullets and related stuff yourself every once in a while. I enjoy that as well. Just don't do the mistake of putting yourself in the critical path ever or neglecting your core duties over tinkering.

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

#60

Post by derwiki »

asdev wrote: post #43
gonzo41 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a way to a stack of money. Which may not give you fulfillment but it does you options.

of course it's a way and it pays well. but once you've become debt free and have some savings in the bank, it loses it's appeal exponentially. this leads to burn out, lack of motivation, people questioning their career choices/decisions

I agree that it loses its value exponentially, but not the appeal.
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