The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
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The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
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Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#2I made a fairly popular reddit post recently on how I down-leveled my career in recent years. Each time I down-level, I get a raise in salary -- it's pretty great.
What that permitted me to learn about myself is that - at the end of the day - I just like solving interesting and challenging problems, working with colleagues as equals, and creating products and solutions that I'm proud of. I have utterly no interest any more in climbing any sorts of ladders, or "chasing" a role, position, or title because I think that'll somehow be the road to riches. Having autonomy, the flexibility to work when I'm productive and inspired (and to not work when not), and interesting/meaningful work is infinitely more important than role or salary. I also feel like I'm not the first person to come to this conclusion.
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#3The title rollercoaster was a great opportunity to disassociate my worth from my title. My last three jobs went something like this: started as Senior Engineer -> left as a Director; started as Manager -> left as Senior Manager; started as Manager -> left as Manager.
As just about everyone I started off caring about titles. As I moved up company tiers, my compensation was significantly higher each time, despite lower title. Downlevel in title also doesn't always mean downlevel in responsibilities - the scope of my Director role at a lifestyle business was the same as the Manager scope at a fast-growing startup. The next "step down" was a true downlevel, but such is the price you pay with FAANG. It's an opportunity to perform with lower expectations at a higher compensation.
In other words, it's a multidimensional rollercoaster and it's not recommended to be always focused on a single dimension (title).
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#4I made a fairly popular reddit post recently on how I down-leveled my career in recent years. Each time I down-level, I get a raise in salary -- it's pretty great. What that permitted me to learn about myself is that - at the end of the day - I just like solving interesting and challenging problems, working with colleagues as equals, and creating products and solutions that I'm proud of. I have utterly no interest an…
A link to the reddit post would benefit an audience like me
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#5I got down leveled when I moved to big tech.
Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much.
I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle.
It’s been very strange to see the fruits of my labor benefit the org while feeling totally unrecognized outside of my team.
Now dealing with massive burn out for the first time in my career. Not sure what to do. I make sure to put out fires and do the bare minimum to keep up the product momentum, but I have no love for the org and just don’t think I’m cut out for the politics games.
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#6Another kind of down-leveling is switching from IC to Manager and back. This doesn’t necessarily mean a pay decrease but I’ve gone back and forth multiple times in my career and so have several of my peers. E.g One of the senior engineers at my company was a VP Engineering at a previous job
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#7The thing that many folks don't understand is that it's not that "Titles don't matter", it's that "Titles don't matter when compared across companies". There's not a universal definition of say, "senior software engineer", so comparing titles across companies will always be an apples/oranges exercise.
Titles do matter, but only when in the proper context.
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#8I think the key takeaway is to never believe when someone says "Don't worry, you'll get promoted in no time".
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#9I made a fairly popular reddit post recently on how I down-leveled my career in recent years. Each time I down-level, I get a raise in salary -- it's pretty great. What that permitted me to learn about myself is that - at the end of the day - I just like solving interesting and challenging problems, working with colleagues as equals, and creating products and solutions that I'm proud of. I have utterly no interest an…
I mean at the end of the day the title is only to feed your own ego. At family gathering nobody's gonna ask you why you were Principal and now you're Staff. I find no difference between being called a "Director" or a "Manager", because the title alone tells me absolutely nothing
Reminds me of American Psycho, where everybody is a damn Vice President (reflective of the time)
Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
#10When I see "senior" in front of any job title, I generally ignore it as essentially meaningless (and I've been a "senior" for about 20 years now). Unless a job title and description comes with actual managerial responsibilities (so director, VP, etc.), it doesn't seem to correlate in any way with pay, respect, job security or any real say in priorities.