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A career ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career ending mistake

#151

Post by Joeri »

tdumitrescu wrote: post #27

Feels like the "senior IC" role described in this article corresponds mainly to today's "3-5 years of experience 'senior' engineer" roles. The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. It's not the same as management, but it's inevitably more meetings and evang…

The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article.

This is my struggle. After about five years of head down all day programming I started to get more of a tech lead role, and the hours spent on explaining the work instead of doing the work crept up. I managed to avoid the management track by actively pushing back when pushed that way, but I eventually got the architect title instead, and now I can go months writing nothing but emails and spec documents before I manage to find a good enough excuse to write code. The upside is that I decide a lot of things, which as a pure coder I did a lot less. The downside is that I really wish I spent more time writing code.

Sometimes I think about going indie and building and selling my own product, but anything I can think of seems to involve a lot of time spent doing other business activities than coding, and that just does not appeal.

Re: A career ending mistake

#152

Post by irrational »

> If you love what you're doing now and don't ever want to change jobs, great: you've reached the end of your career, even if it plays out over many decades.

This is me. I have zero inclination to be anything other than an individual contributor developer. I abhor meetings and don’t want to manage people. It actually took me a long time to convince the higher ups at my company that I have no interest in moving into management. I figure I have 15-20 years left in my career. If I can just keep learning new skills/technologies and getting better at what I do for the remainder of that time, I would be very happy.

Re: A career ending mistake

#153

Post by granshaw »

jacobr1 wrote: post #76
Supernaut wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and I hope that the three options presented by this author do not in fact constitute ineluctable destiny, because frankly, none of them appeal to me. I don't want to hustle for business and I'm not sufficiently obsessed with my work to become a "senior individual contributor". I've done some management in the past and I don't want to do it again, because humans are a pain in the ass. I'd like to simply contin…

> Can that not be arranged? It can, and some companies are fine with that. The challenge is that even with companies that find that arrangement acceptable, many of them aren't willing to pay more for the relevant experience. They want you to be in some kind of higher leverage role. So either you take less pay, get pushed into more responsibility, or you get lucky with a really good company (and that company manages t…

Become a contractor. You’ll pretty much be coding all the time. Don’t get scared by the business-management side, you can pick it up pretty quickly and then it doesn’t take up all that much time

Re: A career ending mistake

#154

Post by asdfman123 »

slfnflctd wrote: post #105
giantg2 wrote: post #5

"It's not surprising, then, that many of us find ourselves in less than fully satisfying jobs, with doubtful or non-existent prospects for advancement." Very true. I can't wait for my career to be over. I don't think I'll ever find the position where I feel I belong, so I'll just be miserable anywhere now that I know how broken the system really is.

> don't think I'll ever find the position where I feel I belong [...] now that I know how broken the system really is Some people are chalking this up to depression, which is possibly part of it, but honestly I think this is simply the reality of a former idealist coming to grips with the big picture. You can't help but recognize that passion will come & go and it's all castles made of sand in the end. Whatever is mo…

Well, the difference between someone who is mentally healthy and someone who is depressed is this (and friends, I've been both):

Someone who is mentally healthy realizes the world is imperfect and what they're doing is isn't working, but then takes that knowledge and builds upon it. Maybe they change careers, or maybe they lower their expectations for their job and focus on other meaningful things.

Someone who is depressed never gets out of the "this is awful" rut.

Again, nothing but sympathy for the depressed, but if you're unhappy you should try to find a way to redirect that energy if you have the strength to do so.

Re: A career ending mistake

#155

Post by vinceguidry »

reaperducer wrote: post #139
Jaruzel wrote: post #118

I hate my job. I don't know how I got here. Like many I started out in small scale IT just as desktop computers were becoming a thing. I transitioned from mainframe support to desktop support, from there I worked through several desktop support roles, wishing I was server support but never managing to get there... over time I became a desktop architect, and then infrastructure architect, and now well.... I just don't…

I have meetings, I write documents. I offer sage advice on best practice. That's it. It's not IT anymore, it's just make-work. My careers have followed a similar route. When I graduated from college, I took a particular job because I didn't want to sit in an office all day. But as I got better at that job, my work increasingly became telling other people how to do the work, and ten years later I ended up in the offic…

> There seems to be something about the business world that removes people from the jobs they're good at.

There's not much business value in just having one person be really good at something. It doesn't scale. The state of coding and information technology means you can't maintain exponential or even logarithmic scaling of your own abilities to produce business value. At some point, the only real thing left to do is to do your best to produce more people who can do what you do. 10 people that are 15% as good as you will outproduce you.

Re: A career ending mistake

#156

Post by asdfman123 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #118

I hate my job. I don't know how I got here. Like many I started out in small scale IT just as desktop computers were becoming a thing. I transitioned from mainframe support to desktop support, from there I worked through several desktop support roles, wishing I was server support but never managing to get there... over time I became a desktop architect, and then infrastructure architect, and now well.... I just don't…

Sounds like you really want to be a mid-career IC. I think you should do your best to change jobs until you find what you're looking for, even if it means a pay cut.

Not all changes have to be dramatic: you don't have to upend your life. Maybe just see what things are like at a new company?

Re: A career ending mistake

#157

Post by deweywsu »

asdfman123 wrote: post #144
ebiester wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it seems to lump tech lead, staff-level individual contributor not leading a team, and architect-level positions that have no direct reports. When I speak about career options to people I lead, I say there is a senior level plateau. At that point, you have to be more intentional about growth. If you want to stay in the field, and you want to progress past senior developer (staying a core contributor is an option!…

Staying a productive IC your whole career is fairly straightforward: I really think it comes down to never "coasting" and always being open to learning new things. The problem is a lot of older people seem to believe that once they get to a certain point, they're entitled a position and respect. Is it a wonder why younger people, who might be more up-to-date than them, don't want to work with them? The trick is to ne…

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Re: A career ending mistake

#158

Post by ttiurani »

Tip to the privileged[1]: find out how low you can drop your monthly spend – what are all the things you could still relatively comfortably live without? I'm now very happy living on my savings, spending super little per month, and it has opened up so many wildly different career paths. A bonus is that my ecological footprint is also very small (relative to my country at least), which has had a very positive effect mentally.

[1] Obviously if you already are at the limit, or living in a society without safety nets, this is not an option.

Re: A career ending mistake

#159

Post by Jemaclus »

Joeri wrote: post #151
tdumitrescu wrote: post #27

Feels like the "senior IC" role described in this article corresponds mainly to today's "3-5 years of experience 'senior' engineer" roles. The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. It's not the same as management, but it's inevitably more meetings and evang…

The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. This is my struggle. After about five years of head down all day programming I started to get more of a tech lead role, and the hours spent on explaining the work instead of doing the work crept up. I managed to avo…

I sympathize. I had a similar career trajectory, but wound up going into management (I like it though) once I hit the principal level.

Don't underestimate the power of communication though. It would be well worth your time to have a frank conversation with your boss about what it is that you're interested in doing (ie, writing more code), and seeing if there's an opportunity to be more hands-on with the code. If there isn't at your company, then start interviewing with new companies and be explicit about what it is that you want to do.

Wishing you the best of luck with this. I know how frustrating it can be to not be able to write code as much as you want...

Re: A career ending mistake

#160

Post by AlbertCory »

hinkley wrote: post #98
AlbertCory wrote: post #88

I came to realize the wisdom of a quote from a truly bad movie: “Everything ends badly, otherwise, it wouldn’t end.” ---Bryan Flanagan from “Cocktail”. [1] I had to look that up as part of my due diligence for this post. The more you know. Occasionally a sports career ends with hitting a homer in Game Seven of the World Series (David Ross of the 2016 Cubs). Most of the time, not. You want to have the sweet we'll-stil…

The fact that things end is why you should enjoy the good times when you have them. If you're going to live forever, you can always see that sunset tomorrow, or next year, or a century from now. No particular value in doing it today.

Yep. Walking or playing with my wonderful doggie, I think often "someday I won't be able to do this."
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