Ask HN: Have you made a career move “down” on purpose, and how has it been?

Background: I work as a senior PM in a big tech company. The pay, without being out of line with the market, is more than I ever thought I'd make. I owned my house outright at age 40, I go out to eat whenever I feel like it, I get to travel a few times a year. I'm pretty happy about my life day to day.

But then I still think of my job as challenging and sometimes stressful. I look at some of my lower level engineering peers that are "stuck" in their careers (5+ years at the same level, no management responsibility), and honestly I feel like they have a pretty blissful life. Maybe I'm idealizing, but I feel like they can just think about how to build something, get it built, and move to the next thing. Not have to deal with recruitment, management, strategy, etc. Show up and fix the bugs.

I used to be a SWE and have kept my skills current, so I'm considering a move back and down from senior strategy and product work back to engineering IC work. This would likely cut my pay in half, so I'd have to do away with some luxuries, but I feel I could manage it financially.

Yet I also have a strong instinct against doing this, because it feels like self sabotage according to the standard definitions of a career. I worry about having regrets and endangering my family's financial safety.

Any folks who've gone through this and want to share their advice?

With this framing, it can turn your life into a disaster.

Up to that point, I was nodding to every sentence you wrote. But not to this, no. When I demoted myself in my time, which ended very well, I had a different framing (or, a different gut feeling). My instinct was that I'm selling my well-being for much much too low a price and that, this time, there is a greener pasture.

I was noticing the money flow and how I was enabling a business owner, a very concrete physical person, to profit immensely. You can call it envy, I'd say I've learned that I can enter and leave any business transaction as I please.

The career path is just smoke and mirrors.

The ownership shenanigans is just smoke and mirrors. It doesn't matter that the ownership is split into million shares, because in the end of the chain the wealth (from many companies) does converge to an individual. Look through these schemes. As a thought experiment, think about that individual on a hard day, imagine how you've just made "him" 2 million with your sacrifice and you will get 20 grand bonus.

I'm not saying to go to the streets and loot the businesses, I'm saying you need to see your transaction and your options clearly, without distractions. Talk to your family in this framing as well.

My advice would be to think of the reasons why you wanted to move up from SWE into various roles leading to the Senior PM role you have now. Were you interested in those roles to be someone in the room making decisions, thinking you would do a better job than others? Maybe you were attracted to the strategy aspects? Maybe it was coaching people and see them grow? Maybe it was 100% pure cash grab?

Blissfully building something and moving to the next thing is idealizing a software engineer's day to day. There is tech debt and the struggle of trying to convince people in your current role the importance, legacy code, legacy frameworks/methodologies, constantly having to learn the new shiny thing to stay relevant, dealing with many different engineer personalities, constantly being asked to deliver stuff in what is perceived as limited timeline, etc.