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

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

#41

Post by matthewmacleod »

Graffur wrote: post #31

> recruitment, management, strategy, etc This is all objectively easier and less skillful than your co-workers work. For example, if you recruit wrong.. the company will just fire all those people (as demonstrated by X number of companies in recent months). There will likely be no short term or long term repercussion for you unless you're one of the people fired. For strategy, if you strategize wrong it is probably c…

It’s not “objectively” anything of the sort and this comes across as fairly rude and dismissive.

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

#42

Post by iancmceachern »

Great, I took a bit of a pay cut and went from senior manager with 50 reports to being a IC/manager mix in a very small team. I joined a much better team with great culture, a great product and real momentum. It was the right choice.

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

#43

Post by david-gpu »

I quit by SWE job last year to take care of my kids and I'm happier as a result.

If I were to return to the work force, I would prioritize enjoying the job: friendly teammates, no/short commute, interesting problems to solve, no ethical dilemmas about how my work would be used.

Life is short and I doubt in my deathbed I will be thinking about all the money I didn't make.

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

#44

Post by romanhn »

It's a matter of perspective. I have 20 yoe, looking at titles alone, all of my job switches in the past 10+ years have been "steps down": director to manager, senior manager to manager, manager to consultant. The first two, however, resulted in greater compensation, not less (lifestyle business to startup to FAANG). The last one was a move towards work-life balance and flexibility. Overall, no regrets about my choices. It's a funky career path, but I'm happy where I ended up.

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

#45

Post by readonthegoapp »

i did this once and it literally almost killed me from the added stress of the lower-level job. i think it just so happened that the 'easy' job i took was insane stressful, but my general experience is that lower-level grunt jobs have always been more stressful to me in the 'bad' ways, tho i didn't realize it at the time i took the lower-level job.

good stress / good for you ('having' to make decisions, being responsible for things, etc.) vs. bad stress / bad for you (getting told what to do, etc.).

getting back to being a manager-type again was a thing - i guess it added a small hurdle - but was not a big deal on the whole.

one data point.

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

#46

Post by [deleted] »

Dowwie wrote: post #20

Product management isn't an upgrade from software engineering. You thought it was until you experienced it yourself. That was your downgrade. I went through that experience and realized PM is a necessary yet insufficient role for someone who has built, and enjoys building software. However, not all software is valued the same. Greenfield work is so much fun, creating something from first principles and intuition, bla…

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by bank6062 »

Yes. Went from Senior leadership back to IC. Life is so much easier for me. I'm doing more coding, solving harder problems and less "people management".

But the company is also a big factor. Previous job was a rotating door. New job has a solid culture.

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

#48

Post by psim1 »

About 7 years ago I got fed up with the company (not the team I was leading) and moved to another company in an IC role. I enjoyed it for a few months and soon realized how much less influence I had as an IC. So I regretted the move. For me there was a ton of value in being able to direct, empower, and encourage the team; allow them to work without distraction; and be part of leadership meetings where bigger decisions were made. I am trying to get back into that kind of role now.

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

#49

Post by amerkhalid »

Senior PM, are you project manager or product manager? Either way, those roles are considered individual contributors role and pay scale is also pretty similar to dev salaries. However, these roles do provide easier transition to true management roles.

At my previous mega company, it was pretty common for people to move up and down the corporate ladder. My company encouraged it and it never affected anyone negatively.

I personally went to from team lead to senior dev role. Team lead is also considered IC/manager-in-training role. I was getting overwhelmed with meetings and losing my programming skills. So far I am really enjoying the new "lower" role, and plan on staying at this level for foreseeable future.

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