A career-ending mistake
bitfieldconsulting.com
A career-ending mistake
1–10 of 211 posts
Re: A career-ending mistake
#2This approach to careers fails to take into account that we inherently change as people.
In periods of ones life other things matters - maybe it is taking an education, starting a family, etc.
Other periods work matter.
It should be entirely fine to switch it on and off and change tracks throughout life - and in my view it seems like it is!
To reach a peak it takes roughly 10 years, but these 10 years can be started at 40 when your kids does not wear diapers anymore.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#3It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on.
At Stream a lead is 80% technical, a director roughly 50% sometimes more. And even VPs and up are still somewhat technical.
I think the idea of management without technical excellence track is just misguided. Small teams, technical excellence, and leaders who can do the work is the right way.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#4It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on. At Stream a lead is 80% technical, a director roughly 50% sometimes more. And even VPs and up are still somewhat technical. I think the idea of management without technical excellence track is just misguided. Small teams, technical excellence,…
> It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on.
I‘ve seen bad companies where it is true, but in good companies typically not true. Look for example Peter Norvig, 100% hands on technical type, but in a high management position.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#5I have found that I can't actually plan with much certainty, and, quite often, the very worst thing that can happen, is that Everything Goes As Planned.
I have found utility in "overengineering" my life. Not just the tech I do, but in most things, and creating small, robust, high-Quality, and adaptable structures. Things that can be rearranged, and repurposed, when (not "if") the context/paradigm changes.
I started maxing out my retirement in 1990, and that's a good thing, because, in 2017, when I finally started looking for work, I was surprised (and disgusted) to find that no one wants to hire us olds. I wasn't planning to retire, but I wasn't consulted by Reality.
In my work, I have found utility in writing in modular fashion, and making every module as high-Quality as possible. I've had to toss quite a few, and had to do substantial refactoring on some, but, for the most part, they have served me very well, and continue to do so, to this day.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#6This article assumes a lot more self-determinism than is available in practice to most people.
Beyond that many of us have been running on fumes for years, I can't lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family, so I can up-skill for a new variation on the same career with ultimately the same bull.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#7It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on. At Stream a lead is 80% technical, a director roughly 50% sometimes more. And even VPs and up are still somewhat technical. I think the idea of management without technical excellence track is just misguided. Small teams, technical excellence,…
there is a difference between "technical" and "writing code every day".
c-levels, VPs, and directors can be very technical, but rarely write code. team leads definitely do, though it may be only 3 days a week, and rest is org/planning/pr reviews.
only at small companies does the CTO write code. our cto has written plenty of deep code back in the day that enabled the business to scale to its current size.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#8I have found that I can't actually plan with much certainty, and, quite often, the very worst thing that can happen, is that Everything Goes As Planned. I have found utility in "overengineering" my life. Not just the tech I do, but in most things, and creating small, robust, high-Quality, and adaptable structures. Things that can be rearranged, and repurposed, when (not "if") the context/paradigm changes. I started m…
In a similar fashion, I try to address all sorts of corner cases in my code, to the point of being called obsessive by some colleagues - but it definitely helped a few times with really stubborn and obscure bugs.
An extra log line here or there, or an e-mail sent to the admin in weird situations, goes a long way - provided that you don't generate many false positives, because no one pays attention to a program that cries "binary wolf" too often.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#9I prefer the journey. I don’t want to “be” independent, I want to “become” independent. The former is winning the lottery, the latter is a long and difficult path.
Re: A career-ending mistake
#10As someone who has fallen into this trap myself, I feel like many people tend to just go with the flow and then end up in a place they don't like doing work they don't enjoy, with no idea how to get out. This has inspired me to approach my manager about possibly stepping down from my role into a more IC role, or possibly swapping jobs, as I realized a Senior IC is where I want to be