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Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

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Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#1
(Throwaway for hopefully obvious reasons) I’m a software developer (web, fullstack) that’s been in the industry for about 10 years now and I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t care about advancing my career. My current title is Senior Software Engineer and, if I had it my way, I would be happy to keep that title for the rest of my career. I tried being a manager for a bit and hated it, and, in a similar fashion, the increased responsibility and scope of going down the road of Staff+ engineer holds no interest to me.

My only issue is that my current job has a very strong “up or out” mentality that I’m starting to push up against. And most other places I’ve worked at or talk about with friends seem to have similar attitudes toward career progression. I just want to do my job well, learn new things, and contribute to the businesses success. I don’t want to have to try and figure out with my manager what projects I should work on to make myself look good and be able to work my way up the ladder.

Has anyone worked somewhere that they felt they could just do their job without worrying about the career advancement aspect? I’ve contracted a bit and know that this would align well with this goal, but I enjoy having health insurance and not having to scrounge for work all the time.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#3
One option is to find a job that has legacy work. A good place to look is a non-tech company. IE: a company that might use tech to run the business (which you will support), but tech isn't their main product. These companies tend be using older software because they aren't really required to have the latest and greatest.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#4
Becoming old is one solution. Less expectation from older folks to move up if they are happy where they are. But as you know, it's a journey to get there :)

A more practical solution as people mentioned here, is staying away from big tech / corporate America.

Re: Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

#5

Personally working in smaller companies, startups (the scene probably ends somehow in 1-3 years) and academic organizations (professors have a career path, staff not) I find that no advancement is a norm.

Startups though, ugh. Maybe tomorrow you will end up a millionaire with stock, or you're eating catfood and hoping the grocery bill difference will be enough to pay the mortgage next month while you desperately look for a job in the worst economy since 2008. If there's an in-between, I've never seen it personally.
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