121–130 of 235 posts
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
I’ve been reviewing a lot of career path documents recently for different engineering orgs, and every one is fairly uniform in that you either progress into management, team leadership, or architecture (or some blend of the three). If not, you’ll stagnate at a pretty high level, but stagnate none the less. I’ve been noodling on this for a while, and I think maybe a fourth track at a lot of organizations should be spe…
A better fourth path is to transition to running your own business. You still get to write the code, and you remove the salary cap. People sweat about all the “Business Stuff” you have to do in addition, but I find it’s not really any more of your day than the normal boring admin stuff of being a rank and file developer. Certainly less than being a manager at a bigco. It also does away with ageism concerns.
We havent had anyone get promoted to this level, but several are close.
I actually enjoy management even when it means more administration at sacrifice to writing code. What I don't like is when I am mentoring a junior on best practices or techniques to increase their performance or the performance of their code and they get defensive to the point of becoming an insubordinate ass. I understand there is a lot of defensiveness in development, but in the corporate world I expect everyone to…
I’ve been reviewing a lot of career path documents recently for different engineering orgs, and every one is fairly uniform in that you either progress into management, team leadership, or architecture (or some blend of the three). If not, you’ll stagnate at a pretty high level, but stagnate none the less. I’ve been noodling on this for a while, and I think maybe a fourth track at a lot of organizations should be spe…
A better fourth path is to transition to running your own business. You still get to write the code, and you remove the salary cap. People sweat about all the “Business Stuff” you have to do in addition, but I find it’s not really any more of your day than the normal boring admin stuff of being a rank and file developer. Certainly less than being a manager at a bigco. It also does away with ageism concerns.
I go to bed every night not worrying about whether my company remains sustainable. If they don’t, as long as it is a microeconomic issue (company failed) and not a macroeconomic issue (economy is in the toilet), I reach out to my network and get another job relatively quickly.
The same amount of money appears in my account every other week whether I go on vacation, call in sick, etc.
And I’m 45. Ageism is way overblown if you keep your skills current with the market and your network strong.
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
I’ve been reviewing a lot of career path documents recently for different engineering orgs, and every one is fairly uniform in that you either progress into management, team leadership, or architecture (or some blend of the three). If not, you’ll stagnate at a pretty high level, but stagnate none the less. I’ve been noodling on this for a while, and I think maybe a fourth track at a lot of organizations should be spe…
A better fourth path is to transition to running your own business. You still get to write the code, and you remove the salary cap. People sweat about all the “Business Stuff” you have to do in addition, but I find it’s not really any more of your day than the normal boring admin stuff of being a rank and file developer. Certainly less than being a manager at a bigco. It also does away with ageism concerns.
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then what is the point? Are you just there to gather your paycheck? I mean, to an extend, yes. But you need to be able to excert some positive effect.
big companies do not innovate. (counter examples welcome!) unless you’re in a 1-20 person startup, your impact is -5% to +5% as a division. Essentially you’re stroking egos: yours or management’s. best to choose the latter and try your hand at changing the world in after-work projects.
Well at least innovate and survive in the mass market.