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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?

#51

Post by trynewideas »

> 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.

Before you do anything, talk to these engineers at length and in depth to confirm whether your assumptions are true. They might not "just think about how to build something, get it built, and move to the next thing".

When I applied for an internal transfer from a senior non-technical role where I was unhappy to a less-senior technical role I had some prior experience with, I talked to members of the team I'd be joining to get a better idea of how they felt on the team and not just the work they had to do. The team I was on was broadly unhappy, which was driving my desire to move, and I wanted to join a team that had at least some camaraderie in the face of the work they had to do.

It would've been easy to assume that was the case, and talking to the team members confirmed it. It also gave me insight into the kinds of gaps and problems they did have that prevented them from doing the kind work I wanted to do with them, and where I could fit in to help solve those problems. It helped justify the move for myself, for the company, and for both the team I was joining and the team I was leaving.

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

#52

Post by apohn »

In the last 5 years I've moved from Data Science Manager to Principal (IC role, but basically the external facing technical lead of the team) and now Senior. When I add up all the positives and negatives at work and at home, I think I'm the most content I've been in a long time.

One piece of advice I can give is to make a list of concrete things that are making you think about becoming an IC. And by concrete I don't mean just a word like "Stress." List out the things that are causing that (e.g. Unpredictable rushed deadlines). If it's useful, create a mental Venn diagram of what overlaps and pull out some larger themes. From the list, pick the top 2 - 3 and ask yourself if you are really going to get that as an IC.

Example: For me, one thing that was causing me an immense amount of stress was a highly unpredictable schedule - last minute meetings, fires, people with no ability to prioritize, etc. At the top of my list was being able control my schedule to a reasonable degree. IME that's really hard to do as a Manager or even a Lead/Principal, so it made sense to me to move down to Senior and find a job that allowed for that.

That being said, there are plenty of IC jobs where you sit in pointless meetings all day and get called into meetings at the last minute. It's not like moving down is a guarantee of anything, so it's important to really identify if moving down is going to get you what want. HN has plenty of anecdotes of crappy IC jobs.

As far as pay, I took a small haircut from Manager -> Principal and then a slightly bigger haircut from Principal -> Senior. My spouse works so we still have more than enough to pay bills, meet retirement goals, and have something left over for other stuff. I'm not paid even close to what FAANG people are making, but I suspect lots of people I work with on the business side of things would love to be in my salary band.

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

#53

Post by davidschof »

> 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.

I moved from Engineering Manager "down" to Senior Engineer 15 months ago. I had pretty much the same perception as this.

I still do. My life is blissful now. Go for it!

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

#54

Post by giantg2 »

I haven't moved up in about 8 years as a midlevel. It is far from blissful. There's tons of pressure to do better no matter what. And of course no real reward compared to the people making 150% what I do because they play the politics.

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

#55

Post by 800xl »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #36

I haven’t moved down, but boy do I miss working in retail. No stress. My evenings are my own. If my boss sucks, I can quit and go across the street for a new job. Part time is an option. Lots of fun people. Work with my hands. Some minor exercise. Not sitting all day getting rsi inevitably one day Doesn’t pay enough to retire though. Can’t even afford the dentist on that income

I also miss some aspects of retail. Life was easy when all I had to do was show up and stock the shelves. Co-workers were a lot easier to talk to and make friends with. I actually had pretty good insurance for about $20 a week too (this was 15+ years ago).

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

#56

Post by kubanczyk »

someguydave wrote: post #21
kubanczyk wrote: post #5

> I also have a strong instinct against doing this, because it feels like self sabotage 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 a…

The problem with this thinking is that an effective engineer in a profitable company is going to make someone alot of money. If you want to capture that money for yourself you can, but it will be a very hard slog.

Making a lot of money for someone else is not the problem. The problem is confusion about some of the aspects of being-a-miserable-manager or being-an-effective-engineer. Not seeing clearly your entire cost/benefit and employer's entire cost/benefit.

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

#57

Post by badpun »

kubanczyk wrote: post #5

> I also have a strong instinct against doing this, because it feels like self sabotage 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 a…

> 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.

My thoughts exactly. Management or enterprise architecture seems so much more stressful and uncomfortable than coding that I would consider doing it for at least 70% raise (and probably would require closer over 100% to really pull the trigger). Whereas, in practice it pays maybe 30% more than coding and, in many companies here in Europe, actually less than coding (managers are perms with meager salaries, coders are contractors with fat daily rates).

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

#58

Post by marmetio »

It's not up/down. It's career track. You ended up in the management track. You want to be in the technical track.

It's difficult to make as much money in other tracks, so you need to decide what your risk tolerance is.

But keep in mind that you're looking the grass on the other side and thinking it's greener. People in the technical track have the frustration of having many technical decisions made for them by the "idiots" in the management track.

Pick your poison.

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

#59

Post by someguydave »

kubanczyk wrote: post #56
someguydave wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this thinking is that an effective engineer in a profitable company is going to make someone alot of money. If you want to capture that money for yourself you can, but it will be a very hard slog.

Making a lot of money for someone else is not the problem. The problem is confusion about some of the aspects of being-a-miserable-manager or being-an-effective-engineer. Not seeing clearly your entire cost/benefit and employer's entire cost/benefit.

If humans actually knew how to measure the value-added by any particular engineer or manager with high certainty then I'm pretty sure that tech corporations would be operated much differently.
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