7 ms·

I'm waiting to find a place that won't push me to keep advancing up the career ladder, without leaving my salary lagging behind the rising cost of living. Does

I'm waiting to find a place that won't push me to keep advancing up the career ladder, without leaving my salary lagging behind the rising cost of living. Does having limited ambition make you a bad dev/engineer, if you keep learning new things and contributing quality code at your current level of responsibility?

monkeybutton 5y ago
What will you do when you're in your 50s? I've seen what happens to older developers, they're one layoff from being totally screwed. Ageism is a real problem in the industry and it motivates me to keep advancing.
- CodeMage 5y ago
  I don't know. I really don't, and that's scary. I've been programming since I was 7 years old, on a ZX Spectrum 48k, and now that I'm 40+, it's been a long, long time. And in all that time, I've never really wanted to be the guy who has to be responsible for a bunch of other people. All I've ever enjoyed about software development was being elbow-deep in code, and learning new things. And now that I'm older, I'm starting to get scared that the world doesn't appreciate people like that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
LargeWu 5y ago
It doesn't make you a bad engineer, but it does, generally, put a ceiling on the value you are able to provide to the company. Individual contributors can only get so much done in a given amount of time, and over a long enough time scale, are generally interchangeable with one another. Sure, you might have some specialized knowledge or understand system X better than anybody else, but there's diminishing returns on that, hence why you won't get big raises forever. As you move up the chain, it eventually stops being about your direct technical contributions and about your ability to multiply the value of everybody under you in your org.
- akiselev 5y ago
  > it eventually stops being about your direct technical contributions and about your ability to multiply the value of everybody under you in your org. I thought that was the whole point of the IC track: putting a technical person into a role where they can be a multiplier without burdening them with management responsibilities. Every staff/principle/architect IC I've ever worked with has had that kind of positive effect on the teams around them. Their schedules were indistinguishable from most managers, except they met mostly one on one and they could get a senior engineer's worth of work (impact wise) done in between the meetings instead of paying the management overhead.
  - LargeWu 5y ago
    Parent was explicitly stating they didn't want to climb the career ladder. i.e. They wanted to remain at a Sr Engineer level perpetually, but also not have their salary stagnate. I don't disagree that principle engineers can and should have a big multiplying effect, but I also wouldn't consider them strictly IC's either, even if they don't have people managing duties.
    - CodeMage 5y ago
      > They wanted to remain at a Sr Engineer level perpetually, but also not have their salary stagnate. Pretty much that, except that I wouldn't use the word "stagnate". What I said was "lag behind the cost of living", which might not have been the most concise way of putting it, but I hoped it would get my point across. Essentially, the conundrum I've faced too often is that if you're not climbing the ladder, the purchasing power of your salary will start falling, even if your salary rises, because the raises you get reflect the lack of regard the company has for people who aren't climbing the ladder. Stagnation, for me, would be to stay at the more-or-less same purchasing power. And I would be fine with that.
- spydum 5y ago
  Agree with this pretty strongly. However there is something I've observed: org multipliers can exist without managing people. HR generally doesnt know what to do with them. It's almost unreasonable to call them ICs, but there you have it.
kelnos 5y ago
It certainly doesn't make you a bad anything. Your level of ambition is a personal thing. It's yours alone, and no one gets to look down on it[0]. This idea that a person's worth is tied to how far they want to and are able to go in their career is something that needs to die. If you're happy with where you are, and happy with your salary and status, then it's fine to stay there! Certainly, as you say, continue to learn new things, make quality contributions, and get your work done. Many companies will have what they call "terminal levels" for individual contributors (most probably don't really advertise this unless you specifically talk about it with your manager). The idea is that you can work at a level where you can get your day-to-day work done with minimal guidance, even if you need guidance on the bigger picture stuff (like what you should be working on, and why). You should certainly talk to your manager about this, if you feel comfortable. And if you don't, and/or they keep pushing you to climb the ladder further, then yeah, you should probably find a new gig. One caveat: ageism is still an unfortunate thing in our industry, and as you get into your 40s and beyond, if you're still "only" a "senior software engineer", you may have trouble getting new jobs. Companies don't want to get stuck with people who are perpetually "junior" and need a lot of hand-holding to get their jobs done. That's of course ok for a while someone is learning and growing, but if they aren't growing out of that, they're a liability and time sink. But once you're past that point, you should be ok. The only problem is if you end up at a weird place where no one wants to progress up through staff/principal/architect/fellow, in which case I wouldn't be surprised if everyone starts getting pressured to up their ambition. But that sort of scenario seems somewhat unlikely? [0] Well, unless they are in your immediate family and your lack of ambition is putting their livelihood at risk in ways they can't mitigate. But I'm assuming that's not the case here ;)

monkeybutton 5y ago

What will you do when you're in your 50s? I've seen what happens to older developers, they're one layoff from being totally screwed. Ageism is a real problem in the industry and it motivates me to keep advancing.

CodeMage 5y ago
I don't know. I really don't, and that's scary. I've been programming since I was 7 years old, on a ZX Spectrum 48k, and now that I'm 40+, it's been a long, long time. And in all that time, I've never really wanted to be the guy who has to be responsible for a bunch of other people. All I've ever enjoyed about software development was being elbow-deep in code, and learning new things. And now that I'm older, I'm starting to get scared that the world doesn't appreciate people like that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

LargeWu 5y ago

It doesn't make you a bad engineer, but it does, generally, put a ceiling on the value you are able to provide to the company. Individual contributors can only get so much done in a given amount of time, and over a long enough time scale, are generally interchangeable with one another. Sure, you might have some specialized knowledge or understand system X better than anybody else, but there's diminishing returns on that, hence why you won't get big raises forever. As you move up the chain, it eventually stops being about your direct technical contributions and about your ability to multiply the value of everybody under you in your org.

akiselev 5y ago
> it eventually stops being about your direct technical contributions and about your ability to multiply the value of everybody under you in your org. I thought that was the whole point of the IC track: putting a technical person into a role where they can be a multiplier without burdening them with management responsibilities. Every staff/principle/architect IC I've ever worked with has had that kind of positive effect on the teams around them. Their schedules were indistinguishable from most managers, except they met mostly one on one and they could get a senior engineer's worth of work (impact wise) done in between the meetings instead of paying the management overhead.
- LargeWu 5y ago
  Parent was explicitly stating they didn't want to climb the career ladder. i.e. They wanted to remain at a Sr Engineer level perpetually, but also not have their salary stagnate. I don't disagree that principle engineers can and should have a big multiplying effect, but I also wouldn't consider them strictly IC's either, even if they don't have people managing duties.
  - CodeMage 5y ago
    > They wanted to remain at a Sr Engineer level perpetually, but also not have their salary stagnate. Pretty much that, except that I wouldn't use the word "stagnate". What I said was "lag behind the cost of living", which might not have been the most concise way of putting it, but I hoped it would get my point across. Essentially, the conundrum I've faced too often is that if you're not climbing the ladder, the purchasing power of your salary will start falling, even if your salary rises, because the raises you get reflect the lack of regard the company has for people who aren't climbing the ladder. Stagnation, for me, would be to stay at the more-or-less same purchasing power. And I would be fine with that.
spydum 5y ago
Agree with this pretty strongly. However there is something I've observed: org multipliers can exist without managing people. HR generally doesnt know what to do with them. It's almost unreasonable to call them ICs, but there you have it.

kelnos 5y ago

It certainly doesn't make you a bad anything. Your level of ambition is a personal thing. It's yours alone, and no one gets to look down on it[0]. This idea that a person's worth is tied to how far they want to and are able to go in their career is something that needs to die. If you're happy with where you are, and happy with your salary and status, then it's fine to stay there! Certainly, as you say, continue to learn new things, make quality contributions, and get your work done. Many companies will have what they call "terminal levels" for individual contributors (most probably don't really advertise this unless you specifically talk about it with your manager). The idea is that you can work at a level where you can get your day-to-day work done with minimal guidance, even if you need guidance on the bigger picture stuff (like what you should be working on, and why). You should certainly talk to your manager about this, if you feel comfortable. And if you don't, and/or they keep pushing you to climb the ladder further, then yeah, you should probably find a new gig. One caveat: ageism is still an unfortunate thing in our industry, and as you get into your 40s and beyond, if you're still "only" a "senior software engineer", you may have trouble getting new jobs. Companies don't want to get stuck with people who are perpetually "junior" and need a lot of hand-holding to get their jobs done. That's of course ok for a while someone is learning and growing, but if they aren't growing out of that, they're a liability and time sink. But once you're past that point, you should be ok. The only problem is if you end up at a weird place where no one wants to progress up through staff/principal/architect/fellow, in which case I wouldn't be surprised if everyone starts getting pressured to up their ambition. But that sort of scenario seems somewhat unlikely? [0] Well, unless they are in your immediate family and your lack of ambition is putting their livelihood at risk in ways they can't mitigate. But I'm assuming that's not the case here ;)