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ultrafilter posted:If you can afford to make no money whatsoever from what you do during that time period, then yeah, you could give it a shot. You should think seriously about moving someplace with a low cost of living, though. Believe me, I am.  I really don't want to leave my life here, but the Bay Area is not the right place to live if you don't have a corporate sugar daddy.
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Aug 4, 2019 22:56
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kayakyakr posted:Also, in actual career advice ask: my experience is companies are so desperate for managers with technical skills that all you really need is competency and desire to move from ic to manager in tech
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Aug 4, 2019 23:23
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the talent deficit posted:my experience is companies are so desperate for managers with technical skills that all you really need is competency and desire to move from ic to manager in tech I've gotten the same impression. At my last interview one of the higher-ups seemed to fall over themselves when I said I was interested in going into management after a few years.
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Aug 4, 2019 23:45
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The bigger issue I see with going into management types of roles isn't the skills or work but that your metrics for success and advancement is less and less due to matters under one's control as much as your company's market position, your abilities to network effectively, a nicely dense graph of mentors and peers to draw collective experience from, and the position in life to take risks for the best opportunities that may not pay you anywhere near market rates. I mean, if you're Robert California and these aren't issues for you whatever, but it's a problem for ambitious people with something missing from one's skillset or circumstances to make them successful here. Other later stage career options that are still technical: 1. Consulting. You may have to go to places you never wanted to visit and spend a bunch of your time trying to find gigs you work an effective 100 hour week all the time, but hopefully you can get enough of a network that trusts you that you don't have to be a salesman all the time. 2. Conference speaking. This is a catch 22 I guess fpr the conversation because most of the time unless you're already a celebrity engineer or employed with some well known-ish corporation or entity you're not going to get that much for speaking. 3. NGO / government orgs with technical foundations / missions. For example, USDS and 18F may be options with the caveats that they tend to be shorter consulting gigs, but perhaps work here for a while can lead to options 1 and 2 as well. The issue I've seen is that some of these places can be so awfully low paying you're better off as a distributed company IC and accept meh rates perhaps.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:03
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No one in development who can make a living as a conference speaker needs advice from this thread.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:12
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Supplemental income makes sense for older folks into social security age, and I don't think it will be unrealistic for a lot of us here to still be nerding it up 20 - 30 years from now and warning our grand-children engineers why they shouldn't be trying to do microservices with immutable containers before they wipe out our retirement accounts because we screwed it up before and nobody has actually made systems that much more reliable despite the advances in machine learning. Maybe I'm a weird person but I genuinely like going to conferences and finding the oldest people there to learn from them.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:26
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necrobobsledder posted:The bigger issue I see with going into management types of roles isn't the skills or work but that your metrics for success and advancement is less and less due to matters under one's control as much as your company's market position, your abilities to network effectively, a nicely dense graph of mentors and peers to draw collective experience from, and the position in life to take risks for the best opportunities that may not pay you anywhere near market rates. I mean, if you're Robert California and these aren't issues for you whatever, but it's a problem for ambitious people with something missing from one's skillset or circumstances to make them successful here. Those are all just as important for your success as a software engineer.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:58
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Careful Drums posted:I've gotten the same impression. At my last interview one of the higher-ups seemed to fall over themselves when I said I was interested in going into management after a few years. Why? What do they want to even see from managers? All the managers I know and have seen, higher-ups don't have a loving clue what a good manager is.
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Aug 5, 2019 03:10
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necrobobsledder posted:warning our grand-children engineers why they shouldn't be trying to do microservices with immutable containers Wait is this real or a joke? (This isn't a dig, I don't have relevant experience and genuinely don't know.)
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Aug 5, 2019 03:30
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Pollyanna posted:Why? What do they want to even see from managers? All the managers I know and have seen, higher-ups don't have a loving clue what a good manager is. IMO it depends on the organization. Some companies, the manager's job is just "heres your resources, deliver the goods and we're measuring you" so it's all results-oriented and that's how programmers end up in death marches. Some shops (including the one I'm at) see the manager's job as more of "take care of your team, make sure they're happy so the keep making great stuff for us". Obviously that's the kind of manager I'd like to be.
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Aug 5, 2019 04:14
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the talent deficit posted:my experience is companies are so desperate for managers with technical skills that all you really need is competency and desire to move from ic to manager in tech This hasn't really been my experience for my job search... One company even shot me down because they had a good 500 senior flat and no room for Lead/Managers... Interestingly, I've been a good barometer for hiring freezes. I've now hit 3 of them.
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Aug 5, 2019 04:15
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Progressive JPEG posted:The impression I'd gotten before is that the UK pays pretty bad compared to most of Europe? I don't know how much of that is GBP collapsing. I think relative to a lot of places the UK is bad. But that's the economy as a whole; junior developers in the better places start on salaries higher than the median for the country and senior/prinicpal/IC roles are second only to doctors & lawyers IIRC (but they're still way above by huge amounts), and there's also a sea of terrible companies which pay next to nothing as well. Where I work: Manchester, the salaries are increasing steadily. Senior roles were Ł35/40k around 6 years ago and are now Ł60/70/80k, outstripping inflation.
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Aug 5, 2019 08:04
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All this worries me, I turned 42 today and have been working as a dev for 5 years now after trying a management role for a while that came from QA. I am having a lot of fun and don't want to go back to manage any process or person again. I accept that I will have to move into a slow government role in some 10 years if I want to stay as an engineer, there is a large national institution at a bicycle ride distance from my house...
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Aug 5, 2019 08:14
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Oh quit with the fatalism. Just because the latest fart app might practice age discrimination doesn't mean your only options are government or management. There are plenty of large companies that pay tons of money to ICs and don't care how old you are. It's just that they're not necessarily in SV or are related to the "industry" as a whole. e: to be clear, age discrimination is a huge problem and one that I'm sincerely concerned about not only for my own selfish reasons. I just think it's worth it to avoid the histrionics in favor of having a broader perspective about where your skills might be valued. Blinkz0rz fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 11:26
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Yeah while age discrimination is definitely a thing. I think its worse in young startups with very young CTOs and people use this as a base of what its like across the whole industry which isn't really true. Hell the last two senior devs we hired were both in their 50s, they beat out candidates half their age because the wide breadth of knowledge and experience they had was far more useful to us as a company (mostly because we have a few VB legacy products kicking about that need security patches every now and again) I definitely feel it gets harder as you get older, but the idea that its a choice of 'management or become unemployable' is just silly.
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Aug 5, 2019 11:54
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Careful Drums posted:Same. I'm aiming for management by late 30s (I'm 31) and hopefully running my own shop by 50 Any reason in particular for waiting until the late 30's to get into a leadership role? the talent deficit posted:my experience is companies are so desperate for managers with technical skills that all you really need is competency and desire to move from ic to manager in tech This is correct. I've found that a lot of places might already have Leads/Managers in those positions but mostly because they took their high performers and gave them more responsibilities than they actually wanted/were ready for.
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Aug 5, 2019 12:01
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yes there will always be cobol-or-equivalent positions for you over-35 greybeards
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Aug 5, 2019 13:04
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Doh004 posted:Any reason in particular for waiting until the late 30's to get into a leadership role? I'd switch maybe mid-30s, if things work out. A lot going on in my life right now and I won't be up for a new role until things get settled.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:08
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raminasi posted:Wait is this real or a joke? (This isn't a dig, I don't have relevant experience and genuinely don't know.)
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Aug 5, 2019 13:18
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redleader posted:yes there will always be cobol-or-equivalent positions for you over-35 greybeards There will also be cutting edge work for older folks just not making a distributed fart app for a company whose ceo won't hire anyone over 25.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:29
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Doh004 posted:Any reason in particular for waiting until the late 30's to get into a leadership role? I can speak for myself here: in no way should anyone ever consider me a leader cause I will 100% gently caress it up. Why go for that position and responsibilities if it will just crash and burn, like it always does? I used to want to make team lead. After seeing the poo poo my team lead goes through and all the poo poo he gets for stuff out of his control...never.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:31
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Pollyanna posted:I used to want to make team lead. After seeing the poo poo my team lead goes through and all the poo poo he gets for stuff out of his control...never. Hahaha this speak to me very strongly. Our team lead is great but the company abuses the poo poo out of him, he's basically running the entire R&D. He just had a baby and actually took his laptop with him and sat in the maternity unit still working, he's on paternity leave right now but I've already seen him reply to several emails.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:42
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Pay him a visit and surreptitiously murder his computer.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:48
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Xarn posted:Pay him a visit and surreptitiously murder his computer. Just pour water on the keyboard.
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Aug 5, 2019 14:48
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If I ever become team lead it will be a few months of screaming match meetings followed by me washing my hands of the affair because people are the worst part of anything. I swear, if I’m ever in a management-y role - and I never want to be and actively resent the idea - my priority will be day to day sanity and tempered expectations, no bullshit. Eugh.
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Aug 5, 2019 14:56
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Y'all are bringing more light as to why that director-level person was so stoked when I expressed an interest in management.Pollyanna posted:I can speak for myself here: in no way should anyone ever consider me a leader cause I will 100% gently caress it up. I'm pretty sure this is every manager ever. Nothing and nobody is ever perfect.
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Aug 5, 2019 15:01
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Speaking as someone who has dabbled in tech leadership but not management, but has spoken with those who have made the transition: basically what you're looking at is increasing impact at the cost of decreasing direct contribution. In other words, instead of personally, directly getting things done, you get to guide the work of others and, figuratively or (if you're a dick) otherwise, take credit for the accomplishments of everyone on your team. If you find your work interesting because of the specifics of the day-to-day (as many engineers do), then transitioning to leadership is going to be a hard sell, but if you're motivated by the overall mission and by hitting milestones, then leadership may be more attractive. One semi-common story I've heard from ICs that went to management and then back was "man, I love getting to spend all this time coding, but I'm getting nothing done!" In otherwords, perceptual progress is slower as an IC than as a manager.
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Aug 5, 2019 15:19
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It's also worth keeping in mind that, while being an IC is largely the same pretty much everywhere, the management experience is going to be a lot more sensitive to the company culture. It might be that you'd be a good manager in a different organization even if not in your current one.
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Aug 5, 2019 15:24
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What does "IC" even stand for? Maybe it's just a Monday morning brain fart but I cannot for the life of me think of what this title could be...
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Aug 5, 2019 15:29
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It means "individual contributor"
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Aug 5, 2019 15:32
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ultrafilter posted:It's also worth keeping in mind that, while being an IC is largely the same pretty much everywhere, the management experience is going to be a lot more sensitive to the company culture. It might be that you'd be a good manager in a different organization even if not in your current one. Yeah. It takes a lot of trust in an organization to be cool with managing under it. Unfortunately, trustworthiness is hard to come by these days.
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Aug 5, 2019 15:43
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Blinkz0rz posted:There will also be cutting edge work for older folks just not making a distributed fart app for a company whose ceo won't hire anyone over 25. There will be cutting edge work at every distributed fart app that gets enough DAU to raise too much money to know what to do with as well. Hence places like twitter invent new databases and poo poo. Age discrimination is real as gently caress, but there are still a TON of places that value experience highly. IC is not dead end at all, if you don't want it to be.
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Aug 5, 2019 16:52
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I was a team lead for a bit over a year, but recently switched companies and went back to a senior dev IC. I don’t really miss it for the time being. I admit I probably was not the best at it, being new and all, but several of my people seemed to like me and I got on great with other management folks.  It also really really depends on the company, because “team lead” or “engineering manager” can mean so many different things. It’s also often not in and of itself a “promotion” as much as a first step in the management ladder. It’s not unusual for senior ICs get paid more than first level managers, but upper level managers will definitely make more. I could potentially see doing it again in the future under the right circumstances. My new company has already dropped hints about it, knowing that I had dabbled before. For now I am keeping it on the back burner and enjoying the relative simplicity of regular dev work.
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Aug 5, 2019 16:58
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Old company was like, "You can't be a team lead unless you start toeing the company line." and I was all, "I'm not toeing the company line until you take a line worth toeing." and we reached an impasse that lasted until I got laid off.
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Aug 5, 2019 17:01
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CPColin posted:Old company was like, "You can't be a team lead unless you start toeing the company line." and I was all, "I'm not toeing the company line until you take a line worth toeing." and we reached an impasse that lasted until I got laid off. If you’re in that sort of antagonistic relationship with a company, you definitely don’t want to be management there. Or there at all. Sounds like you resolved that part at least.
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Aug 5, 2019 17:05
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CPColin posted:Old company was like, "You can't be a team lead unless you start toeing the company line." and I was all, "I'm not toeing the company line until you take a line worth toeing." and we reached an impasse that lasted until I got laid off. The Dr. Cox avatar checks out
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Aug 5, 2019 17:09
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I mean, it didn't go down in so many words, but that was the sentiment. Same company's owner just fired one of its Directors because the Director called the owner an idiot.
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Aug 5, 2019 17:14
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Guinness posted:It also really really depends on the company, because “team lead” or “engineering manager” can mean so many different things. It’s also often not in and of itself a “promotion” as much as a first step in the management ladder. It’s not unusual for senior ICs get paid more than first level managers, but upper level managers will definitely make more. And herein lies the end goal for me: I want to eventually be VP engineering or CTO or something along those lines, and it seems a lot easier to get there via Lead -> Eng Manager -> Director Eng -> VP Eng/CTO than Senior -> Staff -> Principle -> VP/CTO
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Aug 5, 2019 17:14
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Careful Drums posted:I'd switch maybe mid-30s, if things work out. A lot going on in my life right now and I won't be up for a new role until things get settled. Word - gotta do it when it makes sense for you. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't imposter syndrome creeping in. Pollyanna posted:I can speak for myself here: in no way should anyone ever consider me a leader cause I will 100% gently caress it up. Why go for that position and responsibilities if it will just crash and burn, like it always does? Careful Drums said it best but: everyone fucks up, all the time. It's how you own it, learn and then move on that matters. In terms of being the "poo poo umbrella" as a lead - yeah it sucks. I guess there's a certain level of martyrdom that comes with the role. It all becomes worth it when your teams kick rear end and you realize you didn't actually code any of it. kayakyakr posted:And herein lies the end goal for me: I want to eventually be VP engineering or CTO or something along those lines, and it seems a lot easier to get there via Lead -> Eng Manager -> Director Eng -> VP Eng/CTO than Senior -> Staff -> Principle -> VP/CTO Same here. I'm trying to make the jump between Engineering Manager -> Director right now which is an awkward spot.
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Aug 5, 2019 17:53
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CPColin posted:I mean, it didn't go down in so many words, but that was the sentiment. Speaking of, I got one of their links at the top of a google search the other day and was shocked to see it there. Probably because Kendo is at the nexus of people with spare budget who don't know how to do things in general 
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