[chosenbreed37]

Does either camp have second thoughts about how their careers have progressed? You've highlighted one or two downsides for those who've gone down (or should I say 'up') the management route. Would you trade places with any of those friends? Would either of them trade places with you? Do you have an 'exit' plan out of software engineering or do you plan to stick with it to the very end? I appreciate some of these are personal questions and you may not want to discuss it but these are the perspectives that interest me.

[scarface74]

In 2008, I was 35 and had let my career, skills and salary stagnate. I had been a company for almost a decade mostly writing a combination of C, C++, Perl, and VB6 programs for backend processes. I finally woke up, did a career reset and pivoted toward “enterprise development”.

Fast forward to 2016, I was married, with a step son who was a freshman, tired of working on yet another software as a service CRUD app at my 3rd job since 2008 as an IC, and jumped on an opportunity to be a dev lead at a medium size non software company.

I thought the next step was to either stay a hands on dev lead/ “architect” and just muddle along for the next 20 years, go into management, or go the r/cscareerquestions route and “learn leetCode and work for a FAANG” and move to the west coast.

Neither sounded appealing. Then management decided to “move to the cloud”. I didn’t know anything about AWS at the time and saw how much the “consultants” were making and that opened my eyes. If these old school netops folks could pass one certification, click around in the console and make. $200K+ a year, imagine what I could do if I knew AWS from the infrastructure and dev ops side and I knew how to develop and architect using all of the AWS fiddly bits.

It took three years and teo job changes in between, but I really like consulting. It’s the perfect combination of development, high level architecture, customer engagement and you never know what you will be doing in three months - or in what language.

[electriclove]

Thanks for sharing! Could you expand more on those 3 years in making that transition? Do you work at a consulting company or did you start your own?

[scarface74]

The company I worked for as a dev lead was acquired by private equity and by the time I had any knowledge about AWS the infrastructure gatekeepers and consultants took over.

I started looking for a job and got lucky that another company was trying to build an in house development department led by a new CTO. They had outsourced all of the development before.

The new CTO was very forward looking and wanted to make the company “cloud native” and improve the processes. He only had a high level understanding of AWS as did I. He took a chance on me and I became both the de facto “cloud architect” and the person he called when he wanted a customer facing project done from the ground up without having to deal with the slow moving “scrum process”.

I was quite happy at the company and would have stayed a couple of years probably even knowing I could make more money somewhere else and then Covid hit along with an across the board pay cut.

I was still not really looking, a 10% pay cut at a time when we couldn’t travel or really go out was an inconvenience but not earth shattering.

Then a recruiter contacted me for a software development position at Amazon. I wasn’t willing to relocate or do the leetCode monkey dance but we talked a little and then she forwarded my information to a recruiter on the AWS side.

I saw the interview process was basically a high level technical interview to determine whether I knew the basics of AWS (I did) and all about the Leadership Principles. I knew I could answer the “tell me about a time when...” questions with the best of them and the interview process was going to be fully remote.

To keep a long story from getting longer - I work at Amazon as an AWS Consultant from the comfort of my own home in the suburbs in a low cost of living area.

[electriclove]

That's awesome, congrats! Thank you for sharing those details. Sounds like something I'd like to do some day.

[joeblau]

> Does either camp have second thoughts about how their careers have progressed?

Anecdotally from our conversations, I would say that they see computer programming as being less valuable than people programming. My friends do have lots of ideas for things and one in particular will keep saying that he wants to "re-learn iOS dev" or "learn Elixir", but he never does. I've started down the path of learning how to angel invest, which is where I'm trying to learn my people management skills.

> Would you trade places with any of those friends?

Absolutely not.

> Would either of them trade places with you?

I doubt it.

> Do you have an 'exit' plan out of software engineering or do you plan to stick with it to the very end?

I'm already on a trajectory where I won't need to work a traditional job the rest of my life. None of my friends who are climbing the management chain are anywhere near that. I honestly love building and learning (I just finished up a 3.5 day hack-a-thon yesterday). My next path will lead me either to building a company, helping people start tech-enabled companies or helping someone co-found a company. Unless I become a CEO, I don't plan to stop programming.

[cosmodisk]

As with my age,I'm in the middle of both worlds too: I'm a manager but I also do development whenever that's needed ( it's not a tech company). Development,while can be frustrating,is very enjoyable,as you feel that you creating something tangible and useful. The management side is never ending issues. More often than not I have to operate without having a full picture,so arbitrary decision. You also get to be the person who makes decisions for people when they don't want to do it. From the wider business perspective it's quite interesting,as you get to know a lot what's going on in the company. I'd love to do development full time, maybe in a smaller company rather than some big corp environment. Ideally,I'd like to do 10-15 years of development and only then go into management,but not sure how viable it can be.