| I did this from a hands-on CTO role at a 20-person startup to a senior engineer at a 200 person e-commerce outfit known nationally in the UK. I was miserable for a long time, and sat down one day and made a list of all the things I liked about the job and all the things I hated. Everything in the “like” column was dev work. Everything in the “hate” column was the management work. So I slept on it for one night, quit, and went hunting for a dev job - this was 2015 so not too shabby. There were a lot of things about this move I regret. The pay cut, the fact that my office in London got shut down as a consequence of my quitting meaning nearly everyone was made redundant, the fact that at my new role I was kind of resented a fair bit by other engineers. But I was a lot happier and settled in my life. And nobody else can do that for me. I had to own the actions to make my short life on this planet better. I’ve done management work since, and I’m now back to being an IC at a FAANG, but not as a software dev. I am now thinking about getting back into dev but it’ll get harder for me now I’m in my mid-40s. I say if you aren’t happy, do it, but realise there will be some pain points. Ride that out, keep your head down and stay focused and you could be a lot happier. |
Only bad thing about age is that in many organisations you will deal with people that don't have that much experience as yourself and they are not aware when they are making a mistake doing something, because they read about solution on some happy clappy blog or something. Less experience people tend to go into arguments more easily to defend their position and you have all seen this many times over. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get around this. Typically you get to explain things over and over and it may get really boring, as new cohorts come in. In most places the problems to solve are all the same. Take data from one place, transform it and put in another. Progression to management in that sense is where you get people to do all the boring stuff, that is still fun for them and you keep an eye so they don't screw things too much while yourself taking care of the big picture.
Probably best way is at that point to start own business. More fun and reward.