[LinuxAmbulance]

I get the sense that Lalit wants to do the work and get paid while avoiding the career meta game. The appeal of that is understandable, but having been in this situation in the past, it's not all its cracked up to be.

The number of tech companies where you can stay employed for a solid decade without falling victim to layoffs or re-orgs are very rare in my experience, even more so ones that offer competitive pay.

If you find yourself looking for a new job and want to move up in title and pay, doing the same sort of unglamorous work for years can be a detriment to that.

[lalitmaganti]

It's not that I want to avoid the career metagame (I would argue I haven't so far) but that the career metagame is different depending on your environment.

[class3shock]

I know this is off topic but if you ever have the inclination to write about it, I would be really interested in reading about any books, people, experiences, professional lessons learned, etc. that have been helpful to you on progressing along a non-spotlight technical focused engineering path.

I'm in a different domain (aerospace) but am trying to carve out a similar career path and am always looking for more to learn about just being a good engineer.

[lalitmaganti]

> if you ever have the inclination to write about it

I definitely plan on writing a lot more about this in the coming months :) After seeing Sean's own posts and the fact this post resonated, it feels like there are people out there who might be interested in this sort of thing :)

> books, people, experiences, professional lessons learned

Books not so much but one thing i've been very fortunate to have is very good mentors I can learn off. I've had the same manager from when I first joined Google and honestly I've learned so much just from watching him work and interact with people. Also a couple of senior directors/engineers in other teams as well who I always make a habit to catch up with.

If you're interested, stay tuned to the blog :)

[foobarian]

I've done plenty of low level IC type mentoring: "make sure your MR has a good description" "use library XYZ instead of DIY" "you'll need to go to Design Review for this project" etc. But I'm curious about the other angles as well; on one hand I could do a better job of guiding juniors. On the other hand I could do a better job of recognizing a good vs junior manager, and potentially help them improve. Many times I've seen managers ask "how could I help you better?" to which I had no good answer. You're the manager, that's your job to figure out :-)

[tanepiper]

This - I've been very honest with my manager that I won't play "the game" in this organisation - I don't really have to, there is plenty for staff engineers to tackle to have a long career without the yoke of management.

[LinuxAmbulance]

Sure, but Google is a very unique environment and the advice is unlikely to work at the majority of employers.