[rjprins]

For software developers, I feel this career thing works a bit differently. Going up the ladder means managing people or projects, but that is not necessarily more fun than writing code.

I don't know where I see myself in 5 years, but it might actually be still just coding, no actual change in title or function. It's fun and challenging and I imagine it can be like that for a long time.

Instead, a dead end job for me would be caused by projects that are boring, or that the process has become overly bureaucratic, or that the company interests or culture have become too corporate or political.

[bowlofpetunias]

I moved into management not for career purposes (I could make more money being a programmer elsewhere than being a manager at my current employer), but because after 20+ years or programming I felt I was just repeating myself.

There was no more challenge in it. I could still learn new tech, but I wasn't learning anything new about myself an my abilities.

Even when it came to doing "new" stuff (which as you discover in time is often just repackaged old stuff), I already was 99.9% sure I would master it, and it was just a matter of time and hard work. That not only took away the challenge, but also made me less motivated than my younger coworkers for whom everything was shiny and new, and who didn't have the experience to always avoid obvious (to me at least) modes of failure.

Managing was a challenge I could actually fail at (and still do on a regular basis...).

Yeah, programming is still more "fun" to do than managing, but it now is the kind of fun I do as a hobby (as in, hacking in stuff that will never get finished), not a job. A dead end job for me is a job that offers no more real challenges, and a challenge for me includes the risk of failure.

(Of course one other key motivator was 20+ of experiencing how bad management can completely suck all fun and productivity out of programming.)

[justinhj]

That's a great reason to go into management. I also was in a position where I felt there was nothing else to learn as I could just build the same thing over and over. I moved into a different technical area instead.

[mironathetin]

justinhj, would you mind to tell what you did and what you do now? Did you prepare the move or was it painless to find a different position?

I also don't want a management position and plan a technological move. Are you happy with what you did?

[justinhj]

I used to write animation, physics and AI code for video games. I got the point where I was just moving company to company and writing the same system. What I moved into was still video game related but server side. This way I had to learn a whole new set of skills and a new knowledge domain, which brought challenge back to the job. But in addition I had been changing as a person, and I fit in better with server guys and execs than game devs.

[IvyMike]

My previous company had a "technical ladder" for promotion of engineers without making them into managers.

The general idea was that as you progressed through your technical career, you would be making more and more important technical decisions, measured by the impact to the company.

A junior engineer would be making technical choices that affected one subsystem, a principal engineer might define a protocol between two large components, and an architect would be making technical decisions that affected the entire company.

You can always nitpick these things to death, but I liked the general idea.

[mathattack]

It's good that it's a real ladder. My first employer made a great show of having a dual career latter, but in reality there were very few people getting promoted on the technical side. The end of year performance reviews devolved into, "How many reports do they have?" This is ruinous. Software firms are (or at least should be) better at this.

[rwmj]

I read that first paragraph "Are you sitting at the same desk, working for the same manager, doing the same work, and earning the same salary as you are right now?" and thought, if I've still got all of this in 5 years time, I'm going to count myself very fortunate.

[theorique]

Office Space: "It would be nice to have that kind of job security!"

[Kiro]

Same here. I feel sorry for people feeling like that but I can still relate since I've had soul destroying jobs before (non-programming ones).

[ambiate]

I was with my CIO the other day. He turned on his monitor and said 'look, is this what you want to really do?' Spreadsheets on time management, project management, and convincing his fellow Chiefs that he was on the right track. He had a damn good point. I love coding and math.

[huherto]

I have never understood why many companies have executive and managers doing administrative tasks. They should get administrative assistants tracking time, projects, resources, etc. It is a waste of their executive and technical talents.

There are many great things that a CIO can do without having to spend a lot of their time tracking things.

[gohrt]

The admins create the spreadsheets, the CxOs argue with each other about the spreadsheet contents.

[rhizome]

We can't assume that GP's CIO is not title-inflated.

[delluminatus]

I don't think it works that differently. If you're happy where you are, that's fine, but working in the same position forever is not my idea of a software development career unless you receive steadily more pay for doing the same work.

[dasmoth]

It depends whether there's a viable route to promotion that doesn't quickly lead into management territory.

[umsm]

One thing that a friend in management (on the technical side) said that he felt least secure in that position as it meant that he would most likely be fired first if something happened at the company.

Also: Because he was a manager for a few years, that means that his technical skills were almost zero. So he wouldn't be able to be as agile in finding another position as he was as a developer.