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Yup, this is my biggest problem with the field. 15 years in the industry and I've never seen anyone promoted out of IT. Your only escape is a being a founder of

Yup, this is my biggest problem with the field. 15 years in the industry and I've never seen anyone promoted out of IT. Your only escape is a being a founder of a startup. We are not included in conversations that matter. Our opinions are discarded. We are simply dispensable cogs in the machine, its equivalent to data entry work. No status, no opinion worth listening to. I did comp sci because my dad said it was a good idea. I hate programming it's the most boring mentally draining thing imaginable. I hate hate hate it. If anyone had told me compsci was a dead end, if they had told me it wasn't like maths or physics that don't pigeon hole you, I would have never done it. Doing compsci limits your options utterly. If you do compsci you are a programmer for life unless you are very very lucky. Or burn out so hard you have to go on benefits. Which I'm pretty close to doing right now. Programming is like pulling teeth now and I think I'm close to rather being dead than continuing to work in this field.

burntoutfire 6y ago
I've seen plenty of coders promoted into management. Of course, it takes time - first they have to prove themselves in some tech lead or product owner role and later, if they seem capable, they can go higher. Come to this about it, two out of three of my current bosses (incl. a guy who has hundreds of people under him) are ex-coders.
- plutonorm 6y ago
  Where do you work because this categorically does not happen to any appreciable degree in small to medium sized companies in London. Also I would kill for a product owner role. The idea that a programmer can get into a PO role is laughable. I've never seen even the glimmer of a chance of that happening to either myself or my peers.
  - silveroriole 6y ago
    What do you count as a small company? My experience at a small company in London was that I had to be a combined programmer, manager, product owner, project manager and user researcher very early on because, well, there weren’t enough employees/customers to have actual qualified people acting in those roles full-time. (And it’s cheaper to make one person do all the roles and only pay them for one role, of course...)
    - plutonorm 6y ago
      Try using that to get PO or PM role at your next job. You won't even get to interview. I know, I've tried. Really really hard. I've sent out 100s of cv's applying for pm or ba roles with ample experience at small companies, with tech lead role, re facto scrum master role. 15 years experience. With a c.v the a CTO helped me write. And got absolutely no where. 1 interview out of hundreds of applications. You just do not realise that it is impossible to climb out of the programming hole.
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    I work in a large European bank. Mind you, the coder who was made PO is very good at human interactions and politics - but that's kind of a prerequisite for this role.
mlboss 6y ago
This is a totally different experience than mine. I did Electrical Engineering but have been a programmer all my career. I love programming. I love the creative process, the bugs, the build system, the frustration. I love everything about it. Maybe its a personality thing. I was never into what others think. Also, I think you don't work in a pure tech company. My experience in the valley is that programmers are considered first-class employees. All my managers were programmers, some programmed on side. They understood all the complexity that goes in building a software. You can try moving into one of the pure tech companies.

burntoutfire 6y ago

I've seen plenty of coders promoted into management. Of course, it takes time - first they have to prove themselves in some tech lead or product owner role and later, if they seem capable, they can go higher. Come to this about it, two out of three of my current bosses (incl. a guy who has hundreds of people under him) are ex-coders.

plutonorm 6y ago
Where do you work because this categorically does not happen to any appreciable degree in small to medium sized companies in London. Also I would kill for a product owner role. The idea that a programmer can get into a PO role is laughable. I've never seen even the glimmer of a chance of that happening to either myself or my peers.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  What do you count as a small company? My experience at a small company in London was that I had to be a combined programmer, manager, product owner, project manager and user researcher very early on because, well, there weren’t enough employees/customers to have actual qualified people acting in those roles full-time. (And it’s cheaper to make one person do all the roles and only pay them for one role, of course...)
  - plutonorm 6y ago
    Try using that to get PO or PM role at your next job. You won't even get to interview. I know, I've tried. Really really hard. I've sent out 100s of cv's applying for pm or ba roles with ample experience at small companies, with tech lead role, re facto scrum master role. 15 years experience. With a c.v the a CTO helped me write. And got absolutely no where. 1 interview out of hundreds of applications. You just do not realise that it is impossible to climb out of the programming hole.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  I work in a large European bank. Mind you, the coder who was made PO is very good at human interactions and politics - but that's kind of a prerequisite for this role.

mlboss 6y ago

This is a totally different experience than mine. I did Electrical Engineering but have been a programmer all my career. I love programming. I love the creative process, the bugs, the build system, the frustration. I love everything about it. Maybe its a personality thing. I was never into what others think. Also, I think you don't work in a pure tech company. My experience in the valley is that programmers are considered first-class employees. All my managers were programmers, some programmed on side. They understood all the complexity that goes in building a software. You can try moving into one of the pure tech companies.