> Instead of fight it, I accept it and look at it as a natural part of growth, not stagnation. It opens up the possibility for you to take your job for what it

> Instead of fight it, I accept it and look at it as a natural part of growth, not stagnation. It opens up the possibility for you to take your job for what it is—a job—and explore new hobbies and interests. I know what you mean there, and I've gotten there a few years ago, but I'm still not entirely satisfied with my overall situation. What I find is that as I get older and progress in my career, new "challenges" are things I never signed up for, and have no interest in. I was rather satisfied with things as a junior and then mid level engineer. I was assigned tasks/projects, got them done, called it a day. The paycheck was already pretty good. I wasn't particularly interested in a promotion to senior, given how stressed out senior engineers seem to be. I had (and still have) no interest in taking on leadership roles, much less management. I already get anxious enough about my own responsibilities, so no, thanks, I don't want to be responsible for other peoples' actions as well. It's all moot though. Despite having made the above clear to my managers, they promoted me to senior. And now whenever I try to retreat into doing individual, technical work, they throw the "that's not work suitable for your level" card at me. I'm being coerced into a leadership role to build an entirely new service, despite 1. having never built a service from the ground up, 2. having never been on a team that did it (thus being exposed to the decisions being made), and 3. having no particular interest in it. I'm expected to be the person who makes cross-team collaboration happen, despite not being a "people person." And I'm expected to do all that while mentoring younger team members, despite having no reasonable time to do so. Companies pay lip service to the whole idea of helping you define your career goals and direction, but it only really applies to when you do what they have in mind for you.