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(Caveats for this post: First, my experience is largely in rapidly growing startups, so take with a grain of salt if you are not in a high-growth environment. S

(Caveats for this post: First, my experience is largely in rapidly growing startups, so take with a grain of salt if you are not in a high-growth environment. Second, I'm going to be using you as an example, but this post isn't really necessarily for you, it's for anyone else who happens to read it and can maybe take something away from this.) I've been managing engineers for the last 6 years, and I just want to put it out there that this is a perfectly acceptable thing to say as far as I'm concerned. It's refreshing to have someone who knows exactly what they want out of things. If you want to stay at a company for 4-6 years and then move on to another one and do the same thing, this is a great strategy. But from a managerial perspective, there are reasons why people don't want to hire people like this. The most obvious one is money. (Note: I'm going to use nice round (and unrealistic) numbers to illustrate the point. It's not the specifics that matter, but the overall pattern.) Let's say you make 100K, and your company has a generous 10% merit increase each year. Let's also postulate that you can do 1000 scrum points worth of work per year with your current set of responsibilities. As far as a compensation efficiency ratio goes, you're basically making $100 per point worth of work. In Year 2, you get a 10% raise, so now you're at 110K. Based on your statement of "I am happy where I am", that suggests that you aren't interested in additional responsibility (I.e., promotions or management). Due to that, your output is still somewhere around 1000 points. Now you're making $110 per point of efficiency. In effect, it's costing the company 10% more for you to do the same work! Year 3, you're at 110K + 10% = 121K. Year 4 at 133K. Now the company is spending 33% more for the same amount of work. Rough numbers, take with a huge grain of salt. But the point remains: generally speaking, management wants engineers that are ambitious and willing to take on more responsibility and grow. From the business perspective, this means that you're getting more done with fewer resources. (After all, it's cheaper to pay you 10-20% more than to hire a second engineer.) All of that said, if you are happy doing what you're doing and earning the compensation that you earn and getting the benefits that you get, then I, as a manager, think that's fantastic. But the "business" will most likely eventually decide that's not enough. I personally manage three engineers whose answer to "Where do you see your career in 5 years?" is "Doing exactly what I'm doing now, 9-5. I enjoy coding, but my true passions are elsewhere." All three are great engineers, and I would hire them again if I move to a new company. Just my two cents. I'm glad you're happy and I hope you continue to be happy in your role. To me, that's the most important bit about your job! Keep it up.

busterarm 5y ago
On the other end though, my company promoted me very quickly from mid-level to senior to architect simply because someone was needed to step into those roles and I did (i've maxxed out on Impact and Quality of Work on every performance review). I'm at a largish compay so taking a lower role would only make sense if I went to a FAANG. I still feel like there's a ton for me to learn and when I look at any potential I have outside of this company I feel a bit limited. I would be perfectly happy just being a senior at the right company but perceptions are that you always need to move onto better things. That's not to say that I'm not thriving in my current role, but when you're this far down the IC track if feels like there are fewer desirable exits available.
- Jemaclus 5y ago
  I would suggest that you're putting an overly strong emphasis on the job title rather than the other benefits and responsibilities of the role. (Pro tip: titles are free. Just look at any sales org -- literally everyone is a VP of something!) While it's true that companies want people who can grow, it gets harder to measure growth as you become more and more experienced -- and almost by definition, your expertise becomes narrower and narrower. The real-world mimics academia in this way fairly well. Getting a Bachelor's degree is about broad learning, while getting a Master's is about specializing. Getting a Doctorate is about specializing so narrowly that you improve the academic world just a tiny bit. (Brief visual explanation of what I'm talking about is here: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/) What you've described sounds less like merit and more like responsibility. You have more responsibility than you had before. You aren't necessarily a better programmer than you were before, or a better communicator, or a better anything else. But you did take on more responsibility. And if you read my original post above, you'll see that companies love that! In fact, they WANT you to take more responsibility! On top of that, most companies are willing to overlook most other shortcomings in the pursuit of giving you more responsibility! Why? Because it's cheaper for them to give you a modest-to-large raise if you'll take that additional responsibility than it is for them to hire a brand new person to do that instead. So you get a raise... and probably a title change, whether you "deserve" it -- from a merit, as in "I have actually leveled up" perspective -- or not. To your point yes, once you get to a PhD (or in your case, to an Architect title), it's difficult to advance further, because there's... there's nothing past that in a well-defined way. But that doesn't mean you can't learn and you can't grow. You may have the title of Architect, but it's also totally possible that you aren't a PhD-equivalent in your field. It sounds like you may agree with that statement. Pardon me if I'm wrong on that. Going back to my first sentence, my recommendation would be to put less emphasis on the title and more emphasis on comp, benefits, and the value of the work. I'm a VP of Engineering at my current role, and there isn't much upward mobility for me here (the CTO isn't going anywhere, for example). But I would happily go be a Director of Engineering -- a title cut! -- at another company, assuming I felt the rest (comp, benefits, and my enjoyment of the role) was a lateral-move (preferably better!). In other words, an Architect at a 200 person company may be the equivalent of a Staff Engineer at a 2000 person company and a Senior Engineer at a 20,000 person company. And those larger companies can likely pay better and offer more benefits than the smaller one, despite the "title cut"! Furthermore, those larger companies often have wider range of titles available. You mentioned that you went from mid-level -> senior -> architect, but many enterprise companies have many more levels than that! I've worked at companies where it went something like Engineer -> Senior -> Staff -> Principal -> Architect. If you look at that, you may think "Well, maybe I'm actually a Staff-level engineer at that company," and you might be right. Keeping that in mind, moving to another company and taking a "title cut", such as it is, might actually be a good idea. It could be a "promotion" in many ways -- including the fact that now you have upward mobility again!

busterarm 5y ago

On the other end though, my company promoted me very quickly from mid-level to senior to architect simply because someone was needed to step into those roles and I did (i've maxxed out on Impact and Quality of Work on every performance review). I'm at a largish compay so taking a lower role would only make sense if I went to a FAANG. I still feel like there's a ton for me to learn and when I look at any potential I have outside of this company I feel a bit limited. I would be perfectly happy just being a senior at the right company but perceptions are that you always need to move onto better things. That's not to say that I'm not thriving in my current role, but when you're this far down the IC track if feels like there are fewer desirable exits available.

Jemaclus 5y ago
I would suggest that you're putting an overly strong emphasis on the job title rather than the other benefits and responsibilities of the role. (Pro tip: titles are free. Just look at any sales org -- literally everyone is a VP of something!) While it's true that companies want people who can grow, it gets harder to measure growth as you become more and more experienced -- and almost by definition, your expertise becomes narrower and narrower. The real-world mimics academia in this way fairly well. Getting a Bachelor's degree is about broad learning, while getting a Master's is about specializing. Getting a Doctorate is about specializing so narrowly that you improve the academic world just a tiny bit. (Brief visual explanation of what I'm talking about is here: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/) What you've described sounds less like merit and more like responsibility. You have more responsibility than you had before. You aren't necessarily a better programmer than you were before, or a better communicator, or a better anything else. But you did take on more responsibility. And if you read my original post above, you'll see that companies love that! In fact, they WANT you to take more responsibility! On top of that, most companies are willing to overlook most other shortcomings in the pursuit of giving you more responsibility! Why? Because it's cheaper for them to give you a modest-to-large raise if you'll take that additional responsibility than it is for them to hire a brand new person to do that instead. So you get a raise... and probably a title change, whether you "deserve" it -- from a merit, as in "I have actually leveled up" perspective -- or not. To your point yes, once you get to a PhD (or in your case, to an Architect title), it's difficult to advance further, because there's... there's nothing past that in a well-defined way. But that doesn't mean you can't learn and you can't grow. You may have the title of Architect, but it's also totally possible that you aren't a PhD-equivalent in your field. It sounds like you may agree with that statement. Pardon me if I'm wrong on that. Going back to my first sentence, my recommendation would be to put less emphasis on the title and more emphasis on comp, benefits, and the value of the work. I'm a VP of Engineering at my current role, and there isn't much upward mobility for me here (the CTO isn't going anywhere, for example). But I would happily go be a Director of Engineering -- a title cut! -- at another company, assuming I felt the rest (comp, benefits, and my enjoyment of the role) was a lateral-move (preferably better!). In other words, an Architect at a 200 person company may be the equivalent of a Staff Engineer at a 2000 person company and a Senior Engineer at a 20,000 person company. And those larger companies can likely pay better and offer more benefits than the smaller one, despite the "title cut"! Furthermore, those larger companies often have wider range of titles available. You mentioned that you went from mid-level -> senior -> architect, but many enterprise companies have many more levels than that! I've worked at companies where it went something like Engineer -> Senior -> Staff -> Principal -> Architect. If you look at that, you may think "Well, maybe I'm actually a Staff-level engineer at that company," and you might be right. Keeping that in mind, moving to another company and taking a "title cut", such as it is, might actually be a good idea. It could be a "promotion" in many ways -- including the fact that now you have upward mobility again!