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It shifts in the 50s. Often earlier though. 20 - 25: Please please please everyone 26 - 30: Hey I've been pleasing everyone and everyone loves me so I should

It shifts in the 50s. Often earlier though. 20 - 25: Please please please everyone 26 - 30: Hey I've been pleasing everyone and everyone loves me so I should be a technical lead now. I'm quitting if that doesn't happen. 31 - 35: Hey I'm pretty much doing this perfectly but the major problem now is that the management layer has no idea how this stuff works. Promote me and I can provide insight into why things are going slow and I can help improve things. 36 - 45: Management layers and potentially vice this or chief "tech" that. 46 - 55: Most major burns and let go for new blood. 56 - Onward until you no longer want to work: Go back to development work and focus more on that getting that pool or a house out in the country. I don't care about climbing the ladder I just want that huge dev salary and take care of myself and wife.

indemnity 4y ago
I’m already at the terminal stage at 42 ;) Happy to go back to dev only roles until I retire. Don’t give a shit about titles or org chart any more, since house paid off last month, no debt, a few hundred K in liquid investments. Only reason I went for those roles was to accelerate this time table. Dev compensation in return for no responsibility over people or project execution or deliveries any more is juuust fine by me.
- yakak 4y ago
  Curious, have you avoided companies with the new fads? I feel like it would be more draining to be an individual dev in an org of young people doing agile than someone with responsibilities in a place that avoids meetings.. But I have been avoiding directly working in agile orgs, so I could be wrong?
  - indemnity 4y ago
    I was in a few startups, but stopped moving around and climbed the org chart with the last acquisition. Kept myself up to date, so I’m pretty comfortable on modern stack infra and backend (avoid front end churn). Agile is everywhere, we work in two week sprints here. But take a more sanguine view towards the metrics, it’s not the end of the world if something slips. I’d love to avoid meetings, my current role leans 70% meetings in my calendar. But I just seem to accumulate architecture, process and delivery responsibilities in whatever team I go into, which is annoying because I love nothing more than head down coding, but I can’t stand things being done the “wrong way” (a.k.a over engineering or under engineering, wrong debt being taken on at the wrong time, etc). And this means meetings and lots of communication.
- oh-4-fucks-sake 4y ago
  Checking in at 33 in the same boat. I still feel like I have juice in these legs to hit it hard hands-on-keyboard for another decade or two--but I keep getting pushed into a position where I manage/architect-for ~12 devs and growing. If C-suite had its way, I'd probably move full-time into an advisory/admin position on ARBs, OKR initiatives, drawing diagrams ... I feel I'm moving into Peter Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) territory. I don't care about pay bumps--I just want to work full-time as an individual contributor.
throwaway22032 4y ago
This feels like the either the 1980s, or more like 'first order approximation' track to me. In reality it's more like, read this online, then you're jaded before you even start so you just go all out. If you tell a 20 year old that at 40 they're going to be in some middle management job still paying off the mortgage they'll laugh you out of the room. Everyone I know is either balls deep FIRE so half of that chart is "on the beach", or doing jobs they enjoy that pay fuck all.
ckdarby 4y ago
With this timeline and if you put away 35% of that net income then you can cut the timeline in half. Not by age but by the list. Which results around late 30s and early 40s already retired. Broad assumptions around kids, how many kids, what lifestyle, and moving to a lower cost of living area eventually.

indemnity 4y ago

I’m already at the terminal stage at 42 ;) Happy to go back to dev only roles until I retire. Don’t give a shit about titles or org chart any more, since house paid off last month, no debt, a few hundred K in liquid investments. Only reason I went for those roles was to accelerate this time table. Dev compensation in return for no responsibility over people or project execution or deliveries any more is juuust fine by me.

yakak 4y ago
Curious, have you avoided companies with the new fads? I feel like it would be more draining to be an individual dev in an org of young people doing agile than someone with responsibilities in a place that avoids meetings.. But I have been avoiding directly working in agile orgs, so I could be wrong?
- indemnity 4y ago
  I was in a few startups, but stopped moving around and climbed the org chart with the last acquisition. Kept myself up to date, so I’m pretty comfortable on modern stack infra and backend (avoid front end churn). Agile is everywhere, we work in two week sprints here. But take a more sanguine view towards the metrics, it’s not the end of the world if something slips. I’d love to avoid meetings, my current role leans 70% meetings in my calendar. But I just seem to accumulate architecture, process and delivery responsibilities in whatever team I go into, which is annoying because I love nothing more than head down coding, but I can’t stand things being done the “wrong way” (a.k.a over engineering or under engineering, wrong debt being taken on at the wrong time, etc). And this means meetings and lots of communication.
oh-4-fucks-sake 4y ago
Checking in at 33 in the same boat. I still feel like I have juice in these legs to hit it hard hands-on-keyboard for another decade or two--but I keep getting pushed into a position where I manage/architect-for ~12 devs and growing. If C-suite had its way, I'd probably move full-time into an advisory/admin position on ARBs, OKR initiatives, drawing diagrams ... I feel I'm moving into Peter Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) territory. I don't care about pay bumps--I just want to work full-time as an individual contributor.

throwaway22032 4y ago

This feels like the either the 1980s, or more like 'first order approximation' track to me. In reality it's more like, read this online, then you're jaded before you even start so you just go all out. If you tell a 20 year old that at 40 they're going to be in some middle management job still paying off the mortgage they'll laugh you out of the room. Everyone I know is either balls deep FIRE so half of that chart is "on the beach", or doing jobs they enjoy that pay fuck all.

ckdarby 4y ago

With this timeline and if you put away 35% of that net income then you can cut the timeline in half. Not by age but by the list. Which results around late 30s and early 40s already retired. Broad assumptions around kids, how many kids, what lifestyle, and moving to a lower cost of living area eventually.