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I was close to getting a staff engineer promotion at my last job after doing a stint as an engineering manager and then switching back to an individual contribu

I was close to getting a staff engineer promotion at my last job after doing a stint as an engineering manager and then switching back to an individual contributor. I declined the promotion and ended up switching jobs and staying at the senior level. I loved writing proposals, planning them, leading the team on them, and putting larger pieces of the puzzle together. But I couldn't stand having to get in endless arguments with upper management, designers, and other staff level engineers about how to do something. Everybody had an opinion, including me, and there were never any good answers. I chalk a lot of the negativity up to the culture of the company- it wasn't fun and tensions were often very high. Glad to be back at the senior level, but I do miss having more say over the broader direction that the platform that I'm working on is headed.

karmakaze 4y ago
I completely understand this. Even when people are not intentionally being difficult there can be difficulties in exchanging views and getting to a point of agreement. I probably went through up to a year of such discussions (when starting at each company), sometimes arguments, not to the point of raised voices but certainly talking past one another. I don't know exactly how to avoid this but it has gotten much better for me lately. I think it's from a few factors: word seems to have gotten around that I know stuff, I'm much more patient taking a talk and learn approach, and I myself am more open to the possibility that I might be off base. The last feedback I received was wondering why it was taking so long to have a technical point resolved. In this particular case there was a lot of the discussion captured in PR comments and Slack threads where in the end it was clear that I was addressing long term conceptual/design concerns vs short term ease of implementation. The parts that I'm having difficulty with now is that since I produce much less tangible output and if I do my job well, it's avoided a lot of unnecessary work, it's hard to point at exactly what it is I did when it's mostly improving others' output. I've never been one to spend much time/effort on self promotion, but I'll have to start writing up some of my high level understandings and ideas and share them around. As long as there's value to other devs/managers reading it, I'm up for that. Maybe working at a large company helps. For instance the only time I have to be much concerned about front-end is with API design. And I don't often even speak to upper management as there are many levels so it tends to be more project focused. Maybe it's good to check yourself and carve out boundaries to be concerned about. I myself skip most meta-discussions about process etc, or long term company direction, and focus on doing good back-end designs and implementations. Good luck on your journey.

karmakaze 4y ago

I completely understand this. Even when people are not intentionally being difficult there can be difficulties in exchanging views and getting to a point of agreement. I probably went through up to a year of such discussions (when starting at each company), sometimes arguments, not to the point of raised voices but certainly talking past one another. I don't know exactly how to avoid this but it has gotten much better for me lately. I think it's from a few factors: word seems to have gotten around that I know stuff, I'm much more patient taking a talk and learn approach, and I myself am more open to the possibility that I might be off base. The last feedback I received was wondering why it was taking so long to have a technical point resolved. In this particular case there was a lot of the discussion captured in PR comments and Slack threads where in the end it was clear that I was addressing long term conceptual/design concerns vs short term ease of implementation. The parts that I'm having difficulty with now is that since I produce much less tangible output and if I do my job well, it's avoided a lot of unnecessary work, it's hard to point at exactly what it is I did when it's mostly improving others' output. I've never been one to spend much time/effort on self promotion, but I'll have to start writing up some of my high level understandings and ideas and share them around. As long as there's value to other devs/managers reading it, I'm up for that. Maybe working at a large company helps. For instance the only time I have to be much concerned about front-end is with API design. And I don't often even speak to upper management as there are many levels so it tends to be more project focused. Maybe it's good to check yourself and carve out boundaries to be concerned about. I myself skip most meta-discussions about process etc, or long term company direction, and focus on doing good back-end designs and implementations. Good luck on your journey.