Good article, I can relate to it. Just this morning I was thinking, while interviewing an SDE 2 candidate: "how did we ever get here?". By "here" I mean in a si

Good article, I can relate to it. Just this morning I was thinking, while interviewing an SDE 2 candidate: "how did we ever get here?". By "here" I mean in a situation where it seems that software developers after 3-4 years of experience are forced/coerced/encourage to "influence other orgs", "execute through others", etc. instead of designing systems and writing code. Every time I get a new team/org, I just tell everyone that I will minimize the meetings and maximize the ability to write code and build stuff. One would think this would make me a popular manager, but feedback is always mixed: more experienced engineers complain that I am taking away their promotion opportunities by de-emphasizing "influencing other orgs". Some leave. I am also a prolific interviewer, and I have noticed that developers learned the game and are now emphasizing "leadership and alignment" skills vs. actual technical skills. Back then when I started, maybe 1 out of 3 candidates I interviewed were the hacker-oriented engineer who loved solving problems. Now it's maybe 1 in 20 - all the rest are more concerned about showing how they aligned 300 product managers to build a batch job to remind the customer to buy shoes. It's a depressing state of affairs.