> who I remember for two things
I'll bite, what's the second thing?
Oh, I introduced him to “kakipea” (kaki no tane with peanuts) , a Japanese snack food. He alternated between shoving money into my hand when we went to the Asian market for lunch and then cursing me around a mouthful of them the next several days and calling me his dealer.
I know a few things. I know that some aspects of our development strategy are not under my control, and there's little I can do besides beg and cajole. I know that line managers don't have much more control over that process, and that if you get any higher in the org then you won't even see code let alone touch it.
I also know, through my career and volunteer work, that I can manage about 6 people sustainably. And that pigeonholes me into line manager where I get none of the things I want.
And because of that, I've barely gazed at the grass on that side of that fence, let alone yearned for it. I'll continue to do tech lead and mentoring work and the major changes from here on out will be the kind and reach of the projects I associate with, not my status within those projects.