Re:Engineer’s Guide to Career Growth: Advice from My Time at...
by PheonixPharts on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @08:38PM
(#37399859)
This has been my career lesson as well.
One of my earlier jobs I started as a mid-level engineer who had aspirations of doing data science/ML work. The leadership team really liked me and 6 months later I was leading a small team of data scientists. The company started losing momentum and leadership changed so 1 year later I was off to a new gig (with many other coworkers, including the founders).
Much later in my career I found my self far more knowledge, far more skilled and yet at a lower level reporting to people who had been in my exact situation as before only they were just luckier. The frustrating thing I found is that many of these people in "leadership" roles never ended up learning much more after their initial role required, why would the average person?
That said, I'm not nearly as frustrated by this anymore. I write code because I genuinely enjoy the craft, and I like getting paid to solve interesting problems. Career for me has always been secondary to learning and building things. For me at least, I realized that I was grateful that early company didn't take off, otherwise I would have ended up as a VP or potentially even a C-level, but without ever advancing in the things that I enjoy.
I'm also not sure how long this advice will remain relevant. During the tech boom I saw insane career growth; multiple people going from very first job to Director level and above at what eventually were publicly traded companies in just a few years. Things weren't always this insane, and I doubt that will stay that way much longer.
One of my earlier jobs I started as a mid-level engineer who had aspirations of doing data science/ML work. The leadership team really liked me and 6 months later I was leading a small team of data scientists. The company started losing momentum and leadership changed so 1 year later I was off to a new gig (with many other coworkers, including the founders).
Much later in my career I found my self far more knowledge, far more skilled and yet at a lower level reporting to people who had been in my exact situation as before only they were just luckier. The frustrating thing I found is that many of these people in "leadership" roles never ended up learning much more after their initial role required, why would the average person?
That said, I'm not nearly as frustrated by this anymore. I write code because I genuinely enjoy the craft, and I like getting paid to solve interesting problems. Career for me has always been secondary to learning and building things. For me at least, I realized that I was grateful that early company didn't take off, otherwise I would have ended up as a VP or potentially even a C-level, but without ever advancing in the things that I enjoy.
I'm also not sure how long this advice will remain relevant. During the tech boom I saw insane career growth; multiple people going from very first job to Director level and above at what eventually were publicly traded companies in just a few years. Things weren't always this insane, and I doubt that will stay that way much longer.