Comment by deepsquirrelnet
Comment by deepsquirrelnet 10 hours ago
For me, I have two competing worries in deciding what’s next after senior. I like to spend my days in code. I don’t enjoy time spent in meetings like some people seem to. I don’t enjoy managing other people. But I also don’t enjoy poorly planned work, which is problematic as I’m become more opinionated about over time.
Ultimately, I think you should feel ok rejecting a promotion if it forces you into responsibilities you don’t want to have. But you’re probably going to have to accept the consequences of that either way. And you might even be forced into doing some of those responsibilities and not get paid for it.
I work for a smaller company (~100 people) and took ownership of a new greenfield project. I have to wear all hats: hiring people, firing people, managing people (ensuring they're happy, salary adjustments), mentoring, project manager, architect, database design, mentoring other teams as SME (stayed at company too long), meeting with domain experts and creating requirements, UX design (amazing how few seem capable of this), reporting to leadership, meeting with clients, meeting with partners and their dev team, etc.
As you can imagine, some of these responsibilities can drive you mad. The domain experts may expect the product to do X, but they want it to work the same as their product made in the 90's and they start dictating how the UI should function. Since ultimately the success of the product is in my hands, communication ultimately is the most important thing. You have to push back against nonsense and suggest other ways of doing things to people who may be set in their ways (lots of yelling and you need to keep your calm). The endless meetings are another issue. And we don't have a strong company culture to set policies on meetings (like Amazon enforcing meetings must have a small 1 page writeup that everyone has to read). When you're hyper-focused on not wasting time and you join these meetings where half the time is spent talking about weekend plans it can drive you insane.
I got into software development because I enjoyed coding, problem solving, etc. I never signed up for this! I think after this, my next move will be able to step down into a role at another company with less responsibility. This is just too much pressure, especially with two young kids at home.