Background: I work as a senior PM in a big tech company. The pay, without being out of line with the market, is more than I ever thought I'd make. I owned my house outright at age 40, I go out to eat whenever I feel like it, I get to travel a few times a year. I'm pretty happy about my life day to day.
But then I still think of my job as challenging and sometimes stressful. I look at some of my lower level engineering peers that are "stuck" in their careers (5+ years at the same level, no management responsibility), and honestly I feel like they have a pretty blissful life. Maybe I'm idealizing, but I feel like they can just think about how to build something, get it built, and move to the next thing. Not have to deal with recruitment, management, strategy, etc. Show up and fix the bugs.
I used to be a SWE and have kept my skills current, so I'm considering a move back and down from senior strategy and product work back to engineering IC work. This would likely cut my pay in half, so I'd have to do away with some luxuries, but I feel I could manage it financially.
Yet I also have a strong instinct against doing this, because it feels like self sabotage according to the standard definitions of a career. I worry about having regrets and endangering my family's financial safety.
Any folks who've gone through this and want to share their advice?
With this framing, it can turn your life into a disaster.
Up to that point, I was nodding to every sentence you wrote. But not to this, no. When I demoted myself in my time, which ended very well, I had a different framing (or, a different gut feeling). My instinct was that I'm selling my well-being for much much too low a price and that, this time, there is a greener pasture.
I was noticing the money flow and how I was enabling a business owner, a very concrete physical person, to profit immensely. You can call it envy, I'd say I've learned that I can enter and leave any business transaction as I please.
The career path is just smoke and mirrors.
The ownership shenanigans is just smoke and mirrors. It doesn't matter that the ownership is split into million shares, because in the end of the chain the wealth (from many companies) does converge to an individual. Look through these schemes. As a thought experiment, think about that individual on a hard day, imagine how you've just made "him" 2 million with your sacrifice and you will get 20 grand bonus.
I'm not saying to go to the streets and loot the businesses, I'm saying you need to see your transaction and your options clearly, without distractions. Talk to your family in this framing as well.
My thoughts exactly. Management or enterprise architecture seems so much more stressful and uncomfortable than coding that I would consider doing it for at least 70% raise (and probably would require closer over 100% to really pull the trigger). Whereas, in practice it pays maybe 30% more than coding and, in many companies here in Europe, actually less than coding (managers are perms with meager salaries, coders are contractors with fat daily rates).
If you want to capture that money for yourself you can, but it will be a very hard slog.
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Further, as you get older, becoming an IC has ageism risks, and returning to age appropriate leadership roles maybe hard with the “drop” on your resume.
This fallacy is so common, but so obviously illogical. By definition, "leadership" roles require a larger number of "followers". Corporate structures are inevitably pyramid shaped, with a tiny number of executives at the top and then more middle managers below and still more ICs at the base.
But unless you're in a country with exponential population growth happening, that structure clearly doesn't represent the populace. There are going to be way more older workers than there are spots at the top of the pyramid.
As a society, we really need to embrace reality and stop pretending like the 5% of people in the upper ranks succeeded and the other 95% of people failed, if they don't rise to the top and then stay there for the rest of their career.
One other thing in tech, I feel like there is a feeling that if you don’t have FU money by 40, and are still working in the coding weeds, you actually aren’t any good and are vulnerable when layoffs etc come around.
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I’ve been to a colleague’s ‘demotion party’ from team lead to IC in another office - they had no regrets.
Be prepared for employers to be nervous about employing you - some will be worried about you being too big a flight risk because you might still have an open door to senior PM roles. So plan to manage that fear on their side.
If you are not happy then I think it is worth moving "down". Worrying about financial safety is important but what about your mental health?
My vote is to seriously consider the move and try to figure out a way to make it work moving "down".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33126861
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30204355
I could have continued working at 100%... but what for? I realized I don't need status symbols like expensive clothes or a sports car with vanity plates, and my kids will get their smartphones second-hand, just as I do. We're now living in the countryside with decently sized garden and some animals around the house.
I've escaped the treadmill and it was the best decision of my life.
My advice: don’t do it. Look around while you have a job, but stay fully committed to your duties at work (stealing from your employers is still stealing and is wrong).
If you need to, take some vto to clear your mind and relax.