Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?

Get the same job working for government. Work stability in government is unparalleled, and there is so much cruft and technical debt that you will literally spend up until your last breath fixing legacy code and trying to get people off ancient software systems.

You will stagnate, and nobody will give a shit. People will come and go next to you, but you will be stable through the ages, like a pillar in an ancient Roman temple... Seasons will leave behind memories, but the winds will not take you with them. You will prevail, no matter what. Maybe forgotten, maybe overlooked, but more certainly not underestimated.

In the U.S., maybe somewhere like Naval Undersea Warfare Centers (at least when I worked there).

The problems they're solving are pretty constant, but they go very deep technically for those who are interested. There's a very long learning curve compared to most private sector jobs, but you can power through it in proportion to your personal ambitions.

Downsides: (1) You're a political punching bag for 50% of the candidates in each federal election, except in years where military power is on the electorates' minds. (2) Mediocre pay. (3) Soul-crushing bureaucracy. (4) It's the only job I've ever had where the employer has missed payroll.

Other pros: (1) Working with the same folks for many years can be nice. (2) Within limits, national defense is really important. If you want it done well, this is an opportunity to pitch in.

Caveat: invading Greenland or Panama isn't what I'd call "national defense". But the learning curve / hiring process are too cumbersome to quit and rejoin every 4 years depending on politics. I know of no good solution to this one.

One option is to find a job that has legacy work. A good place to look is a non-tech company. IE: a company that might use tech to run the business (which you will support), but tech isn't their main product. These companies tend be using older software because they aren't really required to have the latest and greatest.

Lots of large tech firms have defined career ladders with a concept of terminal levels - typically senior level beyond which there is no up-or-out expectation of growth. I think small and midsize companies that focus on fast growth will often carry this expectation, so I'd avoid those. Alternatively: small non-startups or large companies beyond their prime (again, lack of company-wide focus on rapid growth is key here).

> Has anyone worked somewhere that they felt they could just do their job without worrying about the career advancement aspect?

That's every place I've ever worked, to be honest, including tech megacorps. Lots of places will put a lot of emphasis on career advancement, but I've never seen anyone punished for not doing it. I'm not counting "won't get promoted" as a punishment, for obvious reasons.

Bloomberg. The terminal level on their IC ladder is "Senior". They have no formal concept of Staff or Principal engineer. People spend decades there.

Try to look for small/medium non-tech companies. There's quite a few out there that have dev teams but their primary product or service isn't software. The downside to that though is pay likely won't be as good as big tech, and sometimes they can be hit or miss with being able to work on exciting or new stuff.

I work for a medium-ish company (around 250 employees), and we're just a small team two devs, and a sysadmin basically and are pretty autonomous and there's no "up or out" expectation for anyone here.

There's definitely downsides - no one outside of our team has any technical ability whatsoever so communicating requirements back and forth is difficult, and a lot of the work is boring business CRUD and integrating SaaS products together, but it pays well enough and I love being pretty much autonomous on our small team. Most days it just fees like I'm a contractor.

All that being said, I'm almost 40 so I don't mind the boring enterprisey work. In my younger years this job would've burned me out super fast, just something to keep in mind.

Maybe just job-hop. Sure, you're a senior for 10 years at one company, then be a senior at another company for another 10 years. I know that's easier said than done, and could run into ageism as you get older.

Reframe it - no job has ever advanced you career wise. There's no curriculum, it's just a random hodpodge of tech stacks and features. If you advanced, that was on you. There was no professor or tutor there, no gun to your head, certainly no mom or dad. It was just you, your drive, your talent, and whatever you perceived as a challenge or trial. If you want to stop advancing, that's on you, as it always was.

Most companies have a similar profile. There's an up-or-out phase and then there's some level where it no longer matters. Because titles are all over the place it's hard to predict what that level is. But it roughly translates to the point where your value exceeds your cost. For most software companies this is usually the point where one is a very capable IC, able to work independently, as well as able to guide & mentor more junior employees. YMMV

It will never be the case that it's okay to coast for a long time at the lower/middle levels because in the grand scheme of things you're not worth the hassle for them.

Try to think of this from the organisation's point of view. The up or out culture serves two purposes. It helps ensure senior roles go to people they know well and trust, and it ensures there is room for other ambitious and motivated people to move up.

In other words the whole objective is to have a well run organisation with motivated employees. The objective is definitely not to force hard working and talented people to leave.

If you are hard working and talented it's incredibly unlikely they will want to push you out and then go through the whole process of hiring and training a replacement. It's worth having a conversation with your manager before looking for a new job.

A good dev manager would be thrilled to have a senior like you on their team. Rockstars are great, but bedrock employees are better.

Become a contractor. They don’t get promotions. Or any other benefit except pay. So become an expensive contractor.

Personally working in smaller companies, startups (the scene probably ends somehow in 1-3 years) and academic organizations (professors have a career path, staff not) I find that no advancement is a norm.

Qualcomm, at least until I left in 2017, had two parallel career tracks, one for management and another for individual contributors. Both had equal pay grades. It was up to you whether you wanted to follow one or the other.

So if your concern is that you don't want to become a manager while still being well paid, that is an option. Other than that, the culture was pretty nice, especially in the Markham (Canada) office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

>> This outcome is inevitable, given enough time and enough positions in the hierarchy to which competent employees may be promoted.

So if you accept this, you need to find a place where there is no hierarchy: explicit, shadow or implicit.

Government. Though US Federal is a mess right now.

Anecdotally, Netflix is very "settle into your groove and get really good at your job" if you want it to be. There are of course folks that climb the ladder, but I also work with several L5's (Senior engineers) who have been at that level for years. Some of this of course has to do with the introduction of levels being quite recent (within the last 4 years or so) but the majority of folks I know that have been here for 10+ years are at L5 (Senior Engineer, which is like 70% of the engineering staff). The vast majority of folks stay in their hired levels for their entire time at the company, and the salary increases are steady year-to-year. I'm personally trying to push my career forward into either L6 or management eventually, but I also get the distinct feeling that if I decided to settle into my role and not advance that I'd still be here and quite happy 5 years from now.

I worked for all kinds of companies, big and small, corporate and startups, and I thought very few of them had much of the “up or out” mentality or even opportunities. So every time I wanted “up”, I basically moved elsewhere. It seemed to me that most teams and most people actually prefer that stability and didn’t push others either.

I've mostly worked as an IC and a manager in technical organizations outside of VC backed startup land. In those orgs I've found that most places consider 'Senior Engineer' to be a terminal level. By that I mean until you get to senior engineer it us up or out. In fact, as I manager, I've had explicit timelines on which I've had to get people to senior, or manage them out. Once you DO get to senior engineer they are happy to let you stay there forever because a) senior engineers are what keeps the tech org going day to day b) the staff+ path and management path are not just 'up' from senior - they are actually different jobs from senior requiring a different skillset. The downside of this is don't expect anything more than cost-of-living increases in pay.

My company is very big too but if you want to be a good developer and you are happy with your normal salary increase everyone else gets, people will be happy about it because there is no budget anyway to give you a higher position.

I don't think this is a real issue if you are not wanting to make a lot of money.

I've gone everywhere from CTO, Founder, staff engineer, product architect ... in totally non-linear fashions, sometimes in order, then in reverse ... been at this almost 30 years. Don't worry abut it, just do what you want.

Obviously some jobs and some managers may not "get" it, but, if you make it clear to your manager that your only interest is being an individual contributor, this should totally be possible. I have only ever managed once and don't really intend to do it again, simply because I am not particularly good at it. I don't think I've ever left a company because there is pressure to ascend to management, not even Google was pushing me towards that.

If you think about it, I'm sure you can think of coworkers around you that are in the boat of just being an IC long-term, usually working on specialist tasks. I think that's basically what you want, a niche that you can specialize in.

I am a senior web developer (7 years of experience) and I also am pretty much comfortable where I am. The company that I work on is definitely happy with the arrangement too, as I don’t get (nor expect) aggressive salary raise and the company is not profitable and with a short runway.

Maybe that’s the spot, find a small company (doesn’t have to be a startup without cash). There won’t be place to grow, so they actually prefer someone without that kind of ambition.

At least, it works for me so far

> my current job has a very strong “up or out” mentality that I’m starting to push up against. And most other places I’ve worked at or talk about with friends seem to have similar attitudes toward career progression

Hmm, is this why must software products have tons of usability-destroying bugs that never get fixed, even while continually launching new features?

I think it's possible in some large companies. My company has very standardized process. You have a level, expectations for that level, and bonus or way out depending on how you compare with the baseline. As long as you perform at our above expectations, and that you're happy with your paycheck, you're fine.

Try consulting. Once your reach Senior Consultant level it's pretty much the end of the path for ICs.

Years ago I had a consulting project with sapient consulting in New Delhi (a consultant consulting for a consulting company) and I was impressed that they had a viable promotion track for engineers that only wanted to engineer and not manage people. No idea if they still do this.

Actually, most non-swe jobs are like that. I mean check how inefficient any other industry is.

If you want to stay in swe, government jobs are the best, of you can get in as a permanent employee, not as a contractor.

Have you talked to your manager about it? I’m at a large tech company and I know people who have requested to stay at their current level.

look for smaller, private companies. They'll require you to do a broader range of tasks, but there's no progression because there's no hierarchy or formal management. Most of the devs I know who've been in the same role for longer than ~10 years work for < 50 people companies that will always be < 50 people companies.

there are lots of companies where promotions are very very rare. Find one. Look for companies where the current managers have been in their exact same role for 10 or 20 years or more.

Dead end jobs are the norm from what I've seen.

do staff engineers really have increased responsibility & workload at your company? The distinction between staff and sr is kind of fake at most places I think. If anything, its just staff have more leeway to choose what to work on.

Many smaller companies are what you describe.

The pay will probably be less, but it is a trade-off.

Dentist

It's not about advancing. You're working in a stack ranked world where 2/3+ of your peers are on H1B visas are at risk of being deported (plus that's the culture of their home country). You could do the same job but just live in the EU and you'd be less likely to experience these woes.

The current place I'm at, and the last job I was at, do allow folks to hit the "senior/staff" and stay there. These are not FAANG and not early startups, but they're not exactly banks/utilities. These small-to-medium SaaS companies seem to find value in folks being effective in their roles for as long as those folks are willing to stay (duration, 3 years at each of these two employers, though I know folks who've been at each at their current level for 6+ years).

That kind of stability and valuing "being effective at the role your comfortable with" meant a lot to me. I also felt like I saw the best versions of each role and fewer folks stretching parts of themselves across different aspects of different roles.

Becoming old is one solution. Less expectation from older folks to move up if they are happy where they are. But as you know, it's a journey to get there :)

A more practical solution as people mentioned here, is staying away from big tech / corporate America.

has your job security actually been threatened or is this another episode of Using Ask HN as My Therapist

Co-owner of a "consulting company" with partner(s) that are more into the business and management side of things, are cool with you mostly just coding, handling the software related fires, and help guiding, mostly independent, developers, as needed.

After 20 years, I was fortunate enough to know the right people, and be in the right places at the right time, for it to fall into my lap, so I have no advice on how to achieve that, but I never want to go back to regular employment again.

I had a weird career, waiter => build startup => sold => Google 7 years => left.

The bigs used to be great for this: the two problems a Googler manager has with talent management is A) motivating people who won't do work because they know they won't advance B) trying to placate people who work hard, when there's no significant reward for it, for years, and social mores mean there's no polite way to explain why.

Past that, and assuming you can just get a job wherever, I'd wonder why you want to actively not advance. You can't really say this to a manager with a straight face without getting "tsk tsk'd", even when everyone knows there's no real room for it. It'd get dissembled into not having a growth mindset or whatever if its actively voiced.

If you're looking for stability and WLB, my understanding of Amazon/FB from Googlers was they were somewhat ruthless in turning people over, and that's certainly gotten worse. And now it's happening at Google too, there's a defacto quota of ~10% of people who need to get hassled early. And it wasn't fair or rational necessarily who was.

For many companies 'senior' engineer is a terminal level, meaning you can continue on it and will be respected if you do so.

As you've said, both Staff or Eng. Manager role carry out more responsibility, as they are both leadership positions, one being more technical and the other more related to people.

There's a natural push for sending experienced people into the Staff/Manager bracket but I see plenty of people in their 40s and 50s working happily as a Senior Developer.