What no one told me was, as a senior resource how much context switching I need to do.
It's not even 12pm and I have been in 5 meetings, about 4 different projects
-- streaming platform but blockchain (Node, Golang) > planning + deployment issues meeting
-- goodreads but lighter > frontend approvals and ideas
-- custom node module development in C++ for internal db > debugging
-- SD card ETL tool > estimations and planning

custom node module development in C++ for internal db

-> i can only dream about having to work on something like that for a living. It would trigger me into full developer mode.

Literally the reason why I refuse to become "senior".

Every company has its own definition of senior anyway.

@retoor that is also the one I wanna focus on and am thinking of it like a *treat*

@Lensflare exactly, sold myself as medior for a long time because of it but did get the decent pay. Best deal ever. Never was really interested in the Jr, medior, SR stuff. But I won't accept junior status for anything dev related in title anymore. Overall experience does always count. If I gonna sell cars or whatever else, I would accept a junior title. But not for dev job.

@retoor my company lets you have the senior title only if you practically stop doing dev work and start doing people management and meetings all day.

@Lensflare whahaa, I worked for a company that promoted all good devs to no dev positions. The overal dev of the company was quite OK so it wasn't a big problem but the devs that did it, regretted it hardcore. I was never offered such role within that company because it's very obvious that I don't have such ambition. Turning down such promotion is not appreciated either.

Reason was: that company had your function very hard tied to a range of salary. So, if you were a very good dev but you wanted to have even more money, you needed to do something else within the company. I was an exception btw, I made a deal for a above proportional raise if i could get the sentry server clean. They thought it was impossible probably, but I went hardcore and did it. After that, I didn't go for the raise but left the company and raised even more. Solving *** issues realized what effect the approach of development the company had, really had and decided it was time to leave.

@Lensflare sad story is, i do not really like the real professional development at all. It's just unpractical. Much bloat. I once worked at a small company doing everything quite amateuristic, not the way to go but we delivered great software and the velocity and commitment of devs was insane. Will never forget that period. Barely ever a meeting. Everyone knew what to do. Full gas. Software didn't have much issues because high ownership per module per programmer (yeah, i know, that's not profi, but it worked!) and a very good MANUAL test team. And you can imagine that the test team did everything to find a mistake, they were very motivated. The team were a selection of customers and internal employees working with the software. It was a b2b car valuation and trading platform. Cars dude, the options and accessorizes and their values. Dear lord, what a project.

@Lensflare I have had some meetings where I have been told being a senior dev I need to step a bit away from dev work, and focus on the bigger picture as being more of a solution architect and having my hands in multiple things at once

I still focus half my day on active dev stuff because I simply cannot let it go, it's where I derive work satisfaction from the most - the other half is problem solving and meetings

@cjde225 @retoor

Sad to hear that this kind of practice seems to be common in the corporate dev world :/

It just feels… wrong.

@Lensflare yeah, something is going wrong, I think that the people offer it as an 'upgrade'. But they're not upgrades for us at all, else we would've studied something else. Who has the dream becoming a manager and starts a dev career? Lead, I understand very well tho, at a certain point you can become just the 'chosen one' with most influence. Once when I was lead, I took over things from other company that was doing great work and delivered well. I followed someone's recipe that i've learned. Then, I got tired of being lead and gave my position to a friend what was working in my previous company. He changed everything and made it the same way as in our previous company and the result was there was no progress just like in our previous company while we're going so hard before that they were creating new tickets out of panic. We went brrrrrr. From that - to flat lining regarding delivery. It doesn't matter what you make, if you don't finish, it's worth nothing.

@Lensflare I happen to have a very similar approach for the position of a 'lead'.

@retoor Your small company sounds like my 1st job at a small, startup gamedev company.

Pay was abysmal && often !on time, projects were uninspiring, but the team was tops.

Met many great people there.

Became best friends w/ one of them - we keep in touch to this day, even though we'd both left that company in different directions career && geographically-wise.

@D-4got10-01 it went for me that way with many coworkers. Only the good ones :p People who align in commitment to the cause 😁