If you don't mind me asking -- have you found trouble with staying in programming / development into your 40s? Or do you see trouble staying in programming into the "good number of years" ahead? I'm just curious as someone in their early 30's who feels the "pull" towards management as a career longevity move. But on the flip side, I love "soft/upwards management" and being hands-on way more, and without the massive doses of stress of actually being in management to boot.
As someone who went from development to management and then recently back, I strongly recommend that you avoid seeing management as a pull, or as a natural progression for your career. Management is 100% a different skill set, and going there from an engineering position is a career change, not evolution. It's not a promotion, either.
If you do decide to go into management, jump with both feet and give it 100%. And don't weep for your technical chops, because you just can't keep them up at the same level if you are committed to being a leader.
I am 47, very senior "management" position in a large company. I manage a whooping team of three. By choice.
What I am not comfortable with in your comment is the manager = leader (implied in the last sentence). I hate to manage people (to plan their work, to do the logistics of their life at the office etc.). On the other hand I live to be the one pushing for a solution, bringing others in, pushing my obviously brilliant point of view, retro-pedalling when it is not the right one finally and again bring in people with this new solution.
I put a lot of enthusiasm and energy into it and I am very happy.
I think the qualities of a manager and a leader are different, some people can be both but also only one of them.
I managed from 1 to 350 peple, the latter was horrible.
In the 1 to 350 equation where was the line where things turned south and what were some of the qualities that differentiated the good experience as a manager and the not so good?
I'm just curious as someone in their early 30's who feels the "pull" towards management as a career longevity move.
Yeah, I answered that call. Meh, avoid if you can, unless you really, really feel that the team would do better with you leading it rather than contributing at an IC level. IOW, let's not take a good engineer and turn her into a mediocre (if you're lucky) manager.
There have been those times when a team was better off with me as a leader, rather than getting my hands dirty. But when I've been that better leader, it's because I learned from being a shitty one. And no matter how good of an engineer you might be, if you go management you are almost guaranteed to suck at your job for a while. And who wants to suck at their job?
So now I'm in my fifties, plugging away as an IC, happy as a clam in shit. I've owned and sold two businesses (turns out I don't like being a businessman, either), clawed my way to director (well, it kind of landed in my lap), but sit me down with an editor and a problem to solve, and that's where I want to be. I don't make as much money as I could, but FFS, even a kid out of college can make six figures in this industry, how much more money do I need? Happiness, OTOH, I can always use more of.
I don't worry about "aging out" of coding. I'll caveat that with the fact that when I hired on at Microsoft in the 90s, some folks thought that meant you were kinda smart. So there is the chance that I'm the rich person telling poor people to just make more money and they won't be poor anymore when I say that I don't have any more problem passing the interview and doing the job than I ever did. And I think I'm just a maybe above-average techy, despite what companies might be on my resume. But, yeah, if your most recent experience is maintaining old FoxPro applications for the last ten years, you might have a spot of trouble.
I've been lucky to find companies where I could honestly say, "look, I have managed (up to CTO level) and I don't like it, I know myself well enough to know that I will just try to find excuses to write code. I want to be a technical leader, not a manager." I think most sane managers can understand that. If they can't... NEXT!
I live in NYC and in the startup scene here (in my experience) young superstars get (demand!) a lot of attention but hiring managers are always stoked to find someone with some seasoning who is not averse to working in a startup environment. I try to be very upfront that I place a high priority on my family and I will not be spending 60-hour weeks in the office. As long as expectations are set properly nobody has had a problem with that.
I'm 40 and have no trouble staying in programming / development.
The challenge is "Flow". It needs to be something at the right difficulty level and as you get older it feels like things get very repetitive.
Working a company with a hard problem to solve and that allows for more creativity, experimentation, and implementing of new ideas / paradigms is very rewarding. I have been at other companies where it feels more like grunt work and it is miserable.
I haven't personally felt any drive towards management but I do find mentoring junior developers and interns quite rewarding.
