Senior Devs, what career have you moved on to avoid impeding doom?

I’m a “senior” with about 8 years of experience in the US. I recently switched jobs to go fully remote. It took me about 2.5 weeks to get a new job with less responsibility and more pay. I was getting more interest from companies than I could handle and turned down 2/3s of phone screens.

I assume Europe must be a lot different than the US because I certainly didn’t notice it here.

From my previous role…the amount of “decent” devs out there is staggeringly low. The bullshit I’d put up with because a dev was technically competent was astounding given how much they were paid. It took months to find replacements that were passable. Again maybe it’s just US centric but I don’t see it. There is definitely a shortage of competent developers.

I have been a dev for a long time and one thing I am sure about is that some of my job searches have been easy and some have been hard. For instance,

  That time I "burned out",  said "take this job and shove it" and was working on another job 
  in two days.  

  The time I built a machine learning system to filter job listings,  talked about it for the
  first interview and got the job right away.  

and also

  The year of desperate searching,  then another six months of waiting for some academics to 
  find the funding.

  Being able to sell a tiny amount of consulting work here and a tiny amount of work there 
  myself,  then bringing on a "business development" guy on spec who couldn't sell his way 
  out of a paper bag.  The first time I found out he lied to a prospect I kept working with
  him which was retrospectively a huge mistake.

What I do know is that junior people are complaining that there are only jobs for senior devs and seniors are complaining that all the jobs are for juniors.

My 2c: I get the same feeling some times, but if we just base this on job offers, then we're extremely biased, because the offers themselves are biased.

I've had to hunt for talent myself, and reviewed dozens of software developers, and finding someone with 10+ years of good experience is close to impossible, so I would never have that as a request in a job posting, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't want someone like that in my team.

You have a couple of options. 1) Stay with a company for a long time, learn everything about the business domain and software. You will always get jobs in that domain even with different companies 2) Learn deeply about computing principles, these will take a life time to learn but you will never be short of a job, i'm talking about knowing deeply about databases, how data is stored, distributed computing, how a program works on a single machine all the way from code level to assembly to hell even instruction sets on cpu. I've fallen into the trap of also thinking that i'm expanding my skills by working hard for a company but upon reflection i notice that i work hard but the work itself is doing nothing to increase my skills (see #2), so i basically got a job that can help me increase my skills (#2).

I moved from "regular" engineering to data engineering in the last few years which is closer to ML which I find very interesting but comprised of all the stuff that actually needs to be done before ML happens and moved up to "higher end" engineering from having worked entirely in startups to my first big corporate job where I make enough money to retire in 6 years if I want. Bonus is this company isn't a FAANG and morally I get to have a neutral to positive impact on the world but they pay roughly L5 Google level total comp.

If things go well, then if this whole industry goes south I'll be insulated.

Also not joking though blunt it may be, don't be in a European country where wages don't even approach our lowest end dev in the US.

BUT

I don't see the industry going south -- I see it being bifurcated where lower end devs who glue APIs together see their wages driven wayyyyyy down. Find a difficult niche that pays well and try to keep skills towards the top like 60th percentile and higher and your life won't change.

I’m in the US and I haven’t seen this at all. I can’t think of a dev shop not desperate for any level devs and willing to pay through the nose for a good, effective dev.

I have heard EU is experiencing a different market right now, and there’s a variety of threads on this site why that might be. But I also know many US companies with remote work know this and are beginning to market to EU devs more.

> It would seem coding was reduced to gluing things up from pre-made blocks and is not viewed with awe and respect it once may have had.

There is some truth to this, but that is one difference between senior vs. junior devs - the senior devs create the blocks used by the junior devs. I don't yet see us being at the point where a team of nothing but junior devs can create a product. This is particularly true in the back-end, when you need to actually read/write and manipulate data, and know which tool as well as which layer of the stack is the best answer for any given problem.

If you are struggling to find senior level work, I'd recommend expanding your skills to a part of the stack that you don't know as well to be sure you have the ability to do that level of work.

I've been surprised to see some of my brightest colleagues going to work for public institutions.

At the end, I've also chosen to join a public institution as a freelancer. Depending on where you are from, public institutions may pay quite well. You can go there as a freelancer, but even public servants in their 40ies or 50ies have very good salaries. Age is a big factor in salary calculation there.

Coming from a Silicon Valley style unicorn, public institutions are refreshing. Everything is much slower, people are gentle, humble and unassuming. Technology is a tool, there is just enough of it, and everyone takes on the simplest path to solve the problems at hand.

Of course if you live in Poland or Bulgaria where public service can't match IT salaries, this is not an option.

I'm in my 24th year now as a Dev, and I can tell you that the career perspective for senior devs is not nearly as dim as you describe. On the contrary, the more senior I've gotten the more possibilities I have got to move to different countries and/or better salaries.

The key is that you have to keep working on your skills to stay valuable for your (next) employer. When you're 40+ you can't compete with a 20 year old anymore when it comes to the ability to work crazy hours. But do you even want that?

As a senior you have a big advantage though, and that is your experience. But you have to make sure all the time that that experience is useful.

20 years experience is some dying language has very limited value. But 20 years of studying algorithms or general language concepts can get you almost anywhere. It helps of course if you like what you're doing, not everybody likes to study algorithms all the time. But there are plenty of other specialties around that will always be in demand.

I spent the last 5 years doing consulting/contracting in a software development co-op in which I was one of the founding partners. It was a huge boost for my career and ended up increasing my income by around 75%.

One upside of contracting that I never realized was if you do good work, with every new client you take on, you will increase the list of employers that would hire you in a heartbeat if you fall on hard times.

I became a developer advocate. Here seniority still matters. I'm great at public speaking and have all the connections. I write really well and I don't have to work with annoying young team leads who think that their "newer" ideas are somehow new...

Software Engineer Career Progression 0-2y Junior 2-5 Senior 5+ Up to you to define

After ~5y, it's easy to get lost. There's a huge amount of ambiguity in that 5+ range.

Most employers want a young Senior. They're the most cost effective. In the US, no matter how old, you can always find work as a Senior, especially if you're willing to work cheap.

The problem is not getting stuck there. You may end up pushing yourself and becoming super skilled but never recognized. You may end up complacent and never grow. Either one suits the employers fine as long as they can keep you on cheap.

It's really up to you to define. You have to decide for yourself what you want. You need to have the audacity to then put yourself out there and fight for it publicly. You need to have the tenacity to not give up or settle in the face of certain, persistent rejection.

The market is not perfectly efficient and it certainly is not fair. It is competitive and indifferent to your personal needs. To a certain degree you need to put yourself out there to learn the game and then commit to playing it.

Ideally, along the way you commit to be kinder to others than people were to you.

One area that senior developers can have significant advantages over junior resources is in having much stronger understanding of their business domain. I know plenty of developers in their 60's who will likely be able to keep working for as long as they want simply because they understand the equipment leasing business extremely well. That expands the job description somewhat and requires some ability to work with business stakeholders. The older developers that I know who struggle to find work tend to share some of the same characteristics: didn't work very hard to develop new skills, don't have deep domain knowledge, and/or really have trouble having a conversation with a non-technical business stakeholder.

I'm a senior dev in the US, and I don't see things quite that way at all. There is a serious problem with ageism in our industry, no doubt about that, but it's not a career-killer (and I suspect that it takes longer because I'm worth more money and am unsuitable for a lot of entry or mid-level positions).

The industry is huge, and there are plenty of companies who hire (and even prefer) very experienced devs. As I've aged, it's taken a bit longer to find new positions, but I've always been able to.

That said, I do have an escape plan -- it's not to change to a different line of work, it's to start my own venture.

I am not sure about the age/experience angle, but for your concern about "work is being off-shored to low income countries" :

I believe this is the expected outcome of "Work from home" and "Remote Work" trends. It will get worse, as more and more companies set up their infrastructure and culture around "remote".

More and more high paying jobs will be eliminated and moved to lower income countries. If you can hire a remote worker with a similar skillset and reasonable communication skills for 1/4th the price, why wouldn't you?

I've been doing this software engineering thing for over 30 years now, first in Europe, now in the US. The headline compensation for this whole time was pretty much always based on a handful of companies in Silicon Valley - that doesn't mean that developer jobs over here aren't well paid (they often are), but mostly to the level of "comfortable living" and not at the level of "buying my own small country in five years' time". So keep that in mind.

The other part of this is the industry - there has always been a part of the industry that lived on badly gluing together components cheaply for a quick turnaround. Obviously that part of the industry thrives on relatively cheap labour. I do think that sector has grown a bit, but keep in mind that the whole industry has grown, so these jobs have grown in proportion to the industry.

I think another part of this is which sector you are in - there are plenty of niches where jobs can be found where the job is not "chief component gluer". Usually, these tend to be a bit closer to the metal than web development, and arguably a bit more back end or lower level oriented. IOW, not necessarily something that you can show your non-technical family and state "I did that".

I do find it harder to find new jobs, though. Not necessarily because I don't get regular enquiries from recruiters, but more because those jobs are often a repeat of what I've done before with no or very little growth. And there's only so long you can coast along.

Went freelance at 43. Turns out a bit of white hair and experience is actually considered valuable. Pretty much same dev job, contracts usually renewed every 6 months and three to four times the money. I only accept 100% remote if that's your kind of thing. It's a great time to be an experienced dev. Just don't try to compete with the SV crowd.

I'm a senior dev in the EU. Got 9 years in my previous job. Changed job ~1y ago, I got several offers to work on very interesting stuff, without too much trouble, both in start-ups and in more established companies. I didn't try FAANGS.

While I fear doom you've mentioned, I haven't witnessed it yet.

I think this was my point of view ~4 years ago. I've found that things are changing. People are starting to evaluate experience and the value of experience more highly.

IMHO: You can pay for experience, or you can pay for not having it. Your call as an employer. :)

Gluing things together has been what the majority of software developers do pretty much since the industry started. There are millions of us, it's impossible for everyone to be building something completely new. And outsourcing to poorer companies is nothing new - the offshore consulting companies make up significant proportions of their respective country's GDPs and have done for a long time.

My only advice is to try to become "T shaped" (I hate the term but it makes sense), a generalist with a few currently marketable specialisms.

The good news is, the lack of loyalty between employer and employee means that as long as we old folk stay current with the tech, we'll never "age out".

It's a lifelong obsession with learning.

You worry about something that is out of your control:

1. Age. 2. What some specific company do

As a dev you must keep your skills up to date and try to become expert in up and coming tech. I am not sure why this changes with age.

The thing that offshored dev teams are not good at is working directly with clients. There is a need for technical people who are able to talk to clients and can convert those discussions into requirements for dev teams that may be working in a completely different timezone. This has been especially true with clients that require consultants to come directly on-site to work with their systems, such as banks. Although everyone is currently making exceptions for covid, that need is not to be dismissed entirely.

The 2019 Pandemic started right at my 39th birthday, when I found myself newly unemployed.

I found that it takes a little longer to find a job as a mid-career software engineer. Part of this is that I'm experienced enough to avoid bad situations that a junior developer would get trapped in; and part of this is because there are a lot of shops that only want to hire cheap labor.

The only advice that I can give is: Don't give up! It might take a little longer to find a good job where your experience is valued, but it's worth it.

I've been switching jobs every 2-3 years (not deliberately, the offers were just too good to turn down) and the offers keep getting more lucrative for pretty much the same level of work/responsibility.

I think I'm a pretty good engineer, but I'm nothing special. I attribute this more to a great market for my skill set than anything.

This is not with FAANG btw, these are relativity small Series A/B companies. If anything, my sentiment is the opposite of yours.

You couldn’t be more wrong. The market is going exponentially higher for truly senior devs. It is impossible to find and hire these people.

I'm a "senior" engineer with 15 years experience in the industry. My first role, I took when I was 20 and I'm now 35. I recently moved from the US to the EU to try something new and different.

First thing's first, why don't you think you'll learn some new skills in the next 10 years? Do you not _want_ to do so?

10 years is an ETERNITY in the tech industry. Things will absolutely grow and change, and you'll need to as well.

I’ve gotten consistent feedback from everyone I’ve ever reported to that the path to career longevity is to take ownership of customer needs and measure your output based on usage. A war story about the time you jumped in to save a deal worth $X or the feature you really nailed and got N users within a month will be very persuasive to hiring managers, even if you don’t have the trendy new tech skills they’re thinking of.

My understanding of what motivates a company to want me has matured as my soft and hard skillset has.

Moving from Sr Dev to Lead Dev, Staff Dev, VP of Engineering, or CTO means you're now able to do things like 1) architect better systems 2) restructure for growing pains as well as 3) come up with new ways for your company to expand and grow.

Companies will pay a lot for resolution of pain points or growth plans. That is your next step.

This does not resemble my (UK) career at all. On the other hand, I'm writing for the non-web market. Is that "niche"?

If you have 10+ years of experience and it doesn't cover multiple niches and you don't have a professional network, the job hunt is going to be more difficult, but on balance I think the people saying it's never been better from an overall demand point of view are correct.

Been doing this for nearly 40 years. No sign of doom. What I think you're discovering is just that there is a large amount of low-aspiration work out there. That is as true of FANG as anywhere else.

IMO specializing in any particular bit of trendy tech. is a recipe for disaster. Trends come and go. First-principles CS and being able to communicate it continues to be extremely valuable and satisfying.

Consulting, I moved from a senior developer/devops kinda job to fulltime operation as a consultant. Customer want an “adult” when stuff is on fire. In this line of work age and experience work in your favour.

When your new shiny stuff breaks 24/7 customers listen to the guy with 25 years of experience who have seen everything and can fix their problem with off the shelf software.

Here in South America companies don´t wan´t devs with more than 5/6 years of experience. If you manage to find work with 10+ years of experience or after age 35 is because the demand for devs have grow to a point where they cannot fill all the vacancies with younger ones.

I thought of becoming a business analyst but analysts seem passé nowadays.

I'm not sure where your notion of doom is coming from but we're still in the infancy of software development as an industry. There will always be work, whether that's "gluing" CRUD-type stuff together or highly specialized and custom solutions.

Just roll with it if you like developing.

Seems simple as ever to move jobs as long as you keep up to date and flexible! (London)

Find places that have already been bitten by off-shoring. I've lost jobs to off-shoring and offered my job back a few years later 3 times already in my career.

i’ll be homeless in 4 days, soooo lol i am in talks with a few companies. i’ll report back once i figure out if i escaped or not

Hmm. I have a hard time believing that companies will ever not need to express some business-related desire and have it translated into software for them. That's my job -- to listen to what people need, and to make stuff that will do that for them. Have you considered starting a small software consultancy?