I'm very well aware of the privilege afforded to me by my company and the time I'm working in. I tried to emphasize in the post several times that this is not a "universal guide to success" and that in other companies or teams, a different approach and strategy might be needed.
The whole reason I wrote this post at all was, with the success of Sean's work on HN recently, I felt people were leaning too far into the direction of "you need to constantly move around and go where the exec attention is". I just wanted to show that, from my singular experience, it is possible to carve out a different path in some positions while still being ambitious and "successful" (for some definition of success).
Yeah sorry if my assessment was a bit callous and overly critical, and I hope you don't take it personally. I meant what I said up front that it was very well articulated and made a lot of sense.
The reason I wrote what I wrote is because I came into the industry in the year 2000, and multiple times throughout my career experienced a rug pull of my own mental model of my value as a software engineer. It's very painful and something that I think ICs in deep-thinking professions like software are very vulnerable to.
> Yeah sorry if my assessment was a bit callous and overly critical, and I hope you don't take it personally
Not at all. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
> and multiple times throughout my career experienced a rug pull of my own mental model of my value as a software engineer
Sorry to hear you've had that experience. Unfortunately, over the past year we've once again entered the "let's question software engineer's value" space with AI so you're very right to warn on the risks of not overselling your importance as a SWE. It pays to always be watchful and introspective on what changes are happening around you and how to best adapt to them.
The whole reason I wrote this post at all was, with the success of Sean's work on HN recently, I felt people were leaning too far into the direction of "you need to constantly move around and go where the exec attention is". I just wanted to show that, from my singular experience, it is possible to carve out a different path in some positions while still being ambitious and "successful" (for some definition of success).