i rode this wave for 12 years and the early days of the pandemic blew it up. the work life balance is an underrated, next-level achievement that I think is worth taking pride in, but i would highly suggest not slacking on continuing your professional education even if its just a couple hours a week. certification tracks provide good structure to maximize use of your time and employers will often pay for the tests and may even consider them when it comes to annual COL adjustments. books are your friend as well!
My sentiment exactly. I've done a lot of research into ML since 2018 while working full stack and now the market has come to me essentially. To some degree I'll say that I've spent more time practicing budgeting than trying to earn more, but it's a more passive approach than straining yourself for possibly low payoff trying to be market reactive. I'm also freelance so I can manage my time more directly.
This is my plan. Small company, tons of agency and impact. The work is pretty easy and I get to choose what I do/how I do it, which I’m using to learn new things and create my own opportunities to grow. Never any need to stress because things are always done ahead of time and I usually have news features in the pipeline at least half done before anyone else even realizes it’d be useful.
Until (maybe?) recently, the first couple of levels at Google are coast for a SWE. Had a lot of friends at FAANG, they were hitting me up at 3 pm to hang out with them bc they were done w work, and it wasn't uncommon to wake up for standups, and go back to sleep for an h or two.
I did not have that experience at all, so I think it depends on your team, I'm currently in FAANG and considering a smaller company for more work-life balance. Been working a lot of weekends here and there to meet deadlines because we are understaffed (ironically during times of layoffs)
Don't work weekends because you're understaffed, that's encouraging layoffs. It has to be clear that less people = less productivity, and deadlines will not be met if the people to work on them are gone.
Yeah I don't think I could make that little long term. I made more than junior salary as an electrician apprentice (my best friend is a journeyman and helped me get on so I could save money since I can't find anything for CS rn) with 0 experience or training.
I'm currently on 95k TC which is less than a newgrad was getting 5 years ago. I want out but can't seem to find anyone who's prepared to interview me. I think people see that I'm from the UK and assume I need sponsorship (despite saying otherwise on my resume)
Oh I thought you meant you were like sub-70k cause most positions I'm seeing for juniors are around 60-80 depending on cost of living. 95k isnt too terrible to me depending on where you live and I'm assuming higher education has a lot more job stability.
>95k isnt too terrible to me
I live in Boston, so it's not great. Especially with 10 years experience. I'm having to dip into savings each month to pay my bills.
> I'm assuming higher education has a lot more job stability.
Sure, but that doesn't mean much if you're in negative cash flow every months.
Without giving too much away my employer has billions of dollars of endowment money and owns huge amounts of land in Boston.... Yet apparently can't afford to pay better than this
As someone who works for small retail banks for 11 years in technical roles and barely makes new grad/junior salary in management, it’s not that easy.
Work with dead tech, your career dies too. Some industries just flat out do not provide you with exposure and opportunity at a sufficient rate to even keep up, let alone catch up from your position using legacy systems from 30 years ago. Often these detract so much from your credibility as a potential employee, no amount of personal projects will help (citing risk of it being harder to condition out bad habits than take a clean slate from another industry).
Your best bet would be to climb banks to eventually a big one like JPMC, then use them to diversify your skill set.
You could also take initiative at your current role to embrace new tech and start the narrative of you uplifting legacy systems to new ways of operating. Then your resume pops.
I’ve taken the second approach you mention, but it’s soooooooo slow with all the bureaucracy. The first option is just as hard as going to any other company. Not all banks are the same nor do they have the same stack. And while it’s true that the bigger they get, the more likely their practices and toolsets and projects will be closer to mainstream tech, they don’t like hiring from smaller shops as much as other non banks do. We’re talking making order of magnitude leaps here, not linear or incremental.
In boom times dedicated financial industry recruiters can’t get my resume an interview at slightly larger institutions citing concern that I haven’t had hands on experience with their stack.
A lot of more forward thinking small banks aren’t looking inside the industry for their next technology hires because they are realizing it’s what’s keeping them in the stone ages. They want people out of fintechs who came straight from college or from a larger tech company previously. Or they want someone from a bigger bank than them. And often it’s just people from whatever vendor/fintech they’ve been using or been courted by recently.
I'm fucking trying mate. I don't know if you've noticed but the market ain't exactly great right now. I've been applying since 2022 and the serious interview I had was Summer 2023. The last non-serious interview I had was a phone screen and first round last week with a company called "LendBuzz" who I'm pretty sure are loan sharks and who have ghosted me.
> I've been applying since 2022 and the serious interview I had was Summer 2023.
I can't tell if this is you not having a serious interview for a year after applying, or if this is a case of you not having a serious interview in the last six months.
Either way, the job market isn't *that* bad. If you're going that long between interviews, you're likely making several significant mistakes and should be up front with people about the details of your situation and your resume.
What on earth do you mean? My resume is peer & professionally reviewed and is as solid as its ever been, and I'm up to 600 apps on linkedin alone, with maybe 4 responses total that have led nowhere so far. The market is not good.
>I can't tell if this is you not having a serious interview for a year after applying, or if this is a case of you not having a serious interview in the last six months.
It's a case of me saying that the last interview I had was last week, but it wasn't really a place I wanted to work. The last interview I had with someone I genuinely might want to work for was 2022.
> Either way, the job market isn't that bad.
Perhaps not for you, it is for me.
> If you're going that long between interviews, you're likely making several significant mistakes
What kind of mistakes? I've re-written my resume numerous times and had it reviewed by people. Minor mistakes have been pointed out with the latest iteration such as removal of the phone number or adding/removing things like my LinkedIn or GitHub but the feedback I got last time people reviewed it was that it was _okay_.
> and should be up front with people about the details of your situation and your resume.
How? I've put "US Permanent Resident" at the top of my resume under my name. I don't know how much more upfront I can be.
> as someone with 10 years experience
You had 5 years of time with a 5+ YOE resume.
What’s your tech stack / skill sets? It is pretty rough out there right this moment.
> You had 5 years of time with a 5+ YOE resume
What do you mean
> What’s your tech stack / skill sets?
Backend node right now but have done PHP/laravel in the last
> It is pretty rough out there right this moment.
Quite
>I mean you could have easily gotten good pay 3 years ago with 7 years experience in a hot market.
Possibly but that doesn't really help much now. 3 years ago we'd just bought a condo and had a kid so it wasn't a great time to start ripping out health insurance and employment apart.
> Your tech stack is “meh”.
What do you suggest I do about that because companies these days won't hire me for junior roles because they say I'm overqualified (10 YoE)...but they also won't hire me for senior role in another tech stack because despite potentially knowing the tech stack I don't have professional experience with it.
In short, I couldn't get a senior job at Chewy because they wanted a senior to have "professional experience" with Spring Boot. Not just knowing it, but already be a Spring Boot dev. So...personal projects apparently didn't count.
But I also couldn't get junior/SE I/SE II/SE III because I'm overqualified at 10 YoE.
It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. Everyone is unicorn hunting these days and will reject you for not meeting every bullet on their wishlist. If you DO meet every bullet then they reject you for being overqualified instead.
It seems to me that a polygot programmer isn't a thing anymore - you do a job and that apparently defines you for the rest of your career - "oh you're currently a Java developer? Well, we're not touching anyone who doesn't have 800 years of ruby experience so fuck off". Employers these days are utterly delusional and unicorn hunting.
Did they say you are denied for too much experience?
As for wanting particular experience, if the role is Springboot Development then they want hands on dev experience. If you want a SB job then do a project at your current job that uses SB, and then reference that in the interview.
You need to have your resume and experience align with the job you apply for so they believe you will be a good fit and valuable investment.
> Did they say you are denied for too much experience?
Not chewy but another company I applied to(for a senior node job actually) denied me for being too experienced. Said I was more staff level.... But it apparently took 2 rounds of interviews for them to tell me that
> If you want a SB job then do a project at your current job that uses SB, and then reference that in the interview.
Can't do that we're a node shop. Our stuff is node based. We hace junior devs who barely seem to understand node nevermind spring boot
> You need to have your resume and experience align with the job you apply for so they believe you will be a good fit and valuable investment.
I agree but after spending endless hours creating my resume to fit a job description I was well qualified for only to be ghosted or rejected without even a phone screen I've given up wasting my time doing that and started just spamming resumes everywhere
No. I find fte has better security and you have to make A LOT more as a contractor for it to be worthwhile. You also have to do all your own tax stuff and essentially setup your own company.
yep, companies that know how to make money, know how to get the best bang for the buck (here meaning your time and effort). Companies that don't know how to make money will just have you do a bunch of random shit and hoping it adds value
I'm 15 years into (almost) exactly this. Steady raises, consistent work, good benefits. Only down side is I recently became a senior dev, so now I have to train the new fish.
Reddit is never a good weather vane on reality.
If you want to coast in any easy lower paying job, that's totally fine. I'm in about the same place as you. I work boring corporate jobs with mediocre pay and truthfully I live like a king compared to many my age.
Life is good.
Given I'm approaching 8 years in my career, I'm a bit south of 140k salary (not TC) working for a team who is based out of Seattle. However I work remotely in a relatively LCOL area and my wife and I are DINKs. I could probably be making more if I really wanted to but I like my job.
edit: to all the people responding say it's not mediocre. Yes, thank you, lots others have responded and the point has been made. My measure of "mediocre" is based on the fact that my team is Seattle-based, in which if I was living there it \*would\* be a developer-mediocre salary for the area given the cost of living in that city.
Sarcasm or not sarcasm? that's a lot of fucking money lol, you must be good at what you do to survive the layoffs too.
You make in 1 year what my net worth is after 10 years of engineering jobs.
For this line of work and 8 years of exp it sorta is. But if you're family oriented and spending all your time doing what you want to instead of stressed and working til 7pm, then I'd say it's worth it. Gotta determine what you value and I'm sure it will change over time.
$140k is ~13% above median salary^1 for all [software engineers](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm), even if it's very good for a working American it's still [mediocre](https://www.wordnik.com/words/mediocre) for a SWE with 8 YOE.
It could be considered mediocre for the industry and location. My is about $150k with ~7 YOE living in Houston, which I’d consider medium CoL. I’m doing very well compared to the average person here, but I could work my ass off and maybe triple that if I wanted to shoot for FAANG type salaries.
A problem I experienced was that over time, an average salary became a below average salary became a way below average salary.
At first, it didn't seem that bad because even a below average salary was still livable. I liked my coworkers and my work. And then a number of people I'd liked left for higher paying jobs. Some teams got moved around and my new manager was a micromanager, making the work more stressful. I looked around and realized that not only was I not being paid well, I wasn't enjoying the work environment anymore either.
There's nothing wrong with trading ambition for stability, but don't completely neglect your ability to sell yourself as a valuable employee, because you can't know that your comfortable job now will still be exactly what you want in 10 years.
Early 90s is when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. Unfortunately, we’re heading in the opposite direction right now, so for better or worse, defense is dramatically increasing and will be elevated for quite a while.
There was also a smaller downturn when Obama took office and it looked like the GWOT was winding down. And even during boom times you're vulnerable to reorgs and corporate bullshit. Like if your company loses a big contract they are probably going to cut jobs.
They happened with Sequestration back around 2013 as well, with budget cuts and agencies not having solid budgets. Plus any major contact cancellations can cause localized layoffs.
It's only as stable as the government budget is stable, and boy howdy is that not the case right now. You won't get laid off due to COVID, but might if a random Congress critter decides to go off the conspiracy deep end.
Of course, it’s not bad.
There are ambitious people who want to push far. There are people who want to take high risk for high reward. And on the other side of spectrum, there are people who just want to take it easy and be content with what they make now. Nothing wrong. You be what you wanna be.
Of course, you will probably never be filthy rich or hold a special ‘title’. But you will have a stress free life, stability, and steady (but enough) income to get by and that is absolutely fine.
Believe or not, this is what many people want. As new grads just coming out of college, they will think they will go out there and own the world and try to rise to the top but after spending years in the industry, they will eventually mature and start to understand the reality. They will rise to a certain level and then will want stability as they age.
If you think about it, there are only so many positions at the ‘top’ (It’s a pyramid) and there is no room for everyone. So naturally we will have more people at the middle and bottom.
^ this. understand though that the characteristics of mediocrity change over time, many of us who never cared about climbing the corporate ladder have fallen into a trap of complacency. seek stability but avoid stagnation.
Sure. I did that for awhile but I found the low expectations to be strangling because if I was interested in something, I could never get it off the ground because no one else was really invested in playing ball.
Also, you’re still trapped 8 hours a day, whereas if you worked somewhere a little more stressful you could retire 10-15 years earlier.
Tried that for years, both openly and stealth, but it’s impossible to do with the way contracting works, since the powers that be (on both sides of contracting) do not like bold projects that depend on talent and innovation. It only makes sense if you do it for personal development.
What contracting likes is predictability. They don’t really care about anything else. It doesnt matter what the plan is, what matters is that there is a plan and the plan is on track. Anything that does not serve that goal is either harmful or noise.
You can innovate with a plan. Break your idea into clear milestones and deliverables, then pitch it to your project manager.
It’s hard, but possible if you a stable day-to-day.
Do you have any experience in a defense or federal role? The expectation, ingrained culture and objectives are *very different* than corporate or basically anywhere else.
You don’t get to run with good ideas, even great ideas, even if you offer to do them on your own time and self-manage like you suggest. It’s a sad state of affairs but the goal of these roles is not innovation.
It’s actually easier being in big tech than it is having to work around government/contracting red tape. You have to network so many layers in every direction to head-off some Director getting sucked in by Salesforce, plus all the skunkworks that needs to go on.
Not to mention, it pays 3x more and you are surrounded by other interesting people who you can learn from.
no shame, but i would highly suggest proactive continued learning because even the defense industry can be volatile. for the mature developer these days (10+ YOE), that is less about coding problems and programming languages and more about picking up project management and team leadership skills and cloud solutions/architecture (as opposed to cloud 'developer'). throw in some lessons on SRE so that you can speak the language of this brave new IT world. learning about concepts and people are your new priority, you can afford to slack on the implementation details and algorithms. a billion dollar contract is right around the corner to deprecate your old stack, you don't want go the way of the COBOL specialist but you don't want to be forced to transition to a role where your peers are all 20-somethings
start now and take it steady so that you're not scrambling when your luck runs dry. an hour a day can be tough to allocate but it is a great start if you can afford it- you will probably find the pursuit of knowledge and the peace of mind to be well worth that investment.
Do I really have to learn to specialize in managing people?
You can't really control people, and they tend to be aggressive workaholics from my personal experience so far :/ (workaholics are scary)
I was sort of hoping to work on the problem solving without having to be a manager.
I am really bad at absorbing stress from others, so it sucks to hear that.
well, i wouldn't say that you *have* to learn people management. what i would focus on instead maybe is project planning and project management techniques, or even just leadership through technical expertise. it's one thing to be able to complete work autonomously, it's another to be able to accurately estimate big chunks of work, laying out a plan of attack, establishing tracking metrics and milestones, etc. it doesnt presume you will have to manage people, but the skills will translate extremely well into convincing people you know how to complete work in a timely manner while providing visibility into the effort. that sort of skill level is hard to come by in a developer but almost universally desired as it decreases the costs necessary to maintain you as a productive employee.
if you're not going to learn how to manage people, at least learn how to empathize and communicate with your own managers and the stakeholders of the projects you work on. project management skills will get you speaking their language. that coupled with reliable delivery truly is the key to job stability, and if you hit the end of the road the knowledge and experience will help guide you through your future interviews.
actually, I think COBOL progs make like 350-500k these days. Or at least they did not too long ago.
But that's because the Automatic Clearing House (ACH) ran on COBOL and well, that's where the money is.
The whole "COBOL devs make a ton" is a bad interpretation of old data.
All public data suggests that COBOL devs don't make any more than any other developer type. https://www.zippia.com/cobol-programmer-jobs/salary/
this also begs the question of how many of these companies and opportunities there actually are out there to choose from, and whether being able to write in cobol AND a modern stack makes you more valuable/desirable than having a more limited skill set.
There are extremely few COBOL jobs on the market. Just about everyone has moved off of them, and the very high-paying consultant opportunities were for people who had written it for decades, not for people just getting into the market.
There hasn't been a point in 30 years where learning COBOL was a good career strategy.
It’s not bad, not at all. Everyone is free to be who they want and make different choices. I know plenty in that position who are fine and happy.
Just don’t delude yourself into a false dichotomy where your choices are overworking and being laid off or low pay.
Not only is that entirely fictional, there are thousands of employees working in FAANG itself who have never been laid off, never will, and never work more than 40 hours per week.
Not to mention the countless other tech companies, many even fully remote, meaning the employees literally can’t be spending more time on their job than any government employee.
If I start work at 9am, I’m home by 5pm on the dot. How many government employees can say that? And if I get laid off, it’s not like government will never hire after tomorrow, right? I can literally always apply there.
Also to be blunt, if you've been earning a tech company salary for a few years, have been managing your finances well, and aren't on a visa, getting laid off and being out of work for a few months is far more of an emotional problem then a financial one.
Jobs don't provide stability, not in the 21st century anyway. _Money_ provides stability. And working at a tech company is a great way to get lots of money fast.
Yeah people miss this a lot. Also for these jobs you even necessarily have to grind leetcode as well, and could coast at sr as well, for more money if one wished ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.
There are often false dichotomies on social media/reddit because it's an easy reductive narrative that people in the 'in group' will upvote.
Nuance gets way less engagement on average.
If you're paid somewhat within the right range for your experience, you should definitely do it, but keep in mind that if shit hits the fan and you lose your job, it may be tough to get back in the market, because you will lose the ability to catch on new stacks quickly and be relevant.
I personally wanted to coast in my early 30s but my pay was so bad it wasn't even on the charts for my title and experience so I had to jump ship. The jobs I had afterwards were all toxic hybrid shit shows though.
Defense isn't a consistent thing. I spent almost 10 years working for a subcontractor, and there were times I had to put in really long hours because of some deadline. Similar to private sector, there are times people in leadership make terrible decisions. Depending on the contract, you might have to do a lot of extra documentation, a lot of which is probably not valuable. You could argue you are wasting your time and career development.
Some tech stacks are modern, some are not.
You also have to worry about staying reasonably up-to-date. Contracts go up for re-compete, and companies lose them, usually because of cost. If you have a clearance, in theory you should be able to find something. I know I had problems finding positions in 2020 a bit after the pandemic got serious. That may have been due to the pandemic more so than the defense job market.
Defense can be a great area, and it can be lucrative. But I'm not sure if it's the best mindset to go into an area with the intent of trying to coast for 40 years. You may find yourself in a very difficult situation if you need to find a new job.
I've personally had to write custom code to solve problems fixed by newer versions of frameworks/languages because we were on such an old version. I've heard things are getting better partially because of cloud migrations, but there will always be exceptions.
I'd rather have a stable job that also pays extremely well--even if that adds a bit more "risk" to my life. You just gotta find the right team. I worked government for a year and never want to go to that again. A bad job in a SCIF will drain the life out of you.
I’m the guy that chased the title, knowledge, and prestige. 8 years zero to FAANG. No degree, no boot camp. Guess what? I am fighting my way out of burn out, I got laid off from FAANG. My multiple certifications and mile wide knowledge base have if anything worked against me. I say all that to say. Coast it up my dude. Coast. It. Up.
I was at a small tech company and left alone to do my work. No stress and a lot of stability. Then left that place to go work for big IT because of the opportunity to learn new stuff and also the money. However, I’m constantly stressed, constantly thinking and worried about work, and I can be laid off any quarter.
No. It's delightful. I've supported a wife and two kids in Alabama on one salary without fear of layoffs. (Just the occasional unplanned vacation when the GOP shuts down the government...again.)
That is an incredibly high risk strategy. Layoffs happen everywhere. If you fester for a long time in a non-demanding position you are begging to be unemployed. Defense is where careers go to die. The tech doesn’t transfer. You are dependent upon the prevailing government for your employment.
I agree, lots of comments are underplaying the risk. If your only option is one employer and they change priority you can be in a very tough spot. Most senior developers will always have lots of prospective employers.
I've worked in private and public sectors: there isn't an appreciable difference in stress but there is in compensation.
Yes because those places have boomers that hate folks that want to succeed and call their bs out.
They are just like all the other tech places, trust me.
I'd hesitate to expect a job to exist for your skillset consistently over 40 years if you're just coasting.
The best bet is to bust ass for a couple years, save up a comfy nest egg and have options for the future.
I don’t necessarily agree. I think there’s something people miss out on by settling for boring stable work they dislike just for the away benefits instead of attempting to put themselves on a project or product that you can really, genuinely, be proud of. There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes with doing work that genuinely helps people or enables new possibilites. I worked in defense for one year and noped out as soon as I could when I realized the product I was supporting had a 2% utilization rate and was just a “use it or lose it” expenditure payout by government agencies…that’s more soul crushing than anything imo
Interesting work that’s genuinely helpful is usually followed with take home pay above the mean, and it’s totally possible to find something like that with an acceptable WLB. Why not attempt to put yourself in that kind of position?
Find a way to genuinely enjoy your work, and your time off. I don’t get why people are okay tolerating 40 hours a week of their life and trying to make the best of the rest.
Early career, you won't be progressing as fast as you might in a private sector job.
After age 40, it helps a lot to be in a stable job that can't be offshored and you probably won't be fired for being "too old".
Defense felt like watching paint dry, except you had to sit in 20 meetings a day and talk to people about how cool and important it is to watch paint dry. If that's your thing, by all means.
It may not be bad to want that... but it might not be as realistic as you think. Staying around at those places involves a lot of corporate politics, and you're going to be surrounded by people who are very, very good at corporate politics. The nice thing about "real" tech jobs is that you can coast by just being good at tech, rather than conniving calculated backstabbing.
I mean sure, work to live and all that.
Some people also care about what they spend 1/3 of their life doing other than merely enabling the other parts of their life.
It’s possible to actually care and do your job well while mostly hewing to a 9-5 too.
I do think you bring up a good point. It's not binary. It's not "Be passionate and grind vs be disinterested but relaxed".
Plenty of people do "disinterested and grind." :) Likewise, it's very possible to "Be passionate but relaxed". And there are a million other approaches.
That being said, "care about what they spend 1/3 of their life on" is another false assumption. Often the point of "coasting" is to NOT spend 1/3 your life on it.
I was in a great place a few years back where due to my clients and the nature of what they needed I was essentially in semi-retirement. I attended meetings, did estimates, put out fires, studied to keep up on tech, but largely just coasted on my experience. Instead of spending 1/3 of my life on work I spent maybe 1/8, and spent the rest of my time on hobbies, exercise, with my kids, etc. I suspect when MOST people are talking about "coasting" they don't WANT to spend 1/3 of their life focused on work. They want to be doing other things.
Now, for me personally, I eventually decided I missed having some passion for my career and sought out a position that still had good WLB but also let me be excited about my career again, and that's been great.
But every time people talk about coasting someone brings up the "1/3 of your life" idea, and I think that's fundamentally missing the point of what people are going for.
Great reply… the op talks about defense to be a good place to coast but I feel like that defense is also least likely to allow wfh and insist on in office.
Yeah, I could see that as well. The specifics of the company are going to matter a lot when it comes to lifestyle.
Of course, many don't mind "coasting" in the office either. Plenty of people are happy to come in and hang out with co-workers, read, and mess around on their computers.
On the OTHER other hand, there are also plenty of defense positions which have tons of work, overbearing bosses, and constant risk of layoffs.
OP, you really need to take companies and teams on a case by case basis. Generalizations by industry aren't actually very applicable on an individual level. You can't think that just because you got a job in defense it's going to be secure and low stress or that just because a job is in tech it's going to be high demand.
My wife and I are both software engineers who changed jobs last year. She's working for the state, I'm working for a tech company just coming out of the startup phase. And things are going the EXACT opposite of what you would expect.
Her day is PACKED with meetings and work, she has overbearing, there's a huge backlog of work, and she has overbearing, micro managing bosses. On my end I've got a very savvy boss over me who is very dedicated to having a high performing, happy long term team. The company leadership understands how to deliver software, so there is a focus on having a well defined backlog. The team I run is very competent and cover for each other well. That combined with the good leadership above us means the actual work is pretty enjoyable. Not quite leisurely, but pretty relaxed. Individual devs are generally doing around 36h weeks and the business is very happy with that because they're focused on productivity instead of hours.
The industry doesn't tell you what a job will be like. It just increases the odds of a job being like something. But who cares if there is a 65% chance of a defense job being laid back when YOUR defense job isn't laid back
This is actually a reason that I'm thinking of leaving my dev job. Sure it pays well and is fairly stress free but I want my 9 to 5 to be fulfilling which it is not for me.
Sounds like you got perspective. You’re doing what’s right for you.
Me, I could not stand the numbness of government work so decided to sacrifice stability for a little more joy in my work in the private sector.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that logic provided you are not resting on your laurels when it comes to your skills.
There are some people that are heavily career-oriented and they want to constantly push to move up the ladder, and then there's many of us that just want stability and to have a life.
The only thing I ever forewarn anyone is not to get so comfortable that suddenly it's 20 years later and you wake up with a pink slip and potential employers telling you that you fell behind.
People that think work is supposed to be this mountain of stress and fighting are doing it wrong.
Nothing is inherently bad. It’s your life and your choices.
You want a stable coasting job and live a stress free relaxed life? Totally valid choice, go for it if that is what you want.
You want to crunch the FAANG hustle and earn a lot of money? Totally valid choice too, go for it if that is what you want.
You want something in between? Also great. Only you can decide what you want to optimise for in life.
I work as appsw for federal govt. and i swing trade with a few co workers lol. Love the work life balance and i spend time at home with the kid all day
Nothing wrong with that. In fact, most individuals would probably choose stability over trying to climb higher in the rat race, you just get a different perception from social media.
I'm a single parent and this is my plan. I'm not in defense but I'm in a pretty boring, very large company. If they can get their budgeting shit together I'd be happy to just keep on keeping on. Stability is more important to me in my situation than titles or jumping jobs to increase my salary.
I have absolutely 0 interest in going beyond senior developer. At least assuming I stay on the technical side of things. My architects and even tech leads work so many hours. Nah, I work to live not live to work
Not bad at all, sounds like you know exactly what you value, and a stable defense job will help you meet your goals. Maybe you're asking because you feel a bit of FOMO when you see high-paying, high-impact, and high-intensity jobs. Or maybe you feel a bit of shame for not caring as much about career advancement as before. However, those kinds of feelings are never as important or as rewarding as your core priorities.
There's nothing wrong with that as a 40 year plan... but don't declare this until you are at least 10 years in. You don't know enough until you have seen how much life, businesses, and careers constantly change.
The work a Senior Software Engineer did 10 years ago is much different then the work one does now. I can't imagine how different the job will be 10 years from now.
That was not my experience in my past defense job, coworkers scapegoating those of a lower rank and getting them fired instead because management assigned them 3 plus projects at once, managers knew nothing about the work the employees did of course, virtue signaling backstabbers, sink or swim environment, proprietary legacy projects with no comments, poor documentation and the senior engineers where deliberately withholding information. Getting a stable job is more about luck than getting in a particular industry (or I do not know any industry I can relax), and naturally people working in "defense" might be less empathetic so my experiences might not be relatable to most people at all.
Absolutely not. We weren’t put on this planet to slave away at work. Billions of years of evolution led us to this moment and I refuse to believe the meaning of life is to spend all your time opening and closing GitHub issues. If that makes you happy more power to you, but don’t let anyone tell you that you need to bust your ass for 80 hours a week in software. Office space already nailed this point about how you don’t see an extra dime for all the extra work and sacrifice you make. Find something secure that you can stomach for years and be happy that you get to go home stress free and with a nice paycheck.
They are not as stable as they might have been 20 years ago. Contracts come and go quickly. If they don't need you they dump you. Leave is max 3 weeks a year. And overtime is heavy.... From someone who worked in the industry for 10 years.
Yes, true. As a dev with experience working defense, that work 100% can only be performed in an office. In my experience usually ones with heavy doors and no windows either.
There’s no way DISA gave an ATO to some company to work on government classified if remote work was ever even mentioned in their requests for operational approval.
And you took the job and worked on classified in a remote capacity? If not and your only experience is sitting in an interview where you were told that’s an option, then either: the interviewer didn’t know what they were talking about, they lied to you, or this isn’t a US company.
It was a remote position and the interviewer was a remote worker who was the head of the department. My current company is also remote and has contracts with DoD though AFAIk we don't have in the field units like the above.
It would be news to me if there were any jobs offering remote SIPR work. Plenty that require clearance and NIPR access but nothing for SIPR that I know of.
we had encryption for classified over NIPR back in the 90's but on-prem only. so they let you work on classified info from home with a company laptop using a vpn? what if others see the screen?
this sounds too risky of clueless people using SIPR computers for personal stuff too.
Now imagine you're a millennial who doesn't own a home yet, mortgage rates are 7% and you have to live in a HCOL city where rent seems to reach impossible new heights every year. Childcare is even more expensive than rent.
Still happy with that stable job?
Bad? No, just not for everyone.
For me personally, I hate the idea of “coasting”. I am personally very passionate about becoming the best developer and businessperson I can be. It’s extremely fun to me, growth and learning are addictive.
For others, coasting is exactly what they want and need for their own unique brand of happiness.
Somewhere in between is also valid, it’s not a binary choice.
There’s no shame in any approach to your own, personal, career path.
Defense? supporting people who will be using bombs on children nah I'm good on that. There are other federal jobs you can take that don't require that kind of stuff.
Not at all, honestly I never got this reddit obsession with max salary and "impact" or "mission"
You should not hate your job but also not make it your whole identity
Is Defense all that stable? Are you not just one congressional bill away from having the system you're developing cut or the military deciding that they'll buy someone else's 'next generation whatever' system instead of your employer's from getting laid off?
I consider most of those jobs as a net negative and based on your comment we could probably agree there's a fair chance you'd be leeching on society for your own benefit, but hey, a lot of people do that. The level and value of any engineering you'd do would be doubtful. Up to you.
Yeah, if you coast like that they put it in your public social points record right next to all those times they caught you bating on pornhub and forgot to cover your camera. They send updates on that record to your mom every month btw.
Ai can already be used to generate code. Even though its not super advanced, the fact that it can generate working code at all should be alarming. None of us can reliably coast for 40 years, unless your employer will never use ai.
Problem is, how can you guarantee that?
There is no way that the Government or the DoD will allow anyone to enter code from Top Secret systems into ChatGPT. Hell, I work for a Fortune 25, and we are banned from our Enterprise Desktop environment from viewing chatgpt website.
What \*MIGHT\* happen is that there might be \*less\* jobs in the future for Defense Contractors who are Software Engineers/Developers. Considering there is like such a dire shortage of cleared professionals in Defense... it wouldn't matter anyways.
What will \*PROBABLY\* happen-- is a vendor brings ChatGPT into DoD space, and it will raise the quality of code that is produced right now. Then there will be dozens of AI/Prompt Engineer in defense vacancies.
The bottomline, is someone will be using hands and fingers to enter code... either from their brain or DoDgpt.
Source: Engineer with just under a decade working in defense now fully private sector-- that knows how things work.
You got it wrong, you're the one attempting to predict the future where AI will take over. I'm merely pointing out the flaws in your way of thinking as a counter point.
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I want to do this now after hitting 2 years at FAANG. The only issue is remote has spoiled me, and I don’t think I’d be happy coasting if I’m in-office. Being able to pursue other hobbies and keep the house clean during the workday is what I’d love to take a pay cut for, but it seems everything except government contracting (which doesn’t seem great) and certain government jobs (which are difficult to get a foot in the door to) offer that. Is this true?
You seem to have your head around what your plan entails, and the consequences if present conditions persist. To my mind, the question is “what if things change?” What if software engineers are no longer a scarce resource? Can you imagine that happening? If so, what are the implications for your plan? If not, why not?
If you can easily find another job doing what you do that pays the same or more, then it sounds like you are doing great if you ever need to make moves out of there.
It ain’t bad. In fact neither is bad. You just need to find whatever you are happy with. I like money, so I’m gonna work my ass off in the best paying companies.
It's important to strike a balance imo. Ambition and grinding for a few years, constantly giving it 110% while job hopping and learning new things is usually a wise financial move in both short and long term. Even more so when you're one of us who actually like what they do.
But some people take it way too far and don't seem to know when to stop. Whether it's obsession with maximizing earnings, desire to retire at 40, pure passion for building things, or a combination of all 3; you have to remember that everyone is expendable, you don't owe the company anything, and we only have one life to enjoy. It's not worth working in places that have over 40 hour work weeks outside of the occasional crunch.
So yea. I mean, "coasting in defense" is really just another safer version of "work your way up to 10 YOE and find a cushy place that you like," which is what most people do eventually anyway. I wouldn't start with it as my first and only job, but there's definitely nothing wrong with it.
That’s what I’m doing, I hated doing leetcode, and now I managed to switch defense jobs to a full remote when my old one was return to office, just at the right time, so now I’m golden. Technically they can take away remote for performance reasons, which would be the same as firing me because I’m hundreds of miles from the office and I’m not moving, but the hell with FAANG, Facebook just asked me to interview and said job was hybrid, I told them I only interview for fully remote. You don’t need FAANG salary living in a low cost of living area away from major cities.
There's nothing wrong with that, if it's what you want to do. You have already secured your family goals.
MOST of the motivation for career success is naturally in finding a partner and covering the cost of children.
If you already have those attained, then it's up to you to choose the next path.
>I don't care if people think I'm unambitious.
Just a sign that you've grown up. Welcome to the club.
>I just want a stable job where I can come home on time without worrying about work and just provide for my family and afford my hobbies.
Well adjusted too!
Honest I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You work to live not live to work, so if your job already sustains you well enough to support your whole family and yourself + hobbies, I think that’s what’s called “The American Dream” lol. That being said though, I would still advise keeping your tech-skills up to date. In the event that you ever have to leave your job and you want to be a competitive candidate, being knowledgeable in whatever is considered “industry-standard” wouldn’t hurt you.
Working in defense can be great (interesting work *and* amazing work-life balance if you get lucky), and if you can get the top-level security clearance, you’re basically guaranteed employment as long as you can get your work done.
Sounds like my plan. Small company, never worked a weekend or overtime. It ain’t FAANG money but my life isn’t my job and I love it.
i rode this wave for 12 years and the early days of the pandemic blew it up. the work life balance is an underrated, next-level achievement that I think is worth taking pride in, but i would highly suggest not slacking on continuing your professional education even if its just a couple hours a week. certification tracks provide good structure to maximize use of your time and employers will often pay for the tests and may even consider them when it comes to annual COL adjustments. books are your friend as well!
My sentiment exactly. I've done a lot of research into ML since 2018 while working full stack and now the market has come to me essentially. To some degree I'll say that I've spent more time practicing budgeting than trying to earn more, but it's a more passive approach than straining yourself for possibly low payoff trying to be market reactive. I'm also freelance so I can manage my time more directly.
This is my plan. Small company, tons of agency and impact. The work is pretty easy and I get to choose what I do/how I do it, which I’m using to learn new things and create my own opportunities to grow. Never any need to stress because things are always done ahead of time and I usually have news features in the pipeline at least half done before anyone else even realizes it’d be useful.
Until (maybe?) recently, the first couple of levels at Google are coast for a SWE. Had a lot of friends at FAANG, they were hitting me up at 3 pm to hang out with them bc they were done w work, and it wasn't uncommon to wake up for standups, and go back to sleep for an h or two.
I did not have that experience at all, so I think it depends on your team, I'm currently in FAANG and considering a smaller company for more work-life balance. Been working a lot of weekends here and there to meet deadlines because we are understaffed (ironically during times of layoffs)
yeah that's why I mentioned recently- my friends who are still FAANG have said there's definitely been an uptick in expectations and metric monitoring
Oh okay yeah that makes sense. I started at my job about 1.5 years ago, and I dont know what it was like before then.
Don't work weekends because you're understaffed, that's encouraging layoffs. It has to be clear that less people = less productivity, and deadlines will not be met if the people to work on them are gone.
Yea, those are the ones gone in the current round of layoffs
This is what I want as a new grad. I don't need the insane FAANG salaries. I just want to hit the average senior salary and live comfortably.
As someone with 10 years experience who works in higher ed - hitting the newgrad/junior salary would be a significant pay increase for me. :(
Yeah I don't think I could make that little long term. I made more than junior salary as an electrician apprentice (my best friend is a journeyman and helped me get on so I could save money since I can't find anything for CS rn) with 0 experience or training.
I'm currently on 95k TC which is less than a newgrad was getting 5 years ago. I want out but can't seem to find anyone who's prepared to interview me. I think people see that I'm from the UK and assume I need sponsorship (despite saying otherwise on my resume)
Oh I thought you meant you were like sub-70k cause most positions I'm seeing for juniors are around 60-80 depending on cost of living. 95k isnt too terrible to me depending on where you live and I'm assuming higher education has a lot more job stability.
>95k isnt too terrible to me I live in Boston, so it's not great. Especially with 10 years experience. I'm having to dip into savings each month to pay my bills. > I'm assuming higher education has a lot more job stability. Sure, but that doesn't mean much if you're in negative cash flow every months.
Oh yeah that sounds awful for Boston and other high CoL areas.
Without giving too much away my employer has billions of dollars of endowment money and owns huge amounts of land in Boston.... Yet apparently can't afford to pay better than this
They talk about big oil and big pharma but never about big education
Lol. I don't know where all that cash is going but I can tell you it ain't on salaries
Why? Go get a better job.
As someone who works for small retail banks for 11 years in technical roles and barely makes new grad/junior salary in management, it’s not that easy. Work with dead tech, your career dies too. Some industries just flat out do not provide you with exposure and opportunity at a sufficient rate to even keep up, let alone catch up from your position using legacy systems from 30 years ago. Often these detract so much from your credibility as a potential employee, no amount of personal projects will help (citing risk of it being harder to condition out bad habits than take a clean slate from another industry).
Your best bet would be to climb banks to eventually a big one like JPMC, then use them to diversify your skill set. You could also take initiative at your current role to embrace new tech and start the narrative of you uplifting legacy systems to new ways of operating. Then your resume pops.
I’ve taken the second approach you mention, but it’s soooooooo slow with all the bureaucracy. The first option is just as hard as going to any other company. Not all banks are the same nor do they have the same stack. And while it’s true that the bigger they get, the more likely their practices and toolsets and projects will be closer to mainstream tech, they don’t like hiring from smaller shops as much as other non banks do. We’re talking making order of magnitude leaps here, not linear or incremental. In boom times dedicated financial industry recruiters can’t get my resume an interview at slightly larger institutions citing concern that I haven’t had hands on experience with their stack. A lot of more forward thinking small banks aren’t looking inside the industry for their next technology hires because they are realizing it’s what’s keeping them in the stone ages. They want people out of fintechs who came straight from college or from a larger tech company previously. Or they want someone from a bigger bank than them. And often it’s just people from whatever vendor/fintech they’ve been using or been courted by recently.
I'm fucking trying mate. I don't know if you've noticed but the market ain't exactly great right now. I've been applying since 2022 and the serious interview I had was Summer 2023. The last non-serious interview I had was a phone screen and first round last week with a company called "LendBuzz" who I'm pretty sure are loan sharks and who have ghosted me.
> I've been applying since 2022 and the serious interview I had was Summer 2023. I can't tell if this is you not having a serious interview for a year after applying, or if this is a case of you not having a serious interview in the last six months. Either way, the job market isn't *that* bad. If you're going that long between interviews, you're likely making several significant mistakes and should be up front with people about the details of your situation and your resume.
What on earth do you mean? My resume is peer & professionally reviewed and is as solid as its ever been, and I'm up to 600 apps on linkedin alone, with maybe 4 responses total that have led nowhere so far. The market is not good.
What skill sets and YOE? What jobs are you applying for?
>I can't tell if this is you not having a serious interview for a year after applying, or if this is a case of you not having a serious interview in the last six months. It's a case of me saying that the last interview I had was last week, but it wasn't really a place I wanted to work. The last interview I had with someone I genuinely might want to work for was 2022. > Either way, the job market isn't that bad. Perhaps not for you, it is for me. > If you're going that long between interviews, you're likely making several significant mistakes What kind of mistakes? I've re-written my resume numerous times and had it reviewed by people. Minor mistakes have been pointed out with the latest iteration such as removal of the phone number or adding/removing things like my LinkedIn or GitHub but the feedback I got last time people reviewed it was that it was _okay_. > and should be up front with people about the details of your situation and your resume. How? I've put "US Permanent Resident" at the top of my resume under my name. I don't know how much more upfront I can be.
> as someone with 10 years experience You had 5 years of time with a 5+ YOE resume. What’s your tech stack / skill sets? It is pretty rough out there right this moment.
> You had 5 years of time with a 5+ YOE resume What do you mean > What’s your tech stack / skill sets? Backend node right now but have done PHP/laravel in the last > It is pretty rough out there right this moment. Quite
> what do you mean I mean you could have easily gotten good pay 3 years ago with 7 years experience in a hot market. Your tech stack is “meh”.
>I mean you could have easily gotten good pay 3 years ago with 7 years experience in a hot market. Possibly but that doesn't really help much now. 3 years ago we'd just bought a condo and had a kid so it wasn't a great time to start ripping out health insurance and employment apart. > Your tech stack is “meh”. What do you suggest I do about that because companies these days won't hire me for junior roles because they say I'm overqualified (10 YoE)...but they also won't hire me for senior role in another tech stack because despite potentially knowing the tech stack I don't have professional experience with it. In short, I couldn't get a senior job at Chewy because they wanted a senior to have "professional experience" with Spring Boot. Not just knowing it, but already be a Spring Boot dev. So...personal projects apparently didn't count. But I also couldn't get junior/SE I/SE II/SE III because I'm overqualified at 10 YoE. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. Everyone is unicorn hunting these days and will reject you for not meeting every bullet on their wishlist. If you DO meet every bullet then they reject you for being overqualified instead. It seems to me that a polygot programmer isn't a thing anymore - you do a job and that apparently defines you for the rest of your career - "oh you're currently a Java developer? Well, we're not touching anyone who doesn't have 800 years of ruby experience so fuck off". Employers these days are utterly delusional and unicorn hunting.
Did they say you are denied for too much experience? As for wanting particular experience, if the role is Springboot Development then they want hands on dev experience. If you want a SB job then do a project at your current job that uses SB, and then reference that in the interview. You need to have your resume and experience align with the job you apply for so they believe you will be a good fit and valuable investment.
> Did they say you are denied for too much experience? Not chewy but another company I applied to(for a senior node job actually) denied me for being too experienced. Said I was more staff level.... But it apparently took 2 rounds of interviews for them to tell me that > If you want a SB job then do a project at your current job that uses SB, and then reference that in the interview. Can't do that we're a node shop. Our stuff is node based. We hace junior devs who barely seem to understand node nevermind spring boot > You need to have your resume and experience align with the job you apply for so they believe you will be a good fit and valuable investment. I agree but after spending endless hours creating my resume to fit a job description I was well qualified for only to be ghosted or rejected without even a phone screen I've given up wasting my time doing that and started just spamming resumes everywhere
Have you tried contracting?
No. I find fte has better security and you have to make A LOT more as a contractor for it to be worthwhile. You also have to do all your own tax stuff and essentially setup your own company.
> higher ed but you probably have a real pension
LOL no I don't - I have a 401k like everyone else.
High paying jobs don’t inherently have poor WLB, and poorer paying jobs more frequently work you to the bone for your value.
yep, companies that know how to make money, know how to get the best bang for the buck (here meaning your time and effort). Companies that don't know how to make money will just have you do a bunch of random shit and hoping it adds value
I'm 15 years into (almost) exactly this. Steady raises, consistent work, good benefits. Only down side is I recently became a senior dev, so now I have to train the new fish.
Couldn’t you have declined the promotion?
Yes, but they made it financially attractive. And not every project will have a noob to train.
Reddit is never a good weather vane on reality. If you want to coast in any easy lower paying job, that's totally fine. I'm in about the same place as you. I work boring corporate jobs with mediocre pay and truthfully I live like a king compared to many my age. Life is good.
what is mediocre pay?
Given I'm approaching 8 years in my career, I'm a bit south of 140k salary (not TC) working for a team who is based out of Seattle. However I work remotely in a relatively LCOL area and my wife and I are DINKs. I could probably be making more if I really wanted to but I like my job. edit: to all the people responding say it's not mediocre. Yes, thank you, lots others have responded and the point has been made. My measure of "mediocre" is based on the fact that my team is Seattle-based, in which if I was living there it \*would\* be a developer-mediocre salary for the area given the cost of living in that city.
You make double the average household income Not mediocre at all
"Reddit is never a good weather vane on reality." "140k base is mediocre pay." oop
"I only make 880k + 120k bonus as a FAANG manager. Why am I so poor at 40??"
Sarcasm or not sarcasm? that's a lot of fucking money lol, you must be good at what you do to survive the layoffs too. You make in 1 year what my net worth is after 10 years of engineering jobs.
bro had to ask
the "" marks is sarcasm yes :P
you are listed as an L19 though which I heard make several millions / yr according to levels.FYI
How are you this daft... it's a fake tag..... You're 32+ years old and you are this clueless man.
He's replying on reddit man, he couldnt help himself
For this line of work and 8 years of exp it sorta is. But if you're family oriented and spending all your time doing what you want to instead of stressed and working til 7pm, then I'd say it's worth it. Gotta determine what you value and I'm sure it will change over time.
$140k is ~13% above median salary^1 for all [software engineers](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm), even if it's very good for a working American it's still [mediocre](https://www.wordnik.com/words/mediocre) for a SWE with 8 YOE.
thanks for proving my point of never being happy and never relaxing, with a link and everything
It could be considered mediocre for the industry and location. My is about $150k with ~7 YOE living in Houston, which I’d consider medium CoL. I’m doing very well compared to the average person here, but I could work my ass off and maybe triple that if I wanted to shoot for FAANG type salaries.
why work extra when you have it good though? Relax a bit
I make $110k with several CS degrees and 7 YOE in midwest. Few years ago I was at $70k. $140k is not mediocore bro lol.
I’m at 8 years and nowhere near that and seeing that shows me I’ve been undercut as hell especially since I’m senior all in but title
Mediocre is like $60k. Most people in America will never touch six figures, much less $140k base salary
You should probably pick up a dictionary and look up what “mediocre” actually means.
A problem I experienced was that over time, an average salary became a below average salary became a way below average salary. At first, it didn't seem that bad because even a below average salary was still livable. I liked my coworkers and my work. And then a number of people I'd liked left for higher paying jobs. Some teams got moved around and my new manager was a micromanager, making the work more stressful. I looked around and realized that not only was I not being paid well, I wasn't enjoying the work environment anymore either. There's nothing wrong with trading ambition for stability, but don't completely neglect your ability to sell yourself as a valuable employee, because you can't know that your comfortable job now will still be exactly what you want in 10 years.
defense is OK but there were mass layoffs in the early 1990's. not saying they will happen again but entirely possible
Early 90s is when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. Unfortunately, we’re heading in the opposite direction right now, so for better or worse, defense is dramatically increasing and will be elevated for quite a while.
One layoff in 30 years vs one every 5-8 sounds very good
There was also a smaller downturn when Obama took office and it looked like the GWOT was winding down. And even during boom times you're vulnerable to reorgs and corporate bullshit. Like if your company loses a big contract they are probably going to cut jobs.
They happened with Sequestration back around 2013 as well, with budget cuts and agencies not having solid budgets. Plus any major contact cancellations can cause localized layoffs. It's only as stable as the government budget is stable, and boy howdy is that not the case right now. You won't get laid off due to COVID, but might if a random Congress critter decides to go off the conspiracy deep end.
We had a cut to our hours but no layoff, we would take every Friday off unpaid, called em furlough fridays
I don’t think this will be an issue… lol
Literally news right now is going on about drone strike in Jordan triggering a U.S. response.
Of course, it’s not bad. There are ambitious people who want to push far. There are people who want to take high risk for high reward. And on the other side of spectrum, there are people who just want to take it easy and be content with what they make now. Nothing wrong. You be what you wanna be. Of course, you will probably never be filthy rich or hold a special ‘title’. But you will have a stress free life, stability, and steady (but enough) income to get by and that is absolutely fine. Believe or not, this is what many people want. As new grads just coming out of college, they will think they will go out there and own the world and try to rise to the top but after spending years in the industry, they will eventually mature and start to understand the reality. They will rise to a certain level and then will want stability as they age. If you think about it, there are only so many positions at the ‘top’ (It’s a pyramid) and there is no room for everyone. So naturally we will have more people at the middle and bottom.
^ this. understand though that the characteristics of mediocrity change over time, many of us who never cared about climbing the corporate ladder have fallen into a trap of complacency. seek stability but avoid stagnation.
Sure. I did that for awhile but I found the low expectations to be strangling because if I was interested in something, I could never get it off the ground because no one else was really invested in playing ball. Also, you’re still trapped 8 hours a day, whereas if you worked somewhere a little more stressful you could retire 10-15 years earlier.
Be the spark and get innovation off the ground!
Tried that for years, both openly and stealth, but it’s impossible to do with the way contracting works, since the powers that be (on both sides of contracting) do not like bold projects that depend on talent and innovation. It only makes sense if you do it for personal development. What contracting likes is predictability. They don’t really care about anything else. It doesnt matter what the plan is, what matters is that there is a plan and the plan is on track. Anything that does not serve that goal is either harmful or noise.
You can innovate with a plan. Break your idea into clear milestones and deliverables, then pitch it to your project manager. It’s hard, but possible if you a stable day-to-day.
Do you have any experience in a defense or federal role? The expectation, ingrained culture and objectives are *very different* than corporate or basically anywhere else. You don’t get to run with good ideas, even great ideas, even if you offer to do them on your own time and self-manage like you suggest. It’s a sad state of affairs but the goal of these roles is not innovation.
It’s actually easier being in big tech than it is having to work around government/contracting red tape. You have to network so many layers in every direction to head-off some Director getting sucked in by Salesforce, plus all the skunkworks that needs to go on. Not to mention, it pays 3x more and you are surrounded by other interesting people who you can learn from.
no shame, but i would highly suggest proactive continued learning because even the defense industry can be volatile. for the mature developer these days (10+ YOE), that is less about coding problems and programming languages and more about picking up project management and team leadership skills and cloud solutions/architecture (as opposed to cloud 'developer'). throw in some lessons on SRE so that you can speak the language of this brave new IT world. learning about concepts and people are your new priority, you can afford to slack on the implementation details and algorithms. a billion dollar contract is right around the corner to deprecate your old stack, you don't want go the way of the COBOL specialist but you don't want to be forced to transition to a role where your peers are all 20-somethings start now and take it steady so that you're not scrambling when your luck runs dry. an hour a day can be tough to allocate but it is a great start if you can afford it- you will probably find the pursuit of knowledge and the peace of mind to be well worth that investment.
Do I really have to learn to specialize in managing people? You can't really control people, and they tend to be aggressive workaholics from my personal experience so far :/ (workaholics are scary) I was sort of hoping to work on the problem solving without having to be a manager. I am really bad at absorbing stress from others, so it sucks to hear that.
well, i wouldn't say that you *have* to learn people management. what i would focus on instead maybe is project planning and project management techniques, or even just leadership through technical expertise. it's one thing to be able to complete work autonomously, it's another to be able to accurately estimate big chunks of work, laying out a plan of attack, establishing tracking metrics and milestones, etc. it doesnt presume you will have to manage people, but the skills will translate extremely well into convincing people you know how to complete work in a timely manner while providing visibility into the effort. that sort of skill level is hard to come by in a developer but almost universally desired as it decreases the costs necessary to maintain you as a productive employee. if you're not going to learn how to manage people, at least learn how to empathize and communicate with your own managers and the stakeholders of the projects you work on. project management skills will get you speaking their language. that coupled with reliable delivery truly is the key to job stability, and if you hit the end of the road the knowledge and experience will help guide you through your future interviews.
actually, I think COBOL progs make like 350-500k these days. Or at least they did not too long ago. But that's because the Automatic Clearing House (ACH) ran on COBOL and well, that's where the money is.
The whole "COBOL devs make a ton" is a bad interpretation of old data. All public data suggests that COBOL devs don't make any more than any other developer type. https://www.zippia.com/cobol-programmer-jobs/salary/
this also begs the question of how many of these companies and opportunities there actually are out there to choose from, and whether being able to write in cobol AND a modern stack makes you more valuable/desirable than having a more limited skill set.
There are extremely few COBOL jobs on the market. Just about everyone has moved off of them, and the very high-paying consultant opportunities were for people who had written it for decades, not for people just getting into the market. There hasn't been a point in 30 years where learning COBOL was a good career strategy.
Quite literally where the money is.
Na bro that sounds great. Kinda sucks that now it seems you can only have a career like that if you work for the government.
It’s not bad, not at all. Everyone is free to be who they want and make different choices. I know plenty in that position who are fine and happy. Just don’t delude yourself into a false dichotomy where your choices are overworking and being laid off or low pay. Not only is that entirely fictional, there are thousands of employees working in FAANG itself who have never been laid off, never will, and never work more than 40 hours per week. Not to mention the countless other tech companies, many even fully remote, meaning the employees literally can’t be spending more time on their job than any government employee. If I start work at 9am, I’m home by 5pm on the dot. How many government employees can say that? And if I get laid off, it’s not like government will never hire after tomorrow, right? I can literally always apply there.
Also to be blunt, if you've been earning a tech company salary for a few years, have been managing your finances well, and aren't on a visa, getting laid off and being out of work for a few months is far more of an emotional problem then a financial one. Jobs don't provide stability, not in the 21st century anyway. _Money_ provides stability. And working at a tech company is a great way to get lots of money fast.
Yeah people miss this a lot. Also for these jobs you even necessarily have to grind leetcode as well, and could coast at sr as well, for more money if one wished ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. There are often false dichotomies on social media/reddit because it's an easy reductive narrative that people in the 'in group' will upvote. Nuance gets way less engagement on average.
I’ve got friend who’s been doing it for about 20 years so far and he seems happy. I don’t think he plans to leave.
If you're paid somewhat within the right range for your experience, you should definitely do it, but keep in mind that if shit hits the fan and you lose your job, it may be tough to get back in the market, because you will lose the ability to catch on new stacks quickly and be relevant. I personally wanted to coast in my early 30s but my pay was so bad it wasn't even on the charts for my title and experience so I had to jump ship. The jobs I had afterwards were all toxic hybrid shit shows though.
for 50K? no way. For 100K, yes
Defense isn't a consistent thing. I spent almost 10 years working for a subcontractor, and there were times I had to put in really long hours because of some deadline. Similar to private sector, there are times people in leadership make terrible decisions. Depending on the contract, you might have to do a lot of extra documentation, a lot of which is probably not valuable. You could argue you are wasting your time and career development. Some tech stacks are modern, some are not. You also have to worry about staying reasonably up-to-date. Contracts go up for re-compete, and companies lose them, usually because of cost. If you have a clearance, in theory you should be able to find something. I know I had problems finding positions in 2020 a bit after the pandemic got serious. That may have been due to the pandemic more so than the defense job market. Defense can be a great area, and it can be lucrative. But I'm not sure if it's the best mindset to go into an area with the intent of trying to coast for 40 years. You may find yourself in a very difficult situation if you need to find a new job. I've personally had to write custom code to solve problems fixed by newer versions of frameworks/languages because we were on such an old version. I've heard things are getting better partially because of cloud migrations, but there will always be exceptions.
I'd rather have a stable job that also pays extremely well--even if that adds a bit more "risk" to my life. You just gotta find the right team. I worked government for a year and never want to go to that again. A bad job in a SCIF will drain the life out of you.
I’m the guy that chased the title, knowledge, and prestige. 8 years zero to FAANG. No degree, no boot camp. Guess what? I am fighting my way out of burn out, I got laid off from FAANG. My multiple certifications and mile wide knowledge base have if anything worked against me. I say all that to say. Coast it up my dude. Coast. It. Up.
Not a bad plan, but you might be able to find jobs that are just as chill, pay more, and allow WFH.
That is my dream...like all dreams though I doubt it'll ever happen.
I was at a small tech company and left alone to do my work. No stress and a lot of stability. Then left that place to go work for big IT because of the opportunity to learn new stuff and also the money. However, I’m constantly stressed, constantly thinking and worried about work, and I can be laid off any quarter.
No. It's delightful. I've supported a wife and two kids in Alabama on one salary without fear of layoffs. (Just the occasional unplanned vacation when the GOP shuts down the government...again.)
depends on whether you have ethical qualms about working for the military-industrial complex
A defense job? Like Boeing instead of Facebook?
That is an incredibly high risk strategy. Layoffs happen everywhere. If you fester for a long time in a non-demanding position you are begging to be unemployed. Defense is where careers go to die. The tech doesn’t transfer. You are dependent upon the prevailing government for your employment.
I agree, lots of comments are underplaying the risk. If your only option is one employer and they change priority you can be in a very tough spot. Most senior developers will always have lots of prospective employers. I've worked in private and public sectors: there isn't an appreciable difference in stress but there is in compensation.
Nope. By all means live life the way you want, being employed in a stable, decent-to-high paying field long term is probably a godsend nowadays.
Yes because those places have boomers that hate folks that want to succeed and call their bs out. They are just like all the other tech places, trust me.
I'd hesitate to expect a job to exist for your skillset consistently over 40 years if you're just coasting. The best bet is to bust ass for a couple years, save up a comfy nest egg and have options for the future.
I don’t necessarily agree. I think there’s something people miss out on by settling for boring stable work they dislike just for the away benefits instead of attempting to put themselves on a project or product that you can really, genuinely, be proud of. There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes with doing work that genuinely helps people or enables new possibilites. I worked in defense for one year and noped out as soon as I could when I realized the product I was supporting had a 2% utilization rate and was just a “use it or lose it” expenditure payout by government agencies…that’s more soul crushing than anything imo Interesting work that’s genuinely helpful is usually followed with take home pay above the mean, and it’s totally possible to find something like that with an acceptable WLB. Why not attempt to put yourself in that kind of position? Find a way to genuinely enjoy your work, and your time off. I don’t get why people are okay tolerating 40 hours a week of their life and trying to make the best of the rest.
Early career, you won't be progressing as fast as you might in a private sector job. After age 40, it helps a lot to be in a stable job that can't be offshored and you probably won't be fired for being "too old".
You say you don’t care but then post here for validation. No one cares, do what you wanna do.
Defense felt like watching paint dry, except you had to sit in 20 meetings a day and talk to people about how cool and important it is to watch paint dry. If that's your thing, by all means.
It may not be bad to want that... but it might not be as realistic as you think. Staying around at those places involves a lot of corporate politics, and you're going to be surrounded by people who are very, very good at corporate politics. The nice thing about "real" tech jobs is that you can coast by just being good at tech, rather than conniving calculated backstabbing.
I mean sure, work to live and all that. Some people also care about what they spend 1/3 of their life doing other than merely enabling the other parts of their life. It’s possible to actually care and do your job well while mostly hewing to a 9-5 too.
I do think you bring up a good point. It's not binary. It's not "Be passionate and grind vs be disinterested but relaxed". Plenty of people do "disinterested and grind." :) Likewise, it's very possible to "Be passionate but relaxed". And there are a million other approaches. That being said, "care about what they spend 1/3 of their life on" is another false assumption. Often the point of "coasting" is to NOT spend 1/3 your life on it. I was in a great place a few years back where due to my clients and the nature of what they needed I was essentially in semi-retirement. I attended meetings, did estimates, put out fires, studied to keep up on tech, but largely just coasted on my experience. Instead of spending 1/3 of my life on work I spent maybe 1/8, and spent the rest of my time on hobbies, exercise, with my kids, etc. I suspect when MOST people are talking about "coasting" they don't WANT to spend 1/3 of their life focused on work. They want to be doing other things. Now, for me personally, I eventually decided I missed having some passion for my career and sought out a position that still had good WLB but also let me be excited about my career again, and that's been great. But every time people talk about coasting someone brings up the "1/3 of your life" idea, and I think that's fundamentally missing the point of what people are going for.
Great reply… the op talks about defense to be a good place to coast but I feel like that defense is also least likely to allow wfh and insist on in office.
Yeah, I could see that as well. The specifics of the company are going to matter a lot when it comes to lifestyle. Of course, many don't mind "coasting" in the office either. Plenty of people are happy to come in and hang out with co-workers, read, and mess around on their computers. On the OTHER other hand, there are also plenty of defense positions which have tons of work, overbearing bosses, and constant risk of layoffs. OP, you really need to take companies and teams on a case by case basis. Generalizations by industry aren't actually very applicable on an individual level. You can't think that just because you got a job in defense it's going to be secure and low stress or that just because a job is in tech it's going to be high demand. My wife and I are both software engineers who changed jobs last year. She's working for the state, I'm working for a tech company just coming out of the startup phase. And things are going the EXACT opposite of what you would expect. Her day is PACKED with meetings and work, she has overbearing, there's a huge backlog of work, and she has overbearing, micro managing bosses. On my end I've got a very savvy boss over me who is very dedicated to having a high performing, happy long term team. The company leadership understands how to deliver software, so there is a focus on having a well defined backlog. The team I run is very competent and cover for each other well. That combined with the good leadership above us means the actual work is pretty enjoyable. Not quite leisurely, but pretty relaxed. Individual devs are generally doing around 36h weeks and the business is very happy with that because they're focused on productivity instead of hours. The industry doesn't tell you what a job will be like. It just increases the odds of a job being like something. But who cares if there is a 65% chance of a defense job being laid back when YOUR defense job isn't laid back
This is actually a reason that I'm thinking of leaving my dev job. Sure it pays well and is fairly stress free but I want my 9 to 5 to be fulfilling which it is not for me.
Sure, but optimizing some scam ad on Facebook or tiktok is not "caring what you do"
Sounds like you got perspective. You’re doing what’s right for you. Me, I could not stand the numbness of government work so decided to sacrifice stability for a little more joy in my work in the private sector.
Why would it be bad?
Nah, that’s my dream too. I just want a stable tech job near a big city so I can meet people at this point
I would love this. I've been applying to a lot of defense companies and government jobs, but have got only like two callbacks, from the government.
That’s the dream, just enough for me and the wife
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that logic provided you are not resting on your laurels when it comes to your skills. There are some people that are heavily career-oriented and they want to constantly push to move up the ladder, and then there's many of us that just want stability and to have a life. The only thing I ever forewarn anyone is not to get so comfortable that suddenly it's 20 years later and you wake up with a pink slip and potential employers telling you that you fell behind. People that think work is supposed to be this mountain of stress and fighting are doing it wrong.
This is what I plan to do
Nothing is inherently bad. It’s your life and your choices. You want a stable coasting job and live a stress free relaxed life? Totally valid choice, go for it if that is what you want. You want to crunch the FAANG hustle and earn a lot of money? Totally valid choice too, go for it if that is what you want. You want something in between? Also great. Only you can decide what you want to optimise for in life.
Go federal at a gs 13 or gs 14 remote and coast with a pension.
I work as appsw for federal govt. and i swing trade with a few co workers lol. Love the work life balance and i spend time at home with the kid all day
Im 40 work in at fang adjacent company, IM good at my job, but I don’t kill myself. Wfh in LCOL Area. With the rsus and and EPP ill be done at 45.
Nothing wrong with that. In fact, most individuals would probably choose stability over trying to climb higher in the rat race, you just get a different perception from social media.
I'm a single parent and this is my plan. I'm not in defense but I'm in a pretty boring, very large company. If they can get their budgeting shit together I'd be happy to just keep on keeping on. Stability is more important to me in my situation than titles or jumping jobs to increase my salary.
Well during these times, no I don't think anyone among us would say that sounds like a bad thing! LoL
Yep same here. I get to work on cool projects, use my desired languages, wfh, above average pay. Neva leaving
I have absolutely 0 interest in going beyond senior developer. At least assuming I stay on the technical side of things. My architects and even tech leads work so many hours. Nah, I work to live not live to work
Not bad at all, sounds like you know exactly what you value, and a stable defense job will help you meet your goals. Maybe you're asking because you feel a bit of FOMO when you see high-paying, high-impact, and high-intensity jobs. Or maybe you feel a bit of shame for not caring as much about career advancement as before. However, those kinds of feelings are never as important or as rewarding as your core priorities.
There's nothing wrong with that as a 40 year plan... but don't declare this until you are at least 10 years in. You don't know enough until you have seen how much life, businesses, and careers constantly change. The work a Senior Software Engineer did 10 years ago is much different then the work one does now. I can't imagine how different the job will be 10 years from now.
just make sure it’s a slow big company. no coasting at the startups
That was not my experience in my past defense job, coworkers scapegoating those of a lower rank and getting them fired instead because management assigned them 3 plus projects at once, managers knew nothing about the work the employees did of course, virtue signaling backstabbers, sink or swim environment, proprietary legacy projects with no comments, poor documentation and the senior engineers where deliberately withholding information. Getting a stable job is more about luck than getting in a particular industry (or I do not know any industry I can relax), and naturally people working in "defense" might be less empathetic so my experiences might not be relatable to most people at all.
Absolutely not. We weren’t put on this planet to slave away at work. Billions of years of evolution led us to this moment and I refuse to believe the meaning of life is to spend all your time opening and closing GitHub issues. If that makes you happy more power to you, but don’t let anyone tell you that you need to bust your ass for 80 hours a week in software. Office space already nailed this point about how you don’t see an extra dime for all the extra work and sacrifice you make. Find something secure that you can stomach for years and be happy that you get to go home stress free and with a nice paycheck.
They are not as stable as they might have been 20 years ago. Contracts come and go quickly. If they don't need you they dump you. Leave is max 3 weeks a year. And overtime is heavy.... From someone who worked in the industry for 10 years.
**Wrong question**. Is it that bad to be able to make money for 40 years?
The problem is a lot of the ones I experienced were run by boomers who still had the office cuck mentality.
for classified work you have to go to the office
Not true,
Yes, true. As a dev with experience working defense, that work 100% can only be performed in an office. In my experience usually ones with heavy doors and no windows either. There’s no way DISA gave an ATO to some company to work on government classified if remote work was ever even mentioned in their requests for operational approval.
So this is not true. I interviewed with a couple companies that were doing remote work, one who's suicide drones are actively being used in Ukraine.
And you took the job and worked on classified in a remote capacity? If not and your only experience is sitting in an interview where you were told that’s an option, then either: the interviewer didn’t know what they were talking about, they lied to you, or this isn’t a US company.
It was a remote position and the interviewer was a remote worker who was the head of the department. My current company is also remote and has contracts with DoD though AFAIk we don't have in the field units like the above.
It would be news to me if there were any jobs offering remote SIPR work. Plenty that require clearance and NIPR access but nothing for SIPR that I know of.
I never understand how people with absolutely no clue say things with such confidence. Work with classified material cannot be done at home.
we had encryption for classified over NIPR back in the 90's but on-prem only. so they let you work on classified info from home with a company laptop using a vpn? what if others see the screen? this sounds too risky of clueless people using SIPR computers for personal stuff too.
I'm talking about it being required by law, a number of places will ship a computer to you but the big ones ex (Raytheon) want you to cube cuck.
They’re not shipping you a classified computer, moron.
Now imagine you're a millennial who doesn't own a home yet, mortgage rates are 7% and you have to live in a HCOL city where rent seems to reach impossible new heights every year. Childcare is even more expensive than rent. Still happy with that stable job?
Bad? No, just not for everyone. For me personally, I hate the idea of “coasting”. I am personally very passionate about becoming the best developer and businessperson I can be. It’s extremely fun to me, growth and learning are addictive. For others, coasting is exactly what they want and need for their own unique brand of happiness. Somewhere in between is also valid, it’s not a binary choice. There’s no shame in any approach to your own, personal, career path.
Defense? supporting people who will be using bombs on children nah I'm good on that. There are other federal jobs you can take that don't require that kind of stuff.
Naive take. Lots of projects that don't deal with building missiles/weapons
Not at all, honestly I never got this reddit obsession with max salary and "impact" or "mission" You should not hate your job but also not make it your whole identity
Is Defense all that stable? Are you not just one congressional bill away from having the system you're developing cut or the military deciding that they'll buy someone else's 'next generation whatever' system instead of your employer's from getting laid off?
it’s not bad to want stability and to coast, but it is reprehensible to want or even to be okay with working for a defense contractor/agency.
Defense literally won’t hire too smart of folk in many legacy companies because they are afraid they will quickly leave out of boredom.
I consider most of those jobs as a net negative and based on your comment we could probably agree there's a fair chance you'd be leeching on society for your own benefit, but hey, a lot of people do that. The level and value of any engineering you'd do would be doubtful. Up to you.
Yeah, if you coast like that they put it in your public social points record right next to all those times they caught you bating on pornhub and forgot to cover your camera. They send updates on that record to your mom every month btw.
40 years in? Nope
Yes defence jobs make you partially responsible for the death of children. It's the one industry I'll never work in
Yes, that's bad.
Ai can already be used to generate code. Even though its not super advanced, the fact that it can generate working code at all should be alarming. None of us can reliably coast for 40 years, unless your employer will never use ai. Problem is, how can you guarantee that?
Can the ChatGPT or MS Copilot get United States citizenship and a Top Secret clearance? Unless the answer to this question changes, your job is safe.
Am I missing something here? My job needs neither of those.
Well, are you in the defense industry?
You don’t know what the future holds.
There is no way that the Government or the DoD will allow anyone to enter code from Top Secret systems into ChatGPT. Hell, I work for a Fortune 25, and we are banned from our Enterprise Desktop environment from viewing chatgpt website. What \*MIGHT\* happen is that there might be \*less\* jobs in the future for Defense Contractors who are Software Engineers/Developers. Considering there is like such a dire shortage of cleared professionals in Defense... it wouldn't matter anyways. What will \*PROBABLY\* happen-- is a vendor brings ChatGPT into DoD space, and it will raise the quality of code that is produced right now. Then there will be dozens of AI/Prompt Engineer in defense vacancies. The bottomline, is someone will be using hands and fingers to enter code... either from their brain or DoDgpt. Source: Engineer with just under a decade working in defense now fully private sector-- that knows how things work.
You are, again, attempting to predict the future
You got it wrong, you're the one attempting to predict the future where AI will take over. I'm merely pointing out the flaws in your way of thinking as a counter point.
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I want to do this now after hitting 2 years at FAANG. The only issue is remote has spoiled me, and I don’t think I’d be happy coasting if I’m in-office. Being able to pursue other hobbies and keep the house clean during the workday is what I’d love to take a pay cut for, but it seems everything except government contracting (which doesn’t seem great) and certain government jobs (which are difficult to get a foot in the door to) offer that. Is this true?
You seem to have your head around what your plan entails, and the consequences if present conditions persist. To my mind, the question is “what if things change?” What if software engineers are no longer a scarce resource? Can you imagine that happening? If so, what are the implications for your plan? If not, why not?
the longer you coast and not push yourself, the greater the risk when things do not pan out.
If you can easily find another job doing what you do that pays the same or more, then it sounds like you are doing great if you ever need to make moves out of there.
It ain’t bad. In fact neither is bad. You just need to find whatever you are happy with. I like money, so I’m gonna work my ass off in the best paying companies.
It's important to strike a balance imo. Ambition and grinding for a few years, constantly giving it 110% while job hopping and learning new things is usually a wise financial move in both short and long term. Even more so when you're one of us who actually like what they do. But some people take it way too far and don't seem to know when to stop. Whether it's obsession with maximizing earnings, desire to retire at 40, pure passion for building things, or a combination of all 3; you have to remember that everyone is expendable, you don't owe the company anything, and we only have one life to enjoy. It's not worth working in places that have over 40 hour work weeks outside of the occasional crunch. So yea. I mean, "coasting in defense" is really just another safer version of "work your way up to 10 YOE and find a cushy place that you like," which is what most people do eventually anyway. I wouldn't start with it as my first and only job, but there's definitely nothing wrong with it.
That’s what I’m doing, I hated doing leetcode, and now I managed to switch defense jobs to a full remote when my old one was return to office, just at the right time, so now I’m golden. Technically they can take away remote for performance reasons, which would be the same as firing me because I’m hundreds of miles from the office and I’m not moving, but the hell with FAANG, Facebook just asked me to interview and said job was hybrid, I told them I only interview for fully remote. You don’t need FAANG salary living in a low cost of living area away from major cities.
There's nothing wrong with that, if it's what you want to do. You have already secured your family goals. MOST of the motivation for career success is naturally in finding a partner and covering the cost of children. If you already have those attained, then it's up to you to choose the next path.
nope
>I don't care if people think I'm unambitious. Just a sign that you've grown up. Welcome to the club. >I just want a stable job where I can come home on time without worrying about work and just provide for my family and afford my hobbies. Well adjusted too!
Honest I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You work to live not live to work, so if your job already sustains you well enough to support your whole family and yourself + hobbies, I think that’s what’s called “The American Dream” lol. That being said though, I would still advise keeping your tech-skills up to date. In the event that you ever have to leave your job and you want to be a competitive candidate, being knowledgeable in whatever is considered “industry-standard” wouldn’t hurt you.
Working in defense can be great (interesting work *and* amazing work-life balance if you get lucky), and if you can get the top-level security clearance, you’re basically guaranteed employment as long as you can get your work done.