I could never understand why would someone accept these jobs. What's so great about becoming a manager and work 60h/week? How's that better than 40 a week as a subordinate and letting someone else worry about all the office drama?
- Why would anyone pick a healer in an MMO group ? What's so great about becoming a healer ? How's that better than playing a DPS, actually contributing to killing the boss and letting someone else worry about your health bar ?
- What is fun about plying support in DOTA ? I mean the fun is being the carry and killing everyone on the other team to win games ? How can anyone willingly waste his gold to buy visibility wards, that is really not fun at all.
The healer/support/manager (="helper") position appeals to people who like to focus less on the pure "productive" task at hand. They like to focus on getting a full picture of everything that is happening, anticipating potential issues, fixing them, and allowing the DPS/carry/engineer (="producers") to be in the best possible position so they can perform their job. This can be fun for some people even if you don't see it that way. This often is really not an easy task. This often is critical for the success of the team.
And just like there are good and bad "producers" there are good and bad "helpers". The skillset is different, the measure of value creation is different, and the fun is different.
I've often struggled to articulate the reasons I enjoy these positions over a "producers" role. This will help - thank you.
I want to know the analogy of healers that rage quit (they do so more than DPSs or Tanks) with the entire manager/subordinate thing ;)
A decade later, you are an expert in the technologies that company uses, are paid well, and have good working conditions. But a recession comes, the company has a couple of bad years, and is taken over by a private equity firm. They decide you are too expensive and you're laid off.
You have 15 years experience as an IC, are a master of your craft, and no one wants to hire you. Principal engineers are promoted from within rather than hire from without. You are willing to start lower down the totem poll at a new place, but hiring managers believe that you'll leave at the first chance, or be disgruntled at the pay/seniority cut, or are just plain intimated by you. Realistically you are looking at a couple of decades of contracting. That's not the worst thing in the world, there are some upsides, but it's not the pure IC work you had been hoping for--it means decades of hustling.
Now look at the other career path. 6-7 years as an IC, 2-3 years as a engineering lead, 4-5 years as a engineering manager. If you get laid off at that point, besides all the engineering manager positions you can go for, you can also position yourself as a engineering VP / CTO of a smaller company. No one is overqualified for that, and the CEO that does the hiring isn't going to be intimated.
I'm not saying that you need to decide that reduced career risk (and probably extra money) are worth moving to the leadership track from the less stressful IC track, but isn't some incomprehensible choice.
I really hope that by the time I get there and get laid off in a recession or restructuring, I'll be retiring. I love software, but not enough to do it for longer than I have to and for someone else.
If you double your hours, raise your pay to 150 units and inflate your lifestyle by 25% (from 80 units to 100 units), you are now making 150, spending 100 (with more luxury), and saving 50 units (250% of what you were saving before).
That might be considered a trade-up (and is more or less the path I chose).