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Comment by ysavir | Hacker News Reader

Probably due to the very poor and misleading article title, which frames the situation as a "demotion", something that happens to us, not something that we decide to do.

The article has a good message, but the title is absolute click-bait. Many people might come across the title, and although not interested in reading it, walk away with the idea that following dreams leads to negative consequences. I hope the author changes it.

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Yeah, the title of the article is pretty poor. It kind of sounds like someone who was promoted from a developer to something else, rose to the level of their incompetence, then reversed the promotion to go back to doing what they enjoyed.

This person was not a developer previously, so I don't understand how they were "demoted." Other than management > individual contributor.

What really happened was they changed jobs to do something they found more fulfilling. Which is great, but if I decided to change careers to building furniture, I wouldn't say I "got demoted to making furniture."

They were director of design! I am not part of that company so it’s possible that director is a joke there but in most companies that’s the highest level prior to the c suite/owners (public company/professional services firms). That would mean she likely had immense autonomy and a large group of direct reports whom themselves had teams of direct reports. Going from that to “just a coder” ie one team member of one team responsible for only their contributions to their current projects.

In nearly every organization that would be a huge demotion WITH a huge pay cut. In this instance because coders are paid so much more than most other professions it’s possible it was a lateral move or even a pay raise! But no question as far as responsibility for the direction of the organization it’s a huge demotion.

> That would mean she likely had immense autonomy and a large group of direct reports whom themselves had teams of direct reports.

As someone who has worked at a variety of companies - this isn't true. It's just a title. I've seen plenty of "director of X" with no direct reports. I don't know how big Stack Overflow's design department is but with only 300 people in the company - I can't imagine it being massive enough to warrant a typical director title you'd see at some truly big corps where a director has 50+ people under them.

I have seen all members of a sales team all have the title of ‘Director of Business Development’ simultaneously.

I don’t know what one calls the director of directors, though.

Senior director or Vice President (or in a team like you describe, ‘sales manager’ hah)

Outside of the film industry, director is usually a joke title.

She was a director (manager of managers), so going from that to an IC developer is absolutely a demotion by any definition of the word.

If you want to be strict, sure. But there's no arguing that when people hear the term "demotion", it's almost universally regarded as a non-voluntary change of negative consequence. Perhaps if the title was "To follow my dreams I asked my manager for a demotion" it would be decent usage, but the current phrasing in the title is entirely misleading. It's probably the use of the word "got", implying that it was an external decision, not their own.

Not really if it’s by choice. She decided more to “retire” from being a director. A “demotion” is involuntary.

It’s not a demotion in the same way that voluntarily deciding on a career change from IC to management is not a promotion. A promotion is given to someone, not chosen by them.

> Probably due to the very poor and misleading article title, which frames the situation as a "demotion", something that happens to us, not something that we decide to do.

Not seeing the connection with that and feeling inferior. I agree with your point, just still can't figure out the top level comment.

Not feeling inferior, but feeling insecure. The message in the title can easily reinforce people's insecurities and discourage them from pursuing their dreams, because they'll just get "demoted".

We have a fairly diversified economy. If you feel promotion is more important to you, pursue that. If you feel performing a different kind of task is important to you, pursue that. Neither is "better" in some absolute sense, much less moral sense.

Life is full of tradeoffs though sometimes they are easy and that's wonderful ("doing X isn't worth the money to me" or "I don't really like doing Y but I don't mind because the extra money will allow me to Z"). Some people couldn't care less about titles (e.g. me) while some people think they are even more important than pay (e.g. my mum who grew up in such a culture). I can't claim either is bad or wrong; people just have different itches to scratch.

The "choices" we should worry about are those forced upon people who don't actually have a choice ("I have to drag myself to my second minimum wage job because otherwise I'll be homeless").

Director to junior engineer is absolutely a demotion (albeit a voluntary one), and might even come with a paycut.

The online article's title is a bit less click bait than the transcription here on HN, but it's still misleading.

"I followed my dreams, left management, and love being a coder again" might be more on target.

Demotion has a very negative connotation.

>The article has a good message, but the title is absolute click-bait.

Well, it is a demotion, though: "reduction in rank or status".

And it's interesting here exactly because it was by choice.

The title undermines any message that the author may have cared about conveying. This is why I rarely read articles where the title has a whiff of clickbait.

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