It's also one of the biggest challenges to me, replacing those people, who are often top performers on my teams. But that's my job. It's what I do for this organisation. "As an engineer" I hope you never consider holding your own career progress back just to make that part of my job easier. If that's a serious problem for me, then that's because I failed at _my_ job. I need to have contingency plans and succession plans and we both need you to not be irreplaceable. When I've got my ducks in a row, my reaction is "Right, time to accelerate $otherDev's seniority, temporarily move those @responsibilies to @colleagues with a handover, and call up HR/recruiting to hire in someone with @skillset. Let's plan some celebratory drinks."
When you're ready, and when a great opportunity presents itself, do not spend a second worrying about how I'll need to deal with you leaving. While you've probably just made a whole bunch more work for me as I scrabble to fill the gap you're leaving, I will genuinely be happy for you and proud of you for getting there.
(And I will try my hardest to communicate that pride and happiness much better than I show my frustration and stress as I do the hard parts of my job.)
That's the correct attitude. View your team as a pipeline that produces top people. It's much more rewarding to work that way.
Fact is though I wouldn't be looking if the company was as loyal to me as vice versa I guess. I actually really like the job and the people but I need to at least keep up with inflation to avoid feeling like a clown haha
Good luck with your job hunt.
I'm not necessarily in software engineering (operations/architecture), but the weight on my manager(s) at times has been what's kept me here.
Not always directly on them, but the vacuum they mention. Everyone on my team is a champion of their realm, and I can't help but assume the worst if I were to leave.
I might not love the place, but the people and the core of what we do - absolutely. Sometimes it indeed just isn't the right time.
Usually nobody really in management cares unless they are complete psychos. And the team will not miss you much either because other people usually step up. People who leave are forgotten quickly.
In the later, the team has a head start finding and onboarding my replacement. As we all know, the main issue here is that the customary 2 week notice is insufficient time to find your replacement. If it’s truly just about money or something like that, it also gives them an opportunity to give you what you feel is fair or they know what is going to happen if they don’t.