Comment by BigHatLogan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BigHatLogan | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for the reply, and for sharing your story. I smiled at the description of Estonian men--I know a few Eastern Europeans myself (I think Estonia falls under Eastern Europe?), and your description is completely accurate. I'm glad you and your father had a warm relationship.

I have a question for you: Do you wish you had stayed on the career train? Maybe not completely, but at least not getting off of it entirely? I am on the career train right now (not married, no children) but am wondering if it is "best" to leave if/when I start a family. Part of me feels like that would be nice, but the other part of me worries about providing materially for my [future] family, including my parents, who are not so well off financially too. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, whether you have any regrets over it.

Based on my own experience, there is no need to do so. I have just set hard limits on what can be expected of me (e.g no work after 6), and by all appearances my boss is still very happy with my work (and corresponding promotions).

That makes sense. Are you at all concerned about not getting promotions as quickly in the future, or being more easily replaceable, etc.? I guess I'm under the "up or out" mindset, especially in tech with the ageism factor. I would love to do exactly what I'm doing right now for the next 30 years, but I don't know if that's possible--that mindset keeps me on the train, so to speak.

Not really. It probably depends on the organisation you are working for, but where I’m at now I still feel valued. Of course I’ll get less promotions, but that’s mostly because I reached the highest IC level now (as far as I’m aware).

I can’t tell you how to do that though. For me I used to do a lot of feature delivery, but now I’m more focused on team wide improvements (pipeline, CI/CD, guidelines, tooling). I’ve taken myself off the critical path, but make everyone’s life better (or aim to, anyway).

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