If you're not interested in that and just want to build things, what sorts of roles exist beyond stock "Engineer"?
> A recurring theme I see on HN when people talk about Principal Engineers and other such positions, is that they're less about actual engineering and more about telling other people what to do.
This isn’t the common definition of Principal Engineer in the industry. There are some exceptions, but most companies expect Principal Engineers and similar titles to code. They will also have responsibilities to set tone and direction, mentor, and other leadership roles.
However, if someone is only managing people and not engineering, they are literally a manager. It doesn’t make sense to give them an Engineer title.
Uhm - 30 years from today, with the experience that brings with it - would such an experienced engineer be mentally OK playing the games JavaScript devs in the JavaScript ecosystem have to currently play? (not to single out JavaScript but the point being there will always be a nascent, rapidly growing, chaotic community that becomes the most popular during a window of time)
I did the typical career path for developers. From Dev to Project Management to Enterprise Architecture and actual management and I hated it. So I found myself a development job again, and this happened to be one that uses a lot of JavaScript. It’s been great so far, because JavaScript isn’t actually that bad when you do it right.
Which is where the opportunity lies. Because it’s sooooo easy to do things wrong. Need to connect to a named instance or a msSQL server in azure? Tedious is going to be your first result, but tedious sucks. Then maybe Sequelize? Can’t connect? Yeah, you, me, and everybody else in a range of closed GitHub issue. Enter node-mssql which works, but in such a horrible way that you’re either a magician or building technical depth the moment you install it.
Except Sequelize runs on Tedious, so why isn’t it working? Aaaah, the documentation is just really poor for connecting to named instances on a msSQL server in an enterprise network. But once you figure it out, you have an ORM that’s basically as good as Entity Framework.
See what I’m getting at here? 15 years ago I would’ve gone with the mssql step and never thought twice about it. That was before I experienced a decade of cleaning up my own hurried mistakes. I’m not going to claim I’m a good developer or this is some sort or revelation, it’s exactly the opposite intact. But since most of us are mediocre, there is plenty of work for those who are old and mediocre. ;)
Agree with everything you said including this one.
The point I was trying to make isn't that there won't be plenty of work for us. There always will be existing code to maintain and update.
The point I was trying to make is that development is rarely done in isolation, so you'll likely have to work as part of a larger team.
It's extremely likely that the majority of that larger team will be much younger than you and will be playing an exact copy of the JavaScript games you're playing now, but with ShinyNewLang.
So my question was - when that happens, would you, with the experience you will have by then, be mentally OK playing those games?
Imagine being a 73 year old bricklayer by comparison.