Ask HN: Advice for Principal Engineer looking to take a step back? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Advice for Principal Engineer looking to take a step back?

18 pointsjustwanttocode12 comments

I've been coding since I was 12, when my dad first showed me how to run QBasic. I've been excelling as an engineer over the years (even though I doubt myself at times), and it's led me to where I am today as a principal engineer for what I'd consider to be a unicorn of a company.

I joined the company about 3 years ago as a Senior Engineer, and I was quickly moved into a lead position that ended up turning into a Principal role. I didn't ask for any promotions, I just kind of fell into it with a company that is great about recognizing its employees.

I'm on track to make $500k this year (though it will probably be closer to $375-400k in subsequent years). I never imagined making this much money in my life, and it's really helped me and my family to quickly contribute towards our retirement when we were essentially living paycheck to paycheck about 5 years ago.

The challenge I'm encountering is that I've been feeling burnt out on tech. Perhaps more accurately, I'm feeling burnt out on the _leadership_ aspects of the Principal role that I've stumbled into. To be clear, I've been having a lot of feelings of depression that are strongly tied to my job satisfaction.

A few months back, I requested a demotion into a Staff level position, which has happened, and it did alleviate some of those feelings. However, I'm still longing to spend more time building like I was in Senior roles in the past. I think the solution is to find a role that more aligns with that interest, but I'm having what amounts to a huge mental hurdle with two aspects of this want:

1. My income would drop significantly compared to what I'm currently making. Even just my base salary without bonuses is about $285k, and I would probably be making $100k less building what I enjoy in a role I'll be happier with.

2. My resume would show consecutive growth towards where I am today, followed by what amounts to a huge jump backwards. This feels like I would be hurting myself when it comes to future opportunities and how that might be viewed when applying for future positions.

It feels a bit like a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" type scenario where I'll continue to be unhappy if I stay put, but I'll be giving up so much if I make a move to something I'll be happier doing.

What would you do in my shoes?

You have the golden handcuffs on. Do you feel trapped into staying in that position? Is that also weighing on you?

While my dollar amounts were lower, I have been in a similar situation. I wasn't ready for the leadership role I was in, but they were paying me too well to leave. But this actually led to a lot of my anxiety about it. Once I realized I didn't need the extra money, things became clearer.

0. Talk to a therapist/psych. You may be depressed.

1. Assess your financial situation. How much do you NEED to achieve your goals?

2. Take leave. If the psych diagnoses you with depression, medical leave may be an option. If not, well, you can always just try to take regular unpaid leave at the risk that your job may not be there when you get back (what's your relationship with your employer/boss?). Seriously, take 3 months or more.

3. Start to look for a new job that you think you'll be HAPPY doing. If you're not happy working as a principle or a staff eng now, what makes you think your next job should be that role? You sound like you'd be happier at senior. That's fine! Maybe with more experience as a senior someplace else, you'll find that you're more prepared for the staff/principle level responsibility later on. You think you want to do senior-level work -- so go find someplace you can do senior level work, where you're happy!

Job titles are so different depending on company/industry, it may not look that weird on paper anyway. But you've already proven to yourself and others that you can get promoted and can handle more responsibility (even if at cost to your mental health). You can get there again.

well written thanks for writing this

part of me thinks though that if he gets demoted more, he will lose a lot of autonomy he's enjoying now, and that could eat him away too.

I’m basing my feedback on Will Larson’s Staff Engineer archetypes (https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes) so read that first if you’re unfamiliar.

It sounds like you’re in a company that only has Tech Lead and Right Hand staff+ roles available, and the responsibilities of those roles are at odds with what you want to be doing.

I would actively seek out companies that offer Solver or Architect roles. These tend to be non-tech companies with large internal technology teams, so you might need to look further afield than the organizations we typically see represented on HN.

Overall though, optimize for your happiness at work. If you suffer through a role you don’t find fulfilling you will burn out.

I wouldn’t worry about the optics of your CV. Any place with a decent culture (i.e. somewhere you would actually want to work,) will listen to your story and appreciate your self-awareness and candor.

I would do what makes me happy given that my family wouldn't suffer from my choices. And by suffering i mean real suffering (i.e if my wife complains that she drives a Honda accord instead of a Tesla, that is not real suffering. If i can't afford to give my kids a good education/keep a roof over their head - that is real suffering).

My wife and kids having to put up with me bringing misery home from work can be real suffering, too. And the longer you live with it, the harder it is to not bring it home.

or you get the husband who is dead inside, also not a good thing to bring home

Im in your shoes.

I don’t see any exit except building my own company one day which will work by my rules and where people like you are welcome to earn as much money as the contribution they make irrelevant of titles and frequency of meetings in their calendars. And treated like people and professionals, not like cattle contributing to statistics and KPIs.

There’s is just no corporate ladder called “improving performance and produced software quality” these days - you either senior, or you grow to managing people and bureaucracy one way or another.

And from a company’s perspective all seniors are more or less the same, like cows of the same age in the farm.

This is not your problem, this is the status quo faang cargo cult problem.

Has anyone noticed the "burned out" threads have been increasing lately?

They've always been endemic in HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=burned+out

I don't actually see them outside HN. It could just be that the kind of people who read about tech as a form of procrastination get burned out faster.

> My resume would show consecutive growth towards where I am today, followed by what amounts to a huge jump backwards.

Your resume isn’t a deposition. It shows what you put on it — and what you put on it is a good story that will get you the next job you’re applying for.

I'm kind of in the same boat. Just yesterday I was calculating how much less money I might take if I would be allowed to just code.

Take a sabatical. 3-4 months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com