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Comment by toast0 | Hacker News Reader

> but for most techies, the most useful goal is to make money fast in a way that doesn't drain your life energy. And most of the time, this means responding to opportunities, not sticking to your guns. For example, a lifetime IC job may be ultimately worth less than a management job that gets you to VP level in a decade.

If you can switch to management without draining your life energy, go for it? I hope you're a good manager.

Personally, all of my experiences managing people have been very draining.

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Exactly. If making good money without taking on too much stress was the goal, my advice to everyone would be to become a senior/staff IC at a decent company and stay in that role till retirement.

I think the stress at senior/staff will be there no matter what but if you aren't especially suited for the management track, the stress of being a manager will be 10x. If you're suited, then I'd argue it will be 1x or maybe less.

I've attempted to follow the traditional/expected progression path of senior->management and had a horrible experience each time. Even though I was getting praised for the work,it was taking way more energy from me to the point of burning out much faster than anything at the IC level.

Draining but also rewarding? I think work is supposed to be hard and tiring - seems like most things of value are - but if it sucks your life force permanently that's not a good thing. I've found management is a bit of a muscle that can be worked and you increase your energy reserve with time & practice. Similar to being an IC I've found it's fear that drains the most, and building a perspective of "I don't know exactly how to do this (nobody really does) but we'll figure it out." has been immensly valuable.

I can see how it could be rewarding, but it wasn't for me. Since I don't need to do and don't enjoy it, and other people are better at it, I can leave it for someone else and be thankful my circumstances allow for that.

> I think work is supposed to be hard and tiring

I suppose that depends on what kind of work you are talking about and your perspective on what different kinds of work really are.

I wouldn't consider "The thing i do so me and my family don't starve" to have an inherent need to be hard or tiring.

Whereas "The thing i do to fill up my time with something i feel is meaningful" might have a hard and/or tiring component, but only if you personally feel like the hard/tiring part is required.

Things can be rewarding without being draining and value is subjective.

There's also a risk going to into management that you don't have as a much more indispensable developer. My friend is great developer who transitioned to management, then got laid off 2 years later when the company hired a bunch of Amazon layoff casualties who pushed out all the other management. All the developers under her were retained.

Is it more likely to happen as manager or dev? I suppose that is the important question, to which I don’t know the answer

From my experience it's manager and not close. Good devs are hard to find, especially devs who have built some stuff and can make fixes in 5 minutes that might take another dev a week to get up to speed.

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