Ask HN: Are you a “lifer”? If so why?

Point 5 is painfully misled and I'm getting real sick of seeing this trope over and over again. Just because we are witnessing some layoffs of absolutely rediculously foamed over billion dollar tech giants in no way reflects the software job market at large.

Unless, all you read all day is the same crap that everyone else reads all day, then yes, you would be led to beleive that 'the end is nigh' for software engineers.

Great site tracking all the layoffs: https://www.trueup.io/layoffs

I was hiring until a few weeks ago. The market is flooded with candidates right now and it wasn't three months ago. Lower supply and increased demand means it's a much worse job market for candidates. It doesn't take much to tip an equilibrium like this.

I think I understand the anxiety others are feeling, especially those not laid off but are actively interviewing. Those graphs show tens of thousands of tech workers from blue chip companies now looking for work. It's not as if the market itself is in trouble, but this temporary supply shock of high quality engineers definitely makes things different.

I personally went from 5-10 recruiter pings per week (our team just closed $___m and we need a founding iOS engineer!) to 1-2. The sky isn't falling, you're right, but I can definitely still see how this round of layoffs would be affecting a current job seeker.

Do not care. The more jobs for me ;-) I only worked about 100 hours this year and already made more than the past 3 years.

What would be an interesting metric would be # of core SRE engineers laid off vs number of "Agile Project Managers" or "Developer Advocates" laid off. My company has had 2 SRE openings all year long.

Hey there, I am on the market looking for an SRE/Cloud Infrastructure opportunity, my email is on my profile, could you please share the name of your company or a link to the job openings? Really appreciate it, thanks

US eCommerce adoption rose dramatically because of Covid providing a fertile ground for all digital companies (SHOP, META, AMZN, GOOG, etc) to hire like there is no tomorrow. They all were wrong by assuming that this trend would continue. https://app.finclout.io/t/R18XAmX As it turns out. Humans love meeting other humans in real live way more than meeting people online.

> As it turns out. Humans love meeting other humans in real live way more than meeting people online.

That's one way of putting it.

But the economic implications is way more severe. This reasoning about constant economic growth has had the world fooled for way too long.

eCommerce is what I'd consider a core value proposition though, so I would expect steady long term growth in balance with bricks and mortar. There's also lots of products and services for which bricks and mortar retail doesn't make financial sense, which provides a base level of participation from sellers (in my opinion).

I agree. I think the business is trickling down to smaller businesses right now, and you'll see more hiring at smaller places.

Startups that aren't profitable (ie: most of them) are in even more trouble than large still profitable companies. There's less VC money and they need to preserve runway or they'll go out of business.

I wouldn't be too sure. Of course this is anecdotal, but the one Startup that actually replied to my application and said that they were about to make an offer just said they were implementing a hiring freeze as well. I might just not be an attractive candidate, but I haven't recently found many of those high-paying tech jobs that were so popular in 2021.

I suspect that a lot of people would be happy to be a "lifer" in the right situation. (Good company, good work, good colleagues, good respect, good TC.)

A barrier is that situation doesn't occur often. I think it could, but not many companies seem to be run that way. The stereotypical tech company, for example, seems to be driven by growth at all costs, and there's a kind of mercenary thinking by both company and employees, towards each other. Which is intertwined with the weird dynamic in which folk wisdom is that companies will pay more to hire someone than they will to retain.

Another barrier is that a worker opting out of this -- to go to a mythical modest little oasis company run by a CEO with a heart of gold who will live forever -- can be difficult, due to the large number of high-TC other workers in the field. In the US, if a worker is making relatively a lot less than others, they're at a disadvantage for housing, healthy living in various ways, opportunities for their children, etc.

So even lifer-inclined people will be motivated to play along with our current situation of chasing FAANGs, hierarchies of people all targeting promo criteria and metrics rather than company and team success, job-hopping whenever the right bump of TC and title comes along, rehearsing for fratbro interview rituals, etc. (Maybe with a bust cycle of a lot of VC exit schemes, we'll start to get better, but a lot of workers and companies have known nothing else, and there's a lot to unlearn.)

> good TC

Not to get too mopey but I went through the phase of "sell out and do things that make me unhappy and stressed for more money" a few years ago and while it put me in the position I am today financially, it came at great personal expense. I lost friends and partners by moving, lost years of close contact with family late in their lives, and the stress put a physical toll on my body and mental toll on my psyche.

I think we're quite naive at a young age - our eyes glaze over at the massive amount of money we can make but don't value the non-monetary cost. Your youth is finite and you don't know what you've missed until it's gone.

That’s totally legit, but there’s a flip side, too. I was running my own business, but it wasn’t going anywhere. (I think after 5 years, I’d had one year in the red, 3 years of just barely breaking even, and 1 good year.) My spouse was working 2 jobs, one of which required a lot of evenings and weekends during the holidays. I “sold out” and got a high-paying job, and it made our lives much easier. Even doing hard work for someone else was easier than doing literally all the work myself. And a few years later when my spouse developed a serious medical condition, we had good insurance to cover us. I’m glad I got the experience of doing it myself, but I’m also glad I got out. There are still stressful times, but my current situation is less stressful than when I was running my own business. (There are, of course, other options like not working for yourself, but also not going for a very high paying job, etc. That’s totally legit, too.)

It definitely depends on where you are in life and what you want from life but for those of us who live in crazy housing markets good TC is the only way to have a mortgage. It’s kind of crazy to be a successful dev and be stuck forever renting.

If okay compensation in a low cost of living area gets you a home that’s a bit different. But for people who live in places like the Bay Area, NYC, Vancouver or Toronto the comp has to be there and it’s a very big deal.

You're not alone. It's normal to incur costs one didn't really understand. Some of them will be bigger costs than others. But I'd guess most people have big regrets. Given the linear nature of our experience of time, all I know that we can do is to count our blessings, and do the best we can going forward. And often situations we thought couldn't get better do get better (which the mind tends to resist believing).

There are reasons they have to offer the huge TC, you will be doing things that are not in your interest for it.

Not necessarily true! I've found that as TC has gone up the level of respect for workers has gone up as well. When companies don't pay well they generally treat workers poorly. Now of course, some mission-based companies are an exception to this!

My most stressful job was my first, and it required a lot of late nights of crunch time and writing proposals which I hated. Now at a big tech company, I am making 3-5x more than before, more opportunities to lead projects, more respect from management, and more interesting and impactful work.

Not necessarily, the total comp is mostly because those companies are overflowing with money so they can afford it. And they're competing with other companies overflowing with money.

There are not enough developers, and especially senior developers with experience in other FAANG (the skillset is different from your regular service IT company).

> companies will pay more to hire someone than they will to retain

It's painfully true very often.

I worked on a team where I was one of the most proactive people on the team and was one of the top performers (well, at least IMO).

I joined the company with an already relatively low salary because in the middle of covid shutdowns, the the startup I worked for didn't look stable enough, so I joined the bigger company even if their offer was the same as my previous salary.

After almost two years later, I asked what can I do and what's the process for salary increase, they told me that "sure, we can raise your salary"...

* the company only raises salaries once a year, and that comes next year April, so I'll have to wait 7 months

* usual increase is 5%, if I'm very lucky, I might get 10%

* this increase is not given every year, so if I get it this time, I'll have to wait two more years for my next 5-10% raise

* I'll have to go through a long evaluation process with HR, which means lots of extra meetings spent begging and explaining that I'm actually pretty good

They think this is all acceptable while I had multiple offers with very little negotiation, all offering me 20%+ increase.

In the end, I got a 50% increase and on top of that a significant amount of stock options from a company that really has a potential to grow and go public.

Yeah, I can't be a lifer with those conditions.

> I suspect that a lot of people would be happy to be a "lifer" in the right situation.

I twice stayed in a specific company for more than ten years (11 and 13 respectively). In both cases I left (retired in the second example) because the company concerned had changed around me. I'd also gone native with the customers, and was seen internally as a domain expert. I enjoyed this, but it meant that I began to be firewalled away from internal strategic decision making to avoid conflicts of interest. This in turn reduced my visibility to senior decision makers, and thus promotability.

I’m similar, 12 years in one job, after a career of W2 contracts and 2-3 year startup positions.

Sales and customers loved me, but I ran afoul of a manager and quit rather than be fired. Now trying to update my skills.

Good luck!

> I suspect that a lot of people would be happy to be a "lifer" in the right situation. (Good company, good work, good colleagues, good respect, good TC.)

Exactly. I think I could be a lifer in the right circumstances, but I'm not and probably never will be. I think I could have been a lifer at my second job; it was in many ways a great place, but eventually I realised I didn't like the content of my work much, I was constantly doing the exact same thing for a new customer, and all the interesting stuff was being done by new hires. It was time to leave.

48 now, and I'm currently at a project where I think I might stick around for a while, but it's undoubtedly going to end some day, and then I'll find something else again.

> and then I'll find something else again.

Do you feel confident about that? I'm a couple years younger than yourself and before starting this gig about a year ago I was considering doing something else (anything ... Apple Store, "IT guy" for a small 10 person company) but always got turned away for "too qualified". No desire at all to get in to management / team lead stuff.

Thankfully this job is pretty cool but I'm quite worried about what to do after, when that time comes.

I'm a freelancer. I hire myself out to various large projects, and so far, there doesn't seem to be any shortage in demand. I hope that demands stays up for another decade.

> A barrier is that situation doesn't occur often.

Also, unfortunately, that "this, too, shall pass". At one point in my life I was in a situation where I would consider staying, if not for life, at least a very long time. Then for external reasons, much of management was replaced and while at first it seemed fine, eventually I ended up going somewhere else.

I discovered that it is dangerous to have that exact thought. If I hapoen think: "ok, this is not so bad, this could last a while" the big bang blowing it apart, is usually not far away. If you found happiness, enjoy it, but better not think too much about it.

(I might have to read Goethes Faust again)

IMO your most likely to find 'lifer' types at a FAANG than many others. Job-hopping usually stops becoming an easy promo system once you've hit staff anyway.

I could totally see lifer being great at Google, especially with FIRE being an option eventually. And maybe at an unnamed other FAANG.

Some of the others seem to have had a relative ruthlessness baked into their founding DNA, and I wouldn't bet on them working out long-term. (Because leadership shapes lasting culture; and someone who's nice to you, but nasty to others, will eventually be nasty to you.) Also, for any duration at those places, I'd also need to vet whomever I'd be reporting to, for whether they'd have my back if/when daggers started flying around internally.

Another one seemed to have good founding DNA, but I know less about that one.

You find a hell of a lot of lifers in the semiconductor industry from my experience. Intel, TSMC, AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, IBM, ARM etc. It seems to tick all the boxes I guess. Fulfilling work, decent pay, good benefits, and plenty of room for growth both vertically into director role, and horizontally into other teams and domains. There's scope to make a global impact if you're good at what you do.

I couldn't imagine staying at the company I'm at forever, but equally, I'm not particularly drawn to any other company right now.

I think things are starting to heat up at Google lately - with increased pip quotas and top down pressure. But it’s also the only FAANG I know with people who have been there for 8+ years. Definitely seems like it was a very comfortable, low stress place to work for a long time. I’m guessing places like Bell Labs had similar vibes, but it’s a pretty rare thing these days.

Yeah, although there is fair degree of turnover to different big-tech companies as well (especially now to get a nice RSU new-hire grant at a lower share price). On pulse surveys there is always a question "how many years are you planning on staying" and it tops off at 9+ :)

I joined my first FAANG as a staff engineer working remotely about a year ago and will stay as long as they will have me! Even with the location adjustment and market downturn I am making a great income for the Midwest and get to lead some interesting projects in embedded engineering.

Thanks, I should've spelled that out.

I think of total compensation (TC) as salary, plus stock, plus bonuses. (The eventual actual value of the stock and bonuses can vary, but there's typical/expected numbers. And then usually the employer also contributes to health insurance and 401k.)

Some examples of TC are on the excellent `levels.fyi` site:

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Amazon,Google&track...

I thought I was a lifer back when I worked in telco. I had a 10+ year career when Vodafone 360 happened (look it up, Vodafone tried to invent their own iPhone/Android ecosystem atop LiMo - unsurprisingly, it did not end well) and everything I had invested in career-wise became meaningless overnight and turned into the longest, hardest slog of my life (I spent 2 years trying to fix what I could of it).

Then I moved into a local telco and spent a few more years there until it was acquired by a buy-and-hack operation that is still trying to sell the pieces, and I moved to my current employer.

It has been seven years now, and every couple of years something major happens and I end up moving internally, sometimes on my own but lately because I'm asked to follow someone into a new org to rebuild it.

I'm in my 50s now, am fully remote, match most of your list (except I have a 4-6 hour offset from most of my team), and yet I don't really feel like a lifer because I want to do stuff that I find _gratifying_, and most of the tech industry is just running around after shiny things without considering the outcomes.

So every now and then I sit down and talk to people to assess what I should be doing next.

Right now, _everyone_ is telling me to stick it out given the current situation, but the engineer in me is itching to do different things - stuff that I might not be able to do in the current context, no matter how "comfortable" it is.

But the main point I would like to make is that you should be aware the world moves without you, and the situation may change drastically in only a few weeks.

Things can change very suddenly - new person joins who makes everyone miserable, company goes in a new direction, market changes or sours on company, advertising snafu, etc.

Great that you are happy where you are but my advice is to keep your skills fresh and push yourself to learn and experiment with things in your personal time - if you do not the opportunity to do so at work.

I just finished interviewing people for an SRE position and it was just staggering the number of people who could be described as having been in the room when someone else did something but could not talk about any aspect of what was done in detail. Several people I interviewed had gotten into Java coding in the 90s but had done nothing to grow their skillset since. One person spent three years manually making S3 buckets in the AWS GUI - no effort to learn the cli, cloudformation, or terraform - just came in every day and waited for Jira tickets telling him to make buckets. You don’t want to be any of those people when the time comes.

> One person spent three years manually making S3 buckets in the AWS GUI - no effort to learn the cli, cloudformation, or terraform - just came in every day and waited for Jira tickets telling him to make buckets. You don’t want to be any of those people when the time comes.

This is depressingly common. I've worked with a few developers like this in the past. It's like that phrase "repeating their first year over and over for the last ten years" meaning they haven't expanded their skills ands knowledge since then. They often don't even start being curious about anything, it's full blinker mode. Reminds me a lot of this recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33787857

Some of the ones I've worked with have managed to be promoted to senior or even lead type positions not from knowledge or abilities, but just by repeating their first year over and over at a small business that doesn't have any other developers to help them level up. Management is usually non-technical at these small organisations so they don't even see the problem, even if a solution took 100x times longer than it would have in any other situation. Those developers wouldn't be considered even mid-level at literally any other job. Scary some of the code and systems they've come up with in my experience.

Also known as “this person has one year of experience, ten times”.

I second this. A good SRE is like rocking horse shit - extremely hard to find. I've had blaggers who can't do basic things on a Linux shell and live their lives in VS Code typing in yaml.

Or someone in management reading a new book on a different type of management style, then deciding to implement it.

Six-sigma! Can be applied to any situation or purpose as long as the consultants are paid.

I fully agree with this. I've worked at the same company for the last 7 years. It's essentially because I have a great boss, and we have a great working relationship. If that boss were to be replaced, it would change the job massively

> Things can change very suddenly - new person joins who makes everyone miserable, company goes in a new direction,

Being in company where is a lot of long term employees and me being halfway there. One property it has is that if miserable person joins, there are often ways to change the team or otherwise work around that person. You can say "no" to positions and tasks too fairly often.

It is not always possible for everybody, of course. But the stable people are the ones whose "I dont want to work under that manager anymore" was respected and not punished. Basically, you have a sense of controlling what happens to you at least partially.

The changing direction is then also less of problem in general.

I'm the opposite (a non lifer ?). The problem I've had is that most of the places I've been at didn't promote but rather got you to take on more work and responsibility even though you've not been paid for it. That means when I was a junior I was doing a mid levels job, mid level I was doing a seniors job, senior I was doing a principles job.

How do I know this? Because when I interviewed and moved position I got the promotion easily off of the back of explaining what I was doing day to day.

I guess the summary was I haven't worked at places that actually promote at pace.

I'd also never started with a high salary for example my first programming job was in a big famous city at £15k ($18k) per year salary. Couple that with very low yearly pay increases that meant the only way to get a reasonable pay increase was to move jobs often.

I've now got into this as a habit to move jobs more often.

That's not to say I haven't been at a single job for a good amount of time, I've managed to stay at 2 jobs almost 5 years each. I also don't job hop every year my average tenure is just under 3 years.

Although I do admit I now enjoy moving:

“A person needs new experiences. It jars something deep inside, allowing them to grow. Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”

Definitely, you will be paid more with careful, selective moves. I have mentioned it in previous posts: The key is to find the maximum "move rate" (considering local cultural/social/profession factors). Move at that rate or just below it to maximise your economic return. Another dumb thing: It is so much easier to get a pay raise or promotion by moving. When you are leaving, a bunch of lame middle managers play the loyalty card or worse offer "soft" promises of future pay rises and promotions. Tell them to GTFO. And don't do exit interviews. Those only benefit the org -- nothing for you. If absolutely necessary, play sick on the day of the exit interview (have done it before!).

Plus, people who move more are more adaptive to new environments because (1) experience from different org and (2) forced to adapt to new org. The lifers in my experience are mostly comfortable, (somewhat) coasting, trying to navigate the politics. I have no issue with lifers. Most are focused on the good life outside work (family, friends, etc.) I respect that. Each time I change jobs, I try to find one lifer/long-termer, so I can get the "house view" when I need it. Then I can better judge if "that hill is worth dying over". :)

Lifer until the benefits that matter to me disappear.

I can't stress how much #6 impacts what makes someone a 'lifer'. By the time you are in 35+ and you've been in tech your entire career, you lean a few important life lessons that you witness the less experienced (both career and life) do all the time.

The bar of compensation is almost always goes up as you progress early in your career. You get used to your standard of living. Next thing you know, you want more money. Getting a promotion or new job that bumps your income, that standard of living naturally goes up. It's hard NOT to go on fancier vacations, upgrade your Honda to a Porsche, hire landscaper/housekeeper/dog walker, buy a bigger house, etc. Eventually, you run into a situation that throws a wrench in disposable income and you have to lower that bar. Then you realize money isn't the most important thing in your career. You learn that the difference between a total comp of $150k to $250k isn't as life changing compared to going from $75k to $150k, so what is the purpose of fighting for more?

When you are 35+, job stability is super important. You might have a family, a hefty savings/retirement account, etc. Whats most important is that work/life balance and not that RSU grant next quarter. Once you find a company that makes you comfortable, and you reach a level of seniority that isn't overwhelming/stressful, stay.

Being slightly past the 35+ threshold I'm feeling the pull of this perspective, but also very irked at the thought that my company might know this and decide to let my comp fall behind the market.

From what I hear of the corporate world, companies are always waiting to do this to everyone. The moment they're confident you're a lifer, you'll never see another market-matching raise or bonus. Maybe never see a raise again.

Any older workers have thoughts on how to manage this? I suspect there may be nothing for it but being prepared to leave if I feel my comp is falling too far behind.

(Or maybe I should just give in, call the $$$ good enough, semi-retire and chill... there's more to life, I hear...)

I guess I can answer this, I've got 21 years in at one of the OGs of SV. When I came on board all the old timers told me to get everything I wanted up front so I beat them up pretty hard (they really wanted to hire me). I did fine but that was pretty much it aside from 1-3% raises every year and often no raises at all. Since we are a very flat company there's not a lot of room for a promotion -lots of chances to do other things but not a change in pay bands unless you go from tech to sales. It took six years from the time I started actively pursuing a promotion until I finally got one -this included two job changes and 8 managers. The promotion was a bigger deal than I thought because not only did I finally get a decent raise but it moved me into a managers level for bonuses and stock options and that equates to a 20-30% increase. Even if I didn't get promoted the money was fine, I have 6 weeks defined of vacation, good benefits and I've worked from home since 2003 -a lot of which I'd lose if I went to another company. Several years back I tried to assign a monetary number to what it would take to leave and it was between 25-30K which I might be able to get but you just don't know what kind of rats nest I'd be walking into, at least here I know what I'm dealing with.

I was like most people in IT when I started here, I had done a lot of job hopping, made good money and was a temporary millionaire at some bullshit startup. What I didn't expect was to stick around. When I started half the team had been at the company for over 20 years and I thought that they had to be nuts -a few people never worked for any other company 45+ years of service. Then one day I realized I had been here for a decade and then 20 years and now I have 9 years left before I'm sitting on a beach drinking Imperial and being bitten by mosquitos so I figure if I can do it here I might as well.

It seems like if it’d only take 30k for you to leave then you’re underpaid for your experience or you don’t actually have it that good. I say this because when I have it good it’d take a ~30% raise to get me to leave.

> but you just don't know what kind of rats nest I'd be walking into, at least here I know what I'm dealing with

Very well put. With work, it's often better the devil you know

35+ ain't that far. For all. Damn. Is that fewer than 2-3 chances for huge economic outcomes?

i think grandparent meant that even if your company decides to 'capitalize' (pun intended) on your lifer attitude, you're ok with it, because you've chosen to ignore money in favor of stability. only works if you already have a couple of millions from your younger years imo

If you’ve already got a couple of million then you’d be on about $80k - $180k a year before you get out of bed anyway, so I doubt job stability matters much to you at that point anyway.

> job stability is super important. You might have a family, a hefty savings/retirement account, etc.

These two sentances seem contradictory. If you have a large savings / retirement, don't you have a LARGER parachute / less stress looking for a job? I mean unless yeah you've gone so far on the hedonistic treadmill that you can barely afford your month to month bills.

I don't know, I've never been out of a job for more than like 2 months of actively looking, I think software developers are way to paranoid about job hunting.

Must be nice. Low lifelong salary makes me unable to relate at all.

If you are a rockstar developer with a shitty salary, find an impresario.

> go on fancier vacations, upgrade your Honda to a Porsche, hire landscaper/housekeeper/dog walker, buy a bigger house, etc.

I work at a FAANG and I will never afford a home. Who is this list for? My senior engineer coworkers live in condos unless they move 2 hours away or have a very high earning spouse

99.99% of the world's population don't live in San Francisco, so it's probably geared towards them

Maths: It almost seems like it should be a higher percentage, but 900k/8Billion gives 99.9875% exactly.

> 99.99% of the world's population don't live in San Francisco, so it's probably geared towards them

Is the situation any better in other big IT-cities in the States (Seattle, NYC) or in Europe (London, Amsterdam, Zurich, Munich)? Some of these are slightly better than SF and some are even worse IMO.

It’s not as dire in NYC unless you’re exclusively considering Manhattan. And even in Manhattan it’s relatively “affordable” if you’re willing to live in the 160s+. Significantly less than people think, at least.

OP wrote about owning a "home" as opposed to his coworkers who live in "condos" which makes me think he meant single-family house. Are you saying that SFH in Manhattan is relatively affordable for average FAANG developer?

I don’t think 99.9% of people have the choice between a Honda or a Porsche (… or either of the two), so this list is probably aimed at a much more narrow group.

A cautionary tale for you:

I was in a similar situation a few years ago, working at FAANG and living in SCV. Wanted a house more than anything.

Eventually, got relocated to a lower COL area and finally accomplished my dream of owning a home.

Inspector didn’t catch a few things, also bought at the peak of housing mania and now we are both underwater and have sunk a large chunk of our savings into making the house safe and livable for our kids.

If we would have stayed in SCV and rented we’d be in a better financial position. However, overall we are happy with our choices given we don’t have to stress about things like keeping a 3yo quiet for the neighbors who live below us.

Not saying a house won’t make you happy, just saying houses are not a complete measure of financial success.

SCV = Stato della Città del Vaticano? Yeah, the housing market in Vatican City isn't great unless you're military or the Pope.

People who work for good companies in lower cost of living environments? I live in Palo Alto and appreciate I’ll never buy here but my colleagues on similar salaries have huge houses with boats and nice cars in other parts of the US. This is the $150/200 mark btw, not FAANG.

> This is the $150/200 mark btw, not FAANG.

This is still wild to me.

I’m well into my career (coming close to 25 years):

— I do well when looking for work in that I interview well and get most gigs I go for.

- I trade stability for higher rates working shorter gigs without any of the usual safety net / benefits.

- Comp is top end of the range offered in a relatively well off part of the world.

And yet with all that said, $200k is still an utter pipe dream.

I’m not saying I’m necessarily jealous (I’m sure there’s the downsides I don’t see) but man-oh-man that’s a lot of money.

I’m almost reluctant to ask but what is FAANG comp typically?

Startups are paying above FAANG for many senior positions. Total comp can be 250-850K, lots in the 400-550k range.

The going contract dev rate is 150/hr (Java/Python).

After the tax bracket bump its not entirely as amazing as it sounds... there are still a few places in SV and NY that hand out remote salaries on the high end, if you keep looking.

There are also roles where you just get paid way more than other roles without a need for particularly difficult expertise. People who manage very 'important' stuff for example.

The thing to note is that the base salary isn’t often too far off from non-FAANG jobs, but the stock grant which usually “vests” over 4 years is what makes the compensation so much higher.

The amount of stock is locked in based on how many shares the dollar amount you’re offered would buy when you start, so if the share price goes up over time then that’s going to be worth more when it vests (which I guess mostly happened in the last decade), but if it drops from when you started it’s worth less (as happened in the last year, so if you started this time last year and the company stock is down 50%, that compensation is worth a lot less now).

I definitely think it’s good to be aware of what compensation at these places looks like, I wasn’t really aware of how significant the stock thing is until recently (but I had a fun career up to now so not to worry!). I guess one of the downsides is that these are often huge companies there’s a reasonable chance you’ll end up maintaining some boring internal system or whatever, so it depends what motivates you.

Honestly, as I'm non-US, I think I'm ruled out of those compensation packages (I don't think many offer remote work).

It's disappointing, but it's the reality for a lot of people I'm sure.

How is the traffic and commute time in such cities? I ask as an European who can't fanthom an idea of a large city where most people live in detached houses (and not in apartments or even townhouses) - the city must take up enormous space. Do people commute 30 miles each way to work?

Which cities? Silicon Valley? Or people remote working in the Midwest?

If you are making Faang money you can choose a shorter commute. 30 miles is 1-2 hours in silicon valley. My limit is 10 miles/40 mins

American cities in general. If in an average US city, most people live in a detached house, aren't they just a endless sprawl with nightmarish commute times?

Yes. American cities are endless sprawl. Yes. American cities have nightmarish commute times. During morning and evening rush, it can take 3 hours to cross the city I live in. The city I grew up in was better, but the same task could still take 30 minutes there, and it was a much smaller city.

“But I can’t live in the midwest” -Them, probably

People can't complain about high salaries not working for you in high COL places. In Atherton a 0.8 acre lot (no house) is on the market for $5.2m lol. If you stop looking for the prestige and high numbers of FAANG you can have a far better salary:COL and get that nice house/cool car.

This sounds like a you problem. Remote tech roles are falling off trees. Wherever you are that FAANG money can’t buy you a house, you definitely don’t need to be there. You are choosing to be in some incredibly unaffordable area. Lucky, if you are in a place like San Francisco, I expect with the exodus of on-site jobs and people, that the housing will be rapidly getting more affordable.

Why do you think that? I know many people working at a FAANG both in SF and LA, and most of them own some sort of home. (Some are condos or townhomes because that’s the lifestyle they prefer - but many are single family homes.) They’re in decent places, too, not 100 miles away or “the bad part of town”. It took a few years of savings, and some of them are dual income, which helps, but between stock that’s been on a rocket ship for the last 20 years and a decently high salary, they do just fine. If you’re not vested yet, you might not have hit the point where things start to take off. It can be pretty dramatic what those RSUs add up to if you aren’t constantly watching their value.

*in the middle of SF/NYC/etc. Anywhere else, a FAANG salary will get you home ownership in 1-2 years.

Sounds like FAANG is a trash deal then, tbh.

You could afford a home in most other US cities even with a pay cut from the typical FAANG salary.

For real. My 24 year old cousin just bought his first home and he works a low paid blue collar job. The trick is to be in an affordable location.

Exactly! People read "affordable location" and think it means somewhere boring and depressing, like Youngstown or Peoria. There are numerous, wonderful US cities where you can buy a respectable place for under $200,000 - they're just not on the coasts or in the sun belt. Move to West Rogers Park in Chicago and walk to the best Indian food you've ever had, or Brewer's Hill in Milwaukee and walk to a vegan brewery where all beers are $5. If you like the small-town feel, try Holland, MI or Stevens Point, WI. If the winters get you down, you can fly to Maui in January from O'Hare for $400 round-trip, or you could just wait 20 years for CO2 to do its thing.

IMO this only changed in the US over the last 5-6 years and accelerated because of COVID and remote tech work. The stigma persists from before when the US had only a handful of fun, young, urban areas to live in. When I entered the workforce there were only a few choices. Now I could see myself living in a whole bunch of places were I starting out my career.

Fun fact: where I live, many so-called blue collar jobs such as plumbing earn a higher wage than software engineering, due to extreme shortages.

Or just rent for a couple years and save up enough to buy a house elsewhere in cash.

I bought my condo when I was making less money than FAANG interns do. As long as you avoid the Bay Area it doesn't really take "Senior SWE" money (even in places that are high COL relative to the non-Silicon Valley parts of the country)

lol, I bought the current house we're living in for under $100k cash, maybe move somewhere reasonable instead of insisting on living in the most expensive place possible?

Can you explain your expectations around home ownership? I am rarely this flummoxed at a comment..

They mean they will never own a home in two of the wealthiest cities in the USA - San Francisco or New York. There’s a few other really expensive cities as well. It’s really easy for most properties to list for 1 MM min, even a 3 bed 1 bath house on a quarter acre lot.

The solution is easy, don’t live in an expensive city. Or inherit property from relatives who lived there 50 years ago. Or have a rich spouse.

The most common way I've seen it done in New York suburbs is to buy a multi-family home and split it between family. Houses with three generations of family living in them are quite common.

I'm confused by this, you can totally find single family homes in SF for 1.5-2M, which while pricey should be affordable after a few years on a FAANG salary if you aren't already spending a lot on kids. They're just in Sunset or Diamond Heights or Portola or Glen Park, not Noe or Mission.

And even in those areas, you can find two-unit condos in that range.

Why do you live there then? So many great cities you can live in where you can actually afford a house.

> I can't stress how much #6 impacts what makes someone a 'lifer'.

I agree. I also think there's less naivete when you have heard for the fifth time how revolutionary this new tech or business will be.

I don't know about you, but the first few times I heard that, I believed the speaker.

But eventually I figured out that while there are exciting new revolutions (the first time I saw a lyft it was magical), there are far more interesting or boring ideas that don't require extraordinary effort, just regular, sustained focus.

> When you are 35+, job stability is super important. You might have a family, a hefty savings/retirement account, etc. Whats most important is that work/life balance and not that RSU grant next quarter

My work life balance is much better now working at $BigTech than it was being the de facto dev lead at a company that was on an acquisition spree where I was responsible for leading integration efforts or at a 60 person startup where I was responsible for making them “cloud native” and introducing AWS to the company as they were pivoting to selling access to micro services to large health care companies especially right after Covid hit.

WLB being worse as pay increases is more of a myth than anything else. I haven’t gotten paid more Obed the years because I was expected to work harder.

I got paid more because of the value I bought to the company.

I felt a lot more “stable” after 35 no matter where I worked because I knew I had the skillset and the network to throw my resume up in the air and get another job quickly when things went sideways and I did change jobs six times over those years.

Before 35, I had been at a job for nine years and let my skills atrophy.

I also had a decent “oh shit”/“go to hell fund”

> Then you realize money isn't the most important thing in your career. You learn that the difference between a total comp of $150k to $250k

This is definitely not true. I bumped around as your standard corporate dev until I was 46.

I stayed at my second job for a decade until 2008 and became your stereotypical expert beginner. I job hopped 5 times by 2020 and I was making $150K and seeing offers locally for about $165k - $170K based on my experience with leading projects, “cloud”, and just regular old C# development.

But I liked my job and my wife and I had “enough” with her working part time making $25K in the school system.

Then I fell into a remote job at $BigTech in the cloud consulting department making in the $200s in mid 2020. The difference is night and day. There are a lot more ands than an ors.

I can now “retire my wife” at 46, rent my house to my son and a couple of his friends who we have known for years at below market cost to help them get started while we travel the country staying in mid range extended stay hotels, flying everywhere, afford a winter home/investment property (more of a lifestyle choice than an investment), max out my 401K (including catch up contributions in a year and a half when I turn 50), max out my “after tax 401k at 10% of my base salary, and still have a decent amount of fun money.

Even if I were living a normal life, it would have meant the difference between having to choose whether we wanted to refinance to a 15 year mortgage (we did in 2021), go on multiple vacations, cash flow our son’s (my step son since he was 10) college education, or maximize retirement savings. We could have done all of those things and not choose.

I work for a low-profile fintech, 100% remote, since 2018. I see no particular need to move elsewhere.

I appreciate that it's a task that actually has real customers and revenues, in a firm that's about 20 years old and showing profitability and growth. It doesn't look like there's signs of "oh, the acquisition we were building towards vanished and we ran out of runway, kthxbai, grab a few logo T-shirts on the way out." In particular, I like the spot I'm currently at because it's sort of the firm's core competence, so I'm in the centre of real value generation.

It also keeps me well away from front end, which I should not be allowed near due to a personal design sense that is, at best, Soviet.

I could probably make more money elsewhere, but I hate interviewing and tooting my own horn. I only grudgingly left my last position (10 years on) when it became abundantly obvious the firm was in terminal death throes. They were clearly in a "how much do you need electricity" phase of operations. I brought in a pizza for lunch for my team, and there was a distinct "I haven't eaten in three days" vibe coming from some of them. When I left, they had shorted me at least 9000 USD in unpaid salary.

> They were clearly in a "how much do you need electricity" phase of operations.

I've worked at a place that literally got to that state: the offices power was cut off by the electricity company.

I pretty much stayed until near the bitter end, when I started trying to lay out the facts of life to the founder - there was no recovering from this, and he was at the point where he had dumped all his personal savings into the company to try keep it alive.

that sounds... way past terminal death throes of a company. That sounds like the terminal death throes of the workers

I cringe to think of myself as a "lifer" but I've been doing this for 10 years so draw your own conclusions.

Above all, the thing that makes me stay is having creative control and freedom over how I do my job. I've done enough things to know how rare that is, and how frustrating it is not to have it, and what a blessing it is to have the trust of the people I work for and with. It's so important to me that I feel it as a different baseline state in my body.

Wow, don’t think I’ve seen a comment from you as not-a-mod! But what’s so cringe about lifering? After having jumped from job to job every few years, I’m so tired of doing the first couple years of a job over and over and over. I’d rather get deeper into a product, build deeper automation and analysis, participate in building more of the culture. Maybe that doesn’t happen in practice and tech churn still keeps people on a hamster wheel of constant rebuilding, I wouldn’t know :/

But hey, thanks for all the great work here!

> what’s so cringe about lifering

The answer to that is probably just "attachment disorder'. There's nothing wrong with stable relationships, and the way you describe your preferences sounds completely healthy to me. It definitely does happen in practice, even if it's not the default, so don't give up!

(I post not-a-mod comments semi-regularly, but they're drowned in the ocean of "if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd sure appreciate it ̶g̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶r̶̶".)

> The answer to that is probably just "attachment disorder'.

Don't worry about labels. If you like something, do it.

If you're doing it too much or if it's harming anyone, review it.

I hope they pay you very well. The value YC has gotten from HN has got to be immense and I imagine that without you HN would be a very different place.

Wow, an honest and interesting take. Moderating (managing?) HN seems like a dream job in many respects, I can imagine many people being super envious of your position. It's funny to think that you "cringe" about thinking yourself as a lifer in this position, I'd be hanging on to this job with everything I've got :)

I do understand your feeling though, even the funnest situation can at some point stop letting you grow as a person, which is why a job you can also grow in is crucial. That and the creative control / independence you mentioned are both very important IMO.

Side note: many people seem to misunderstand why tech companies tend to seek growth. One of the reasons, even in non-startup companies, is that companies that grow mean growth opportunities for employees, which means better employees and keeping your good employees. Companies that don't grow tend to eventually lose their best employees, because there's literally no room for growth in their job.

There is a joy associated with acquiring a high value product. There is a different and greater joy associated with acquiring a high value product which is made be people that have fully enjoyed making that product. From what I can gather you were not alone but made an outsized contribution to this product (HackerNews), and while I can’t know your experience, it sure seems that there was a lot of joy experienced in its making. I’m happy we can both be served by this equilibrium :)

I'm in my early 30s and have been at one place. As far as programming jobs go, I can't imagine a better one than what I have ( technically interesting, well managed, ...).

That being said I could see myself leaving programming at some point to do something else. But I'm not shopping for it

Very similar except: :s/40s/50s/ :s/is a horror show best avoided/is fun/ :$ A 8. Really love what I'm doing.

I work at an 800 year old institution. I have been here for 20 years. My wife works here too.

Salary isn't great in global terms, but puts us within the top 20% national household incomes. Enough no not really care about money.

We work 35 hours per week, pretty flexible schedule, about half from home and have more vacation days than we know what to do with.

The work is a bit monotonous and the office politics terrible, to the point of giving us depressing "golden cage" feelings sometimes, but when we take a peek outside, it doesn't look better than what we have. So we'll probably stay for the next 20 years.

> 800 year old institution

> The work is a bit monotonous and the office politics terrible

> but when we take a peek outside, it doesn't look better than what we have. So we'll probably stay for the next 20 years.

Hello fellow university employee! :)

Perhaps a business part of the oldest profession

They don't exist anymore.

I was thinking of the Order of Malta but they are a bit older.

Well not in an official capacity.

No one's getting payslips with "Knights Templar" on them.

I suppose those are the industries that have been relatively immune to disruption?

Yes I am a lifer.

I prioritize personal investment and social engagement over raw salary income. I could find a better paying job tomorrow, within my current company. I like being up to my elbows in the business problem, and the best way to get a seat at the table is to have been around long enough to earn it.

My spouse and I both work at the same company, which greatly increases the sticky-ness of it for me. I can book family meetings with them from within my work calendar. That's worth a lot.

I've spend 15 years ingratiating myself across multiple teams, and multiple larger organizational slices. I have a lot of contacts to fall back on. If I needed a new job tomorrow, I could find one within the company, without having to go outside.

A lot of your items are "of the moment" and could change tomorrow. I wouldn't bank on them remaining stable.

I'm a lifer my self (21 years so for). The thing is I'm not even close to senior, we have lots of guys with 30+ years sitting at the head of the table. The biggest problem I see is with the older lifers not wanting to leave, not carrying their weight, not keeping up with changes and doing the bare minimum required of them. They are a wealth of knowledge, knowledge about things we haven't seen in a decade or more. I understand why they stay, they are paid very well and not much is expected of them but they are also 70+ years old with full pensions & 401Ks doing the job that a college grad could do. To me it's not fair to the young guys who we should be training and mentoring, instead a guy in his late 40's is the youngest guy on the team....sorry for my rambling but the point I'm trying to get to is longevity shouldn't be the reason you are at the table, it should be about what you bring to the table. That said like you having a wealth of contacts is invaluable -who needs to open a ticket when you can call the developer who you've known for a decade or more and who's happy to take your call.

If it's all about "what you bring to the table", older folk will always be at a disadvantage due to their obligations to things that isn't just the company (and disabilities as well). This is the bordering on ageism, brought on by meritocracy thinking that everyone starts from the same spot.

>older folk will always be at a disadvantage due to their obligations to things that isn't just the company

You're talking about kids? I would think kids require less work over time. I would think a 30-year-old employee with a 1-year-old kid would have more home obligations than a 55-year-old employee with a 26-year-old kid.

As someone whose age starts with a 5, I don’t think it’s at all ageist to judge people on what they bring to the table at work. In fact, it would seem “reverse ageist” to have lower expectations for someone who was older.

If you can (and will) do the job, you should be welcomed, respected, and rewarded without regard to age, race, gender, degree, veteran status, parenthood, height, weight, or any of 100 other irrelevant characteristics.

What kind of place has 70 year old technologists sitting around doing nothing?

IBM? Oracle? SAP?

BTW did you know the above are the number 2, 3 & 4 largest software companies in the world respectively[0]? Also I suspect "doing nothing" is a bit of an exaggeration and/or OP isn't 100% privy to what these people actually do. It's probably a relaxed pace but not literally "nothing" & their experience and knowledge still make that valuable for the company.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_software_c...

Universities.

Politics, knowing where bodies are buried and entrenched bureaucracy can be just as much "tenure" but for staff.

It can be pretty bad, and often is.

Sounds like an easy solution. If they do the bare minimum, that’s not a problem.

If you want to get rid of them or take advantage of their expertise, raise the bar. Require more work in some way so that the jobs they do 6 months from now isn’t something that could be done by a new grad.

If they follow you, great. Everyone wins. If they do not, here’s options to exit, take a pick, have a good life.

Curious what kinds of things you're booking on your work calendar? I can see blocking off time but I'm not entirely sure I would be comfortable putting any details for family meetings on my work calendar…

I suppose I'm a lifer, I've been working at the same place almost 20 years now. Even doing the same thing, more or less. But I've had the fortune of having decent managers. I got along even with the one manager I didn't wholly like, and he had his redeeming qualities. All the points made above by the OP are also true for me, except I'm in my late 40s, and we're not fully remote.

I never expected to like it here, and I loathed the work in the first few years. I posted about it here in the past. But I've made it my own, and that has made it more bearable.

I still suffer from occasional FOMO. My SO has been through 4 tech companies while I sometimes feel I've been languishing here. My dad worked at the same place pretty much all of his career and I always wanted to be different, to see the world so to speak. But I ended up staying at the same place just like him. I guess it doesn't matter as long as I feel fine here. I keep dreading the day a really bad manager would come around, or some reorg would actually touch me and throw me in some other less friendly team - several reorgs passed over my team without really touching us.

Incidentally, all my high school friends have more or less stayed in the same place, or hopped just once, during their career. None of them are in tech though.

Then there's the compensation, that's a sore point for me, sometimes. I make significantly less money than many other people I know who work in other companies, including my SO. Somehow I stopped caring about this though. So maybe I'm a sucker for staying here. But I don't feel like one.

> don't see myself leaving of my own accord

Well, that's the trick, isn't it? You could do everything right, and the environment changes, or financial issues hit, or you get bad managers.

I worked at a company for 22 years. In the early 2010's I transitioned to full-time WFH and did that for 7 years. Then new management came in, they rebuilt the office as open-plan, a bunch of Agile cultists took over, and they summarily cancelled all WFH. Then the organization ground to a halt, crushed into immobility by Agile. Then they laid off my entire division, new hires to senior managers, about 300 people.

So, in the space of just a few years, it went from a fantastic place to work, to a miserable place to work, to not wanting me around. Absurdly, they paid (and are still paying) a huge amount of money to go away because 22 years got a great severance package, and I'd been there long enough that they're on the hook for "retiree" benefits.

My longest stint in a single company was 9.5 years, it started as a small software consulting company and was bought by a government-controlled telecom/software company.

The merger went surprisingly well and they brought in some good processes (and some bad), but mostly we were left alone to do our thing.

At a point I saw that they didn't have a big enough support organisation personnel-wise. I had to organise team events, manage sick leaves, do 1:1's with my team, be an architect, a salesman and a software developer in one.

In short, eventually the compensation didn't match the stress of the job.

I found a job through a friend in a multi-national mobile games company and left on good terms.

The gaming company spent what equaled to a "large project" in my old company just for audience testing unreleased games. Marketing budgets amounted to the yearly turnover of my old company. My pay doubled from what I used to have in a few years and my first bonus was bigger than all the bonuses I received in the past 10 years in my previous job put together. And I got actual stock options for the first time.

Money doesn't make you happy, but hoo boy it's nice to get it - and it makes the tiny inconveniences easier to take (like having early morning/late evening calls to the other side of the planet).

I thought I was a lifer at my company in 2000, for many of the same reasons. Then the company was bought by Tyco International and burned to the ground.

I spend most of my day as a volunteer for a youth group.

I have been working here for the past 14 years, and hope to be lifer.

Practically, there are many reasons that this may stop - I don't get paid and may need more working hours elsewhere, they may suggest I retire (am already a grandfather), etc.

I also have been programming part time for longer than that and hope that continues as well.

I recommend that anyone who could, to take on a do-good project and consider it your main occupation [even if it only gets an hour a day], and then go lifer on that.

Sounds like an excellent situation! Just remember that good situations don't always stay good, so stay up-to-date, stay sharp, and be ready for something new if/when things change. The best thing is that if this really is a good job at a good company, you're probably doing those things already.

> Job market is weakening with no recovery in sight

What are you talking about? Unemployment is at historic lows, the job market hasn't been this good in a long time. Sure, some ad-revenue based companies are laying off some workers, but the market is great.

Don't forget about all the two-year-old companies that never had a realistic business model to begin with. If they can't survive, who can? /s

Not sure what you are implying. If your hypothesis was true, wouldn't unemployment numbers rise? When did HN become the place where contradicting anecdotal evidence with data gets me downvoted?

I think it varies and it depends on how you look at it and your current position. Remember 2008 and the recession? A lot of people barely noticed it, yet it was absolutely detrimental to others.

Unemployment is measured basically only by # of people receiving unemployment benefits. It grossly undercounts. A less quantitative number but way more useful is "underemployment". I don't know what that # is, but looking at low unemployment numbers alone can be misleading.

https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

> Unemployment is measured basically only by # of people receiving unemployment benefits.

Untrue; the headline unemployment figure is those in the labor force, not employed, and actively seeking work (they may be recieiving benefits, have exhausted benefits, or have not qualified for benefits because of the nature of their prior employment or their departure from it, or because they were never previously employed.)

Correct. I said "basically" and linked to the primary source for the detailed definition. It's not possible to know what a person is doing if they are not part of a program that follows them. For example, I have been unemployed many times for months and there is no way to track me because I was not on unemployment or using any program in my job search. Therefore, acc to Dept of Labor stats, I was not "unemployed". "Unemployment" is not the full picture.

I'm a lifer. Early 30s. Been here 8 years. I've tried to leave, but my boss/team are excellent and moving has always appeared high risk/low reward.

I've been lucky that my boss and I have an excellent relationship. I have more influence than I would have elsewhere. Our group has been given expanded responsibility and is relatively high profile.

No doubt I'll have to leave before I retire, but I doubt it will be in the near future.

I'd like to be a lifer, or as close as possible to a lifer in today's economy.

Like the OP I'm embarking on my 40s. I'm into my sixth year at a FAANG. Staying at the same company probably made me miss out on some of the career and salary growth of the last several years, but I work in a specialized technical niche that I really enjoy and have a good manager and team.

Part of my motivation for staying is the economy, but the other part is just being a senior team member with a significant amount of subject matter expertise, trust and autonomy. Being able to set boundaries around work/life balance and role scope is super valuable to me.

My spouse and I joke that FAANG life is as hard as we want to work, so we might just stick it out until we are ready to semi-retire and then work on something more low key.

I might be a lifer now. I'm in a big tech company, and in such a big company just understanding how the company works is by itself valuable.

It's not just the skills you learn with their platforms and products, it's the super secret tribal knowledge on how to get stuff done. It's easy to see how people make the decision that "this here is enough, let's ride it out".

I'm in exactly the same situation (a few more years down the road), in specialised technical niche that I really enjoy, and that a smaller company wouldn't need enough to pay someone to do it. so apart from all your reasons I just enjoy the ability to work in niche fields that don't directly drive anyone's bottom line.

Hop around a lot when you’re younger then take your wisdom and stay somewhere to cash in when you’re older. It’s the secretary problem applied to your career.

The org I work at has existed for over a hundred years. It's probably not going away for the foreseeable future. The work, my coworkers, the perks and work environment (low stress) are all great. The only thing that's not at a high-level is the compensation.

Sometimes I think about getting a new job for a pay bump, but I'm not sure I could compete at a "real" tech company anyway, I'm just a regular/average dev and I almost left the field entirely after I burned out from my previous job.

So, that said, I might end up a lifer (already in my 40s). I love my job but I know the circumstances can change at any point if I get a new boss or the work climate changes.

I don't think I'd want to stay until retirement at a regular ol' company or corporation where I'm making someone else rich.

Just my 2c.

At my last job, for the first few years I really thought I might spend the rest of my career there. Household name, I was working on interesting things, I got to travel, I got to contribute to the industry.

Then things changed. My boss left, we got a new boss, change of direction, change in the kind of work we were doing. I didn’t have any career growth available, and performance reviews felt arbitrary.

So I left. It has been a great decision for me. I’m very happy. Companies change and people change, so the match may not seem great in the future. I hope it works out as you want it to.

I'm eleven years into a FAANG company. It pays well enough that I can be the only earner in the family, and on my particular team, it's not demanding on my time. I work from home most days, I leave the office a couple of times a day to pick up my kids from school or go grocery shopping. The work is interesting enough to grow but not particularly stressful. Frankly, it's an ideal place to be while I focus on what's important: my family, and where possible my hobbies.

I don't feel particularly bound to my position. If work stops being comfortable, or if I got uncomfortably bored, or if someone offered me a sufficiently huge pay increase, I might take it, but why mess with a good thing?

I imagine 0 yoe at FAANG would pay enough to support a family :-)

Not really, not in high CoL areas at least. Move to nowheretown USA and then probably. But most companies will adjust pay for such moves.

Imagine thinking there's HCOL and then..."nowheretown"

Actually COVID ruined my lifer plans, it absolutely demolished my previous company. Resulted in insane/pointless re-orgs and just killed the culture. It became so unpleasant I followed my current manager elsewhere.

It's experiences like this that make me question the wisdom of staying in a place for a decade. It's hard to see things you enjoyed wither away and die.

This sounds cliche because it is, but everything dies, the only thing we can do is enjoy the journey.

>7. Startup success (which I've had previously as an early employee) is going to be rare in the coming years

Free money is going to dry up for a while. Bullshit valuations and unsustainable growth will be less frequent

But the number of problems to solve is not going down, quite the contrary, economic downturns are in practice the best time to build, if you're a builder, that is.

I have never been a lifer. I worked as a contractor for a decade so constant change and learning. The last couple years I ran a solo operation which covered my living costs but ultimately was really brutal during the last year. I secured a perm job for the first time in a decade and used it as a way to move back to the UK from a cheaper country. I also have a nice setup similar to yours, pays well, good people on the team, mostly wfh but can go to a nice office in London. Plan is to ride it out and get finances back to normal and use it as a way to secure a mortgage and house. Now I realise most the 'lifers' are probably just middle aged men paying off their mortgages.

No, because in my experience in order to get adequate compensation over time you need to change job.

I graduated in 2017 and I now earn 240% of my graduate salary. 12.5% of the difference came from internal pay rises, 87.5% came from changing company.

I am very happy where I am now, but on past results I imagine I will have to move in a couple of years in order to keep pace with the market.

Nah. Life in corporate America is too volatile. People (especially managers and skip managers!) change, projects change, RSU tank, circumstances change, …

I’ve been in too many situations where my role was changed overnight because of the above.

Currently at the most sought-after (by many) FAANG but I’m always fully prepared to leave/be laid off and don’t let my mind think it could be long term.

What is long term is instead a dense network of professional relationships with ex-bosses and coworkers to whom I would fully entrust my life and certainly my career, and I typically jump ship by moving closer to them every few years. Corporations are just a soulless random entity.

A different spin to the question might be: “Are you a “lifer”? If so, how frequently did you want to be a “lifer”?

There are honeymoon periods but the sands around me have always been shifting.

I guess I can be considered a "lifer". Co-founded a startup nearly 10 years ago. Nowadays my job description can be considered "senior developer" with no managerial responsibility (my choice).

The job has a social impact, pays more than enough for my modest standard of life (lower than market rate, but that's expected for a job in a social impact startup, and I'm at peace with that), colleagues are nice, boss is bearable, and short of the company failing, I can't really be fired. The job is also interesting, with new challenges all the time.

Long story short: it's the right situation for me, and I know for a fact the grass is not greener elsewhere.

Wow, this must be some kind of leading indicator. I have never heard or read anyone talk about being a lifer before and lay out coherent reasons why that might be a good thing. I guess the job market is about to shit the bed.

> I guess the job market is about to shit the bed.

It probably is. All the indicators are looking bad.

A good number of my friends have either been laid off, or are at risk of layoffs.

A lot of places are implementing hiring freezes and other cost cutting measures.

A number of founders I know are desperately hoping for an acquisition or exit in the next year.

Investors are getting a lot tighter on the purse strings.

Everyone I know in finance is pretty much buckling in for a wild fucking ride.

It used to be the norm in many places, especially when benefits were better. Hard to justify leaving when seniority/tenure offered you things like 2 months of vacation a year and a pension you could collect at 55 or 60, but with a minimum of 10-20 years with the company to qualify. Hard to find that outside the government (in the US) these days, but then the pay is mediocre (at best) for software jobs in the government too.

While I don’t feel like being a lifer is bad, I agree that OPs interpretation that this post might be a coping mechanism has some validity.

I say this as someone who has done some serious coping with previous jobs.

Yes, I’m not trying to knock lifers in general, but there was a lot of fear and risk avoidance obvious in this specific post.

You're only ever one promotion or departure (not yours) away from a management shuffle which can make your job shit. That stable software delivering value, day in day out? Legacy trash that needs to be rebuilt as a matter of urgency. Actually, no - outsource it. Software isn't our core business, after all. Personally I have no confidence that I will be able to avoid this scenario (again), or suffer it in silence, so I cannot see myself being a lifer for this reason alone. But the idea alone of working for one company forever doesn't concern me in the sense that I'd have only 1 item on my resume for several decades of work, nor would I look negatively at someone with that resume. I just have a low tolerance for corporate bullshit and at this stage in my career I think it's easier to jump ship than to try and fight the winds of change emanating from some Cx0's arse.

I swear, nearly every job that I've had -- and every job that I actually enjoyed -- has experienced one-or-more management shuffles and/or ownership changes, and every time I feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch.

Like dang[1], I too cringe to see myself as a "lifer" but here I'm: I joined Red Hat when I was 23. Now I'm 37. So I've been at it for 14 years (and still ticking).

In those 14 years, I've moved continents, changed citizenship, changed dramatically as a person (I hope for the good). So far I've managed to keep the freshness at work (modulo the difficult times). Red Hat's engineering culture fits me like a glove.

The ability to give direction to my own work and the culture are the big factors that keep me in. I'm sure I'm losing out on some better compensation elsewhere, but there are other variables that matter to me. Also, I've been a remotee for the last 8 years.

So far I've been responding to recruiters with "Thank you for reaching out. I'm gainfully employed, I wish you best of luck in your search." As a wonderful colleague of mine once said, "but my umbilical cord isn't tied to Red Hat, though". :-)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33797196

You are in a great situation but you should be advised that things can change suddenly.

The company can take a wrong path and realizing it when it's to late, or on the contrary, it can be successful and it will attract external investors.

It's totally reasonable to hope that things stay the way they are until you retire and that would be really nice, but it's a very long time to bet on and you should have an emergency plan.

I advise you to sharpen your technical skills to stay employable if you have the time to. An interesting thing I do is to sometimes say "yes for a call" to recruiters on LinkedIn.

I choose the ones who seem nice and who are not just recruiters like tech leads and CTOs. I always start by saying that I'm not planning to switch and that it will probably not work out but that I'm ok for a call if they are ok with that.

And by doing this I have had really interesting exchanges with interesting people I know I'd like to interview with some day if needed (even if they switch companies). What is cool is that you can discuss with them without playing a game since you don't really care. You can say stupid things, you can be honest about what you want and what absolutely don't want, you can learn about their products, their career ... Hell you can even try to recruit them for your company :D

I'm not saying you'll make new friends but surely you'll meet nice people whose you can keep the mail address / phone somewhere.

And frankly, when they finish the call by "I understand that you are not actively searching a job but it was a great exchange, don't hesitate to call me back if you change your mind", that's really reassuring.

I worked at a bunch of smaller companies before and I'm now 5 years into working at a FAANG. My team and org have the most competent management I've ever seen and I have no interest in rolling the dice on another job unless something changes here.

Some things to consider though:

- Doing the same thing for years can really wear you out. And in a profession where you work with your brains, it would affect the quality of your work.

- Especially in your 40s and later, it is important to challenge oneself and learn new things, otherwise you may thing you know everything there is to know and the only way from here is down. Doing this in a new place is often much easier - in the old place you can get stuck in the routine.

- Not all interviews are bad. If you know your stuff (and by 40s you're supposed to) and aren't desperate for a job, there's no reason why interview would be bad for you. Worst thing, you don't know something - so, see above, you have the opportunity to learn something new.

- Job market goes up and down. In 3-4 years it would look completely different.

- Definitions of success differ. If you're senior enough (which again by your 40s it makes sense you'd be) you should get a regular pay which allows you to cover your needs comfortably. All the startup options are bonus lottery tickets on top of that. Sure, winning $MILLIONS would be rare. But, winning $THOUSANDS won't be that bad either, and that happens much more often. On top of that, you may end up doing some fun stuff which isn't done anywhere else, and meet people which otherwise you would never meet. It's not always the destination - sometimes even the road is worth it.

- Change can happen regardless of what you plan. Today you have excellent company with genius CEO, tomorrow he retires and his airhead son takes over the business and ruins everything. Or consumer preferences change and a profitable company has to look for a new business model. Or a regulator steps in and makes their business model impossible. You may not seek change, but the change may find you anyway.

I would love to be a “lifer” dedicating oneself to a single cause and working diligently towards it. Once you’ve built the right tools around you you can be _incredibly_ productive.

To points keep me from going that direction. The _only_ time one can be sure is getting market value for your work is when one engages with the market - e.g. switches jobs.

And bitter experience has thought me that employers shy away from giving market compensation the longer one stays at a place, even for “business critical” roles like CTO positions.

The other fear of mine is getting to a local maxima of skill, solving problems the easy comfortable familiar way, and missing out on some great innovation. If I manage to find a position that alleviates those fear I’m sold! I could see myself working there more than the usual for me 5 year tenure.

I don't see a point of being loyal in an environment where the loyalty is rarely rewarded in kind.

> 5. Job market is weakening with no recovery in sight

> 6. I'm in my early 40s

> 7. Startup success ... is going to be rare in the coming years

If you're in your early 40's, you'll likely have worked through and/or witnessed the 90's recession, the dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. There's always a recovery in sight and there are often great opportunities to be found during market corrections.

I've given up on terms like "lifer" as they don't account for changing circumstances. If an opportunity presents itself to earn 2x my TC while maintaining all the rest, I'd give it serious consideration. Fully remote work is my preferred arrangement and I'll never go back. Corporate friendliness to work/life balance can change as can one's personal definition. Interviewing can be a horror show but it can also be like having a great technical discussion with like-minded professionals. I've experienced both ends of the spectrum on that front.

Im early 40s but didn’t join the workforce till after the Dotcom bubble, graduating in 2004. Apart from 2008, it has been pretty plain sailing economically since starting in the industry. This feels like the worst downturn so far.

I cant ever imagine staying at a company for more than 5 years tops unless at VP / executive level, I felt the same as you for a company I worked with for several years and then everything changed, the culture, the vision, the market - you literally cannot predict how things will be in a few years time in such a dynamic market.

I am not and I don't actively plan on becoming one (if it "happens", then so be it).

1. I'm full time remote employee now and I am not fully onboard with it. I don't plan to retire as a remote worker. I want to work in office again - in some form.

2. WLB is a valid factor. It is a sad reality that we need to talk about this in 2022.

3. I guess here you meant to say that the company won't go under before you retire, which makes sense.

4. Avoiding interviews is one of the weaker excuses to stick to one company. It puts you at risk if stuff hits the fan. Always be looking. This is not a critique of the interivew process, but you need to play the game.

5. Job market is another weak example. If you plan to be a lifer, you _want_ a strong job market, otherwise your job will be at risk.

6. Ageism. Surely ageism is going to be a big topic very soon if not already? The tech-boom went mainstream in mid to late 2000s. Those who benefited from that wave are already in their mid-30s now and by mid 2020s they will fit the criteria for ageism. I am hoping this gets talked about more by then at least.

7. I heard somewhere that "the top company in X years time hasn't been established yet." I believe there will be new opportunities.

Other reasons that might influence becoming a Lifer: 1. Arcane knowledge of internal systems.

2. Specialization: Too old/reluctant/afraid to specialize in ML/AI/web3/...

3. You're a superstar coder/10X Engineer/Charismatic Leader/...

I have around 25 years of career left (with retirement age in mid 60s). It feels too risky to say I would stick to one company for life, even if it is _insert-your-dream-company_.

I am not a lifer, but I know many people who are lifers. I switched job too many times, my stress is more than my lifer friends. Being a lifer is not too bad, if you want peace and stability.

I was a lifer. But now I can see the tunnel darkens at the end of the journey. You are just one stone throw away from misery.

Don’t count on anything in this world staying the same. The good times last only so long.

Considering it currently.

Pay at $dayjob is pretty fucking good currently, and will only get better.

Company culture is pretty relaxed.

No prohibition on side work, no weird clauses about IP, etc.

Fully remote, usually pretty relaxed about time too.

Can't really be arsed interviewing or hunting for a new job.

Although the OP is phrased in terms of the individual (are you a lifer?), I wonder if the question wouldn't be better asked about organizations: what places are actually worth staying at?

It's a function of both variables, of course.

> what places are actually worth staying at?

I think that's the more important question: what attributes of a place make it likely to retain employees willingly long term?

There does need to be alignment with the employees values/wishes here, but a lot of those can be pretty generalised.

Why not? It's just a job. Whatever allows you to extract the most of what you want and give as little as possible in return.

I don't see myself leaving the role I'm currently in voluntarily, but managers have a way of causing turnover...

I'm a bit troubled that you don't mention "I'm doing something I like / important / fulfilling" :/

Also, I hate to argue semantics, but it's weird to call it "lifer", given that you're employment is almost bound to end before retirement for a myriad reasons (the economy will go up and down, there will be layoffs, reorgs, mergers, pivots, changes in regulation, etc... Also you might be bored, depressed, harassed, sick, offered a better job somewhere else, required to relocate for personnal reasons, etc...)

So what question are we to answer. "Are you realistically planning to spend the rest of your career a the same company, and if so, why ?" Then the question sounds to me like "Are you realistically planning to stay the same age for the rest of your life, and if so, why ?" :) (To which I'd answer "can it be just a tad few years earlier please ?)

If the question is "are you content with your current job ?",then, "yes", but I would feel delusional thinking it's going to stay the same forever.

After being laid off from my previous employer of 7 years, I found a company to join in my domain that has weathered the storm for many decades and is well-established in the industry I’m in AND also has income via federal contracts from another department at the company. The company is still privately owned by the original owners, and it seems to be a sustainable company that will weather the coming economic storm. I’m really happy to have joined when I have, I think this is a company to spend some good years at, and there’s a number of employees that have been with the company for over a decade. Things are looking stable, and I suppose for now I am a lifer.

Lifer at a gigacorp with golden handcuffs since 2008.

Had second thoughts about it a few years back and did some interviews. Got a great offer for an interesting role at a great company. For half my current TC and worse benefits.

In my poor corner of the world, all that is available for my salary demands are high stress hero roles, which is the opposite of what I am looking for.

Trying to find fulfillment in other aspects of life instead, and at work just trying to keep my head down, keep digging the proverbial ditch and lining the coffers.

Turned 50 this year, and probably will stay where I am until I retire. I could make more money at Google, if I lived in the city I'd probably consider it but I'm a 90 min commute away so fully-remote suits me better. Maybe I'll move when they kids leave home (or maybe not)

I've never started anywhere with an intention to be a "lifer" but I have had a fairly linear jup from early short stints, to a 4 year run at VA Linux Systems, later a 6 year run at an "anti-piracy" company that was farcical in many ways but paid the bills and got e through my undergrad nd the 2008 maelstrom, and eventually 10 years at a CRM company that was maybe a year or two longer than needed but otherwise a great run.

In all of those scenarios I "planned" for 1-2 years to see what I could accomplish and if I wanted to stick around.

This industry doesn't tend to promote the idea of long form employment; hell, it almost finds it questionable (which I find stupid. If you are good and satisfied and produce good work, there is no need to find that suspect; not everyone has to be motivated the same way, seek the same incentives for the same path).

You sound a lot like me, only I've already been in my current company for a smidge over ten years. I don't see the experience in another company being any better than I have here (sure I can get more money but at the loss of work/life balance and personal stress levels).

Also, being around longer I've built up a nice backlog of benefits including equity and a metric ton of vacation days. I would have to give up a lot if I moved, and most companies I've spoken to won't match my deal for a new hire.

I'm going to stay where I'm working now for at least two or maybe three years at minimum. I'd tick most of those boxes you listed, however, I'm still actively interviewing, but at a more leisurely pace, just to see what opportunities are out there and to stay "fresh" doing interviews.

Work/life balance is excellent for me, which I'm really thankful for - it means I can go pickup the kids from daycare every day. Otherwise it's either my wife or myself being a stay-at-home parent.

One thing I noticed though, being fully remote I'm on 2x (or nearly 3x) the total compensation compared to doing a similar job for more local companies in the office. I'm living a few hours away from a major metropolitan area. Until either the remote TC or the local in-office TC changes, I can't see myself moving.

You're only fooling yourself: there is no such thing as "retirement". Downsizing, outsourcing, and reorgs will likely see you ageismed out and trying to get a job when older. There is no security except what you make for yourself on the side. This might mean a startup project, real-estate, and/or other passive income sources. It might mean something as simple and trivial as a coin-op laundromat (unattended laundry business). Ebooks. Rental properties. Whatever makes enough money.

If you don't, you're putting yourself and your family at risk of being under-resourced, e.g., homeless.

Complacency is the mother of all assumptions / failures of imagination / laziness.

Tech recruiter here in Switzerland; sadly, I can only agree. Ageism is a big problem no one talks about.

Come to the US. It's beyond absurd. Gray hair is considered a sign of a slow, old worker no one wants to hire. Only youth need apply, in spite of experience and wisdom, which counts for nothing.

DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) extends primarily to (minority) ethnicities, women and nonbinary, religions, and sexual orientations. Age is definitely not a DEI KPI target.

As a foreigner living in Switzerland, having started a PhD at “old” age, please don’t tell me this…

At what age does ageism kick in?

35 and with 45 one is too old to be hired in tech anymore. Eventually as a consultant through some middleman company for a year or so.

I can tell you as someone in that age bracket I have never had more opportunities and a higher paying salary at any other point in my life than right now, without a doubt. Even in the current economic climate I had 3 interviews this week and I'm barely even looking.

Never undertake a degree without a purpose, e.g., a PhD, unless there's an net positive (amortized) lifetime economic incentive to do so, otherwise it may be a waste of time and money.

It depends on the gray hair count and chin sagging. Fixable with dye, plastic surgery, and other forms of creative, strategic deception. :)

I'm 47 and wish I had found a lifer job. Literally could not as I believe every company I have ever worked for is now out of business. Bad sign perhaps. I now do contracting here and there but the pay is low (think poverty level) and unpredictable. Points 4 and 5 on your list are particularly relevant. Maybe the new year will bring me a change in fortune.

What do you do if you don't mind me asking? Are you not able to use your network to find permanent work or do you just not want to?

Programmer. I have ADHD, currently unmedicated which means I can't really focus for more than an hour on code. Not the kind of thing most employers will tolerate and TBH I couldn't pass a job interview.

I can use my network and thats how I found my contract. But I've already let down some people there a couple times and don't like doing that. Network is only so deep.

I change jobs just for the variety. After 3 years with a company I don't believe in, dealing with crappy management and piss poor products, at least doing it all over again somewhere else is new for a little while. Plus you can get that salary / title bump by moving.

I'm honestly just waiting for inspiration to quit my job and start homesteading or something. I don't mind becoming a joke as long as I don't have to deal with the monotony of endless subpar commercial bullshit.

I’d love to be a lifer. But also terrified of the idea, because I get comfortable very easily, and I’m afraid of ageism. Moving jobs is generally a catalyst for me to upskill and stay on top of tech trends.

I'm also somewhat biased due to personal experience - everyone I've worked with that has only worked at one company tend to have overly narrow skill sets, and know only one way of doing things.

If you like your job and feel somewhat secure you'll get employment for the next 2-3 years it makes a lot of sense to stay put. That said - thinking you're a "lifer" could be naive though - no one knows what's coming. Things can get worse for your company, or things can be OK but they still shut down projects or move them oversees or get bought. This happens all the time. And the opposite is also possible - things in the market can improve in 2-4 years at that point you being "early 40s" won't scare you so much and you'll want to move. No one knows and there's little sense in calling yourself a lifer.

P.S early 40s ain't old, happy hacking!

I've been where I am for almost 6 years, which is pretty incredible for me at 31. But am I a lifer? I can never say for sure, but I highly doubt it. It's so circumstantial. I am not worried about getting laid off, but I question what my salary ceiling is (pure salary, I get no other comp), especially next year when inflationary raises need to be more like 10%+ rather than the standard 3%. I really love my job and the work in it, and leaving will be hard, but it's given the pay situation, it seems unlikely to be more than another couple of years.

I think the most important thing is that the work stays varied enough to be interesting in the long term. If you aren't able to move to new projects you'll eventually get some combination of bored, restless, and burnt out. Then it might be time to reboot your career inside the company (if that's something they make easy to do) or you might find yourself ready to move on.

Even if I was completely content at a job, I'd find it hard to imagine being a "lifer" because I've enough experiences with leadership changes that completely changed the company or team's culture. I'd expect that to happen in 3-5 years at most organizations. Maybe things don't change so fast in older / mature companies, but then the work isn't as interesting.

> 7. Startup success (which I've had previously as an early employee) is going to be rare in the coming years Downturns are great opportunities for new start-ups. The 2008 crash spawned a whole range of massive companies - Uber, Square & WhatsApp were all founded in 2009. The current layoffs and hiring freezes will fuel that in particular.

I work for a small business (5 employees, including the boss/owner). They’ve been publishing their news website since 1996, I joined as a sidejob in 2006, and have been working full time since 2012. Fully remote since 2008. Solo dev since 2014.

Compensation is kinda crappy (Would be a bad joke in the US, not great in Germany but also not a disaster), but I just enjoy the freedom I have. It probably helps that I’m very unambitious.

4 years in. Lifer by default because the risk of bad culture in other companies is so high. Even if you get good vibes in the interview stages. I would put it at 50% chance.

I've never had any desire to be a lifer, but your Ask HN reads like a humble-brag. Would be hard for anyone to walk away from what you describe.

+1, was going to say this myself if you hadn't beaten me to it.

I'd LOVE to be a lifer! Turns out not all of us are so lucky.

2 years ago I ticked all those boxes and thought kind of like you did. Then a bunch of things changed very quickly at work, and then I got contacted by a former colleague with a job offer, and then I ended up at a new job.

Rapid promotion these days seems to require some level of job hopping even if slowish (eg ~5 years) so no

I've been at my company for over 10 years, since I was straight out of college. I plan to stay until I can "retire" at 50. Then I'll get some other job.

I hate my job, but there aren't many good options for me in my situation. If somthing better does come along, id consider it. That's 10 years down, what's another 20ish years?

You plan to spend the best years of your life in a job you hate?

If you can afford it and growth prospects within the system aren't looking so great, it could be time to take a risk on growing yourself independently for a couple years.

Almost everyone thinks this at one point or another. And then, one day, your shields drop.

My man Rands explains it best: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/

I’ve been at my current job almost 19 years. I’ve been in many roles on many teams over that time, so even though I’ve been here a while I moved around enough to keep it feeling fresh.

I turn 51 in a few weeks, and as much as I would love to stick around we recently went through a merger and the company that bought us tends to do more outsourcing of their tech to vendors than internal development, so no telling if changes will make me end up looking elsewhere.

I work from home, have maxed out my 401k all this time so I have a few million there, I’m an architect on a data science team so it’s interesting work. I’d gladly stay here another decade if I could.

> 4. Interviewing is a horror show best avoided

I've always changed jobs every ~3 years, but if you think that's a horror show, imagine how it'll be when you're laid off in 12 years. It'll take 10 minutes to write FizzBuzz and you'll have great knowledge for everything in a 15-year-old tech stack.

Took me a long time but I think it means sticking with the same job for life.

Ah.. Then I'll answer the question here..

It depends.. If things continue as they are now, then yes. If something goes south, like, place of work gets worse or I'm fired.. Then no.

Why yes? Because why not? I like my job, salary, w/l balance, colleagues, tasks.. I can "autopilot" it enough to do interesting stuff not only at work, but also in my spare time. Changing job for me is traumatic, it takes a toll on me, I don't like uncertainty, I don't like having to learn massive amounts under stress.. I like learning at my own pace, while being comfortable.

Why no? Something outside of my control changes so that I need to find a new job, as the scenarios mentioned above.

"Profit" companies have no reason to keep being profitable if the engineers have no life. That's the simple science of cause of effect. It's about "when it stopped" and "fucked itself".

If a company is not transparent about their "employee life", then that company is worth called a scam itself. They stole lives.

I would just say make sure you know what is going to keep you stimulated.

You're looking at about 45 more years of life where the plan appears to be "this job I've already been doing for a while, then retirement, then death."

This does work for some people but make sure you've got something going on that'll keep you from being bored to tears.

I mean... how nearsighted is this supposed to be?

You literally cannot see the job market improving (or the startup environment for that matter) at any point in your remaining 25 years of employment?

Sure, if nothing changes you're in great shape, but change is inevitable, and the likelihood everything you've mentioned stays the same is effectively zero.

thought I would be a lifer at a previous company. Then upper management did a re-org and I lost a manager and team lead that I both loved working with and held in high regard. They were replaced by an okay manager, and a team lead that was technically strong but personally intolerable.

so am I a lifer? for now, yes. as long as upper management here doesn't feel the need to shoot themselves in the foot for no reason

Not necessarily a lifer, but my company is so comfortable right now that I’m quite put off by the prospect of doing an interview anywhere else.

For a change they’re also paying really well for the market I’m in.

Lifer here with a short gap. I make less, but in my mid 50s can get an early retirement plus fully paid healthcare until Medicare. I’ll probably work a few years as a consultant or in sales to get my kids through college with little or no debt.

I didn’t have the education get get into a FAANG in the early years and don’t have the risk tolerance for a startup.

8. Is your work meaningful? (To you? Are you engaged? Are you making a difference?)

I've always wanted to be a lifer, but I just haven't found the right place. I think my current place might be it, though.

I guess so?

I am at the top of my game and the company recognized it. It will be very hard to find another company like where I am right now. Currently the manager I have is one of the best and the coworkers are also one of the best.

I have zero incentive to move somewhere else.

I'm a bit older and I would never describe myself as a lifer. Capitalism is brutal and corporations are not capable of loyalty, so it's not a psychological position I want to be in. That said, I also don't put a time limit on tenure—if the people and work are good, I'll stick around. The key is to keep learning and growing though, that way I don't get bored, and I won't get caught flat-footed when it's time to leave (whether voluntary or not).

As you get old, time becomes a lot more valuable as it’s the only thing that you spend every day and can never make more of. Money is cheap and doesn’t really do all that much, beyond a point. The drama of switching jobs becomes less and less worth it.

I was expecting the opposite conclusion in your final sentence. That staying in a stable, comfortable but dull job becomes less and less worth it. The interpretation relies on the reader’s experience I guess.

I am 55 - used to be lifer until I got laid off in 2020 - started second career as an IT. consultant (Python and .NET).

I should have done this earlier - never realized how the certainty of a paycheque had cost me.

Your experience probably counted for a lot though. 55 years old and you may just be at your mental peak - with tons of experience that comes with it. That's (for some) an ideal situation to go into consulting or starting your own company.

I am very risk averse so I would never have done the consulting gig it had not been to beat the depression after being laid off and that useless feeling sitting at home even if I was financially okay.

Also my experience and contacts certainly helped - LinkedIn was farking useless.

Things change. Companies get bought. Management changes. I’ve learned never to get comfortable.

That being said, I don’t see myself leaving my current company as long as the pay/shit factor ratio starts really going down.

But I still keep my resume and career document up to date, my fixed expenses down and stay interview ready.

It's not that I just like money as well, it's that there is usually something I find irredeemable about the tech stack, product, or coworkers that causes me to subconsciously launch myself out of the job. Even when I consciously value potential stability that a lifelong gig would offer.

Yep. I remember starting a job and immediately looking for something else because the tech stack was basically a 10 year old dumpster fire. When I say old, this was basically like using Python 2.x or Java 6 in 2022. I'd log on to production servers and they'd have 1000+ day uptime because literally nothing had been upgraded. (And no, they definitely weren't doing any sort of live patching.) The dev environment was so fragile, you couldn't even run it on a machine with a modern OS. They had to buy used Macs off of Ebay.

self-employed, lifer. I d be wary of investing too much into a company i don't control, especially post-40 when i d be less competitive.life's way too short

By all means, stay if it is going good. Just stay for you, not them.

Yes,

Because contrary to whatever one thinks making frequent changes to a process doesn't mean automatic improvement. Staying at one place ensures I don't have to undergo pointless stress to prove myself to new managers over and over again. Plenty of time to exercise, take care of health, work on investment projects and more time for generating multiple streams of income.

Also lots of free time. All code written is the same, and after a while you stop being impressed by over working and wild wild west coding lifestyle. I'd like to have more time for what matters to my life.

The only catch is finding a place worthy of being a lifer at. I did find one, and sticking to it as long as I can. And yeah by the way, I have done the other side of things too- Sleeping 2 hrs/day, multiple side projects, start ups etc etc. It wasn't pleasant, and not very rewarding either.

> I'm in my early 40s

Ooof that's a reason?

A lot of people in tech could retire or downshift in their late 40s or 50s, so in early 40s you could almost find your last significant role.

I wasn't, until I read your points, then thought, well, maybe.

I've been around for a while. Some companies can be great places to work... until they're not.

So, no, I wouldn't be a lifer in my early 40s. I'd be a "ride it out as long as it stays good", though. (Again, I've been around a while. If you have interesting work, good people, reasonable management, and good pay, think hard before you go somewhere else. That's not always easy to get.)

I'm not a lifer, but I spent 7 years in my previous role and have no interest in leaving my current one (currently 3 years in).

I'm not earning a top salary, but it's pretty good. I have good equity, a decent salary, world-class benefits and actual work-life balance.

If I didn't have those things, maybe I'd job hop more, but right now there's no reason.

Yes, for a single reason: I can't be bothered preparing for interviews.

That said I have changed teams internally and will do so again.

Unless I get annual wage rises on par with what I'd get by switching jobs, no chance.

I wouldn't mind, but I don't think it's realistic/possible.

My income pretty much halfed compared to year ago (in company I work for from home as contractor for 6+ years and work on site for 2 years before that) which is already half of what I had years ago, so I had to contact also other company trying to substitute my income and if it doesn't work out can look for completely new company to cooperate with, because companies are aholes always bringing more and more new requirements to make your work more and more difficult (while delivering same result as in the beginning) and while maximizing their profits and minimizing what they pay you.

I'd like to be a lifer: I'm in a startup with people I like, doing something that's interesting, with a good work life balance. Being a lifer here would mean that our startup succeeded!

My wife is a lifer civil servant, so that also makes the bet on a startup easier to justify.

Late 40's, been at this company for about 18 years.

Mostly because i believe in the company and its future. The future we're building is a solid one.

I'm 42, so apparently about the same as you, and figure that means at least another 20 years before I'm retiring. I don't know how you can possibly expect me to project what I'm going to be doing and who I'll be working for over that entire 20 years. I'm not actively looking nor answering recruiting e-mails right now, but that is a pretty long time. The only thing I know for certain is that if you'd asked me what I'd be doing in 20 years back in 2002, I would not have been correct. The specific industry segment my current company is in didn't even exist yet in 2002.

Retirement age in most of Europe has been bumped to 67 and we're at the very start of the demographic transition, which leaves governments with 2 options:

Provide the same services with about 60% less revenue, and NOT by inflating the difference away. Oh and without hiring essentially anyone.

Keep raising the retirement age so someone born after ~1980 essentially never retires. And ... I guess pray that medicine actually makes this possible.

Both have obvious problems. It seems to me a near-certainty that all governments will not know how to run fast enough to option b. Now there may be "robots" or whatever as a plan, long term, but while I don't work in robotics, I do have a master in it. We're 50 years away from viable robotic care for humans. We're currently not capable to build a robot that's physically capable of doing it without weighing 800+ kg, which makes it a non-starter (and this is the only part of the problem I expect someone like Elon Musk might be able to fix in, say, 10 years)

Of course, governments being what they are they are, are working on it. By:

1) making immigration much harder (and world demographics will start making it harder very soon now, and those won't stop)

2) dropping investment in robotics and medical research

3) making it harder every year to become medical care professionals

TLDR: you definitely won't retire in 20 years. Unless we can create a company and make, at the barest minimum, ~5 million there won't be retirement for any of us.

Most software devs won't make it to 67 unfortunately. Without a major (really major) cultural shift in the job market mid 50s seems to be about it for most software devs - by then ageism and burnout (which happens among others because of ageism) show most tech workers the door. When companies talk about diversity they don't mean age diversity...there's no virtue signaling in hiring a mid 50s white man.

This maybe less of an issue in Europe but its still an issue there for sure, this is a young industry that likes young people, tolerates middle aged (40-50) and hates anything above that.

To be honest I barely tolerate young people! I am in my late 30s and every time I interview someone in their mid 20 I wonder what happened to the education system… give me a 40yo or 50yo instead of 10 20yo any time!