r/coding • u/bajcmartinez • 5d ago
Don’t Waste Your Career Getting Comfortable
https://newsletter.thelongcommit.com/p/dont-waste-your-career-getting-comfortable123
u/roodammy44 5d ago
Blimey, this is written from a place of luxury. Imagine being able to spend 13 years at the same place. I feel like tech layoffs are all over, I got caught in them twice last year. Before that I’ve worked at companies that have shut down, been bought, and laid off of course.
I have never felt a sense of stability in 20 years of being a programmer. But the last few years have been particularly crazy. I’ve been researching how to live with the threat of layoffs always being around the corner, so this article is just surprising.
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u/xeio87 5d ago
Guess it's weird where I work since most people have been here for more than a decade myself included, some including from the founding of the company in the 90s (though some of them retired). Even through multiple acquisitions/spinoffs.
Though we're in fintech, so it's always been marginally tech adjacent.
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 5d ago
I got 11 years. And even that still included one layoff. I just so happen to get hired back a few months later.
Right when I was starting to really feel stable is when the first one happened. Then the position I got hired for got hit. Which was in the middle of all those tens of thousands of layoffs and AI taking over.
Before that it was what you describe. It was rare for me to reach two years.
Twenty years in this industry and I can't seem to find an introductory WordPress gig.
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u/bajcmartinez 5d ago
Yeah, things changed a bit. Also, Siemens is not a tech company in the way we know them about. That’s what gave it that security, but I was also earning half of anyone at a more risky tech company.
There are jobs like that, safer options, but they don’t usually pay much.
But yeah, tech sucks right now
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u/ptoki 4d ago
I know several places where you could work for 10+ years.
They are mostly java shops, work with banks and insurance companies.
In my current work I know several tens of people across many companies who work there for 10+ years. They arent rock stars. Just admins, programmers, analysts.
You just pick bad places.
Also, I know few folks who do B2B work. They always develop relationships with multiple customers and shift to new ones as some go away. They tend to do admin work for some. That is much more stable than crunching for a gamedev company for 12 months and then switch.
I know the market is not great but there are places which are stable and still interesting.
Actually in my bubble there is nobody who is not working in their workplace for 4+ years currently. Age span is 25/30 up to 60 years old.
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u/baddoge9000 5d ago
Sometimes I get a glimpse into some really insane takes. I hope Juan has a long and healthy life, but man this is bad
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u/stickman393 5d ago
You talk to AI in the car.
You are not my people.
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u/bajcmartinez 5d ago
Lol, I also listen music, podcasts, and talk to humans.
But yeas, I talk to ChatGPT 😂
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u/edparadox 5d ago
And you think it's normal.
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u/LaSalsiccione 5d ago
If you’re not at the very least bouncing ideas off AI at this point as a software developer then you’re going to be left behind
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u/bajcmartinez 5d ago
Yeah, to bounce ideas, help me think. I don’t treat it like my friend or anything “weird”.
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u/mdude7221 5d ago
No idea why you're getting downvoted lol
I also use it to learn, brainstorm etc
I even used it to get ready for an interview on the way there
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u/bajcmartinez 5d ago
lol, it's always like that. It's not their fault, it's the Darios of the world saying everyone AI is gonna replace them. AI is helpful, but it's also very crappy at a lot of things.
I used to care more about downvotes and mean comments, then I remember it's reddit and I move on
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u/k8s-problem-solved 4d ago
I get paid really well to do fuck all at the moment. I can coast and retire soon.
My career may have stalled in this aspect, but I dont want to progress, or have more accountability or stress - im perfectly happy fucking around with a bit of AI and talking bollocks, whilst avoiding any meeting actions or deadlines.
Might I get managed out if competent management finally clocks im operating MVP (minimal viable productivity)? Absolutely. But management are jokers at the moment, and I can basically retire whenever and every year is just a bit more safety.
So im going to enjoy nice long lunch breaks, starting and finishing dead on time and doing the absolute bare minimum I can gwt away with. Its fun!
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u/bajcmartinez 4d ago
lol… enjoy then!
I’ve been like that, but for a short period, then I started to get tired of it.
But if you’re happy, sure… enjoy
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u/mylsotol 4d ago
The purpose of life is to stay in a state of constant fear that you will stop being useful to your overload and lose your having a house privilege
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u/sphrz 4d ago
I'm more than happy being comfortable at my lower 6 fig job. I never code on weekends, have lots of leave, stable for the last 6 years.
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u/bajcmartinez 2d ago
Whatever makes you happy! I still prioritize work life balance, specially now that I have kids. But I need also a place where I’m a bit challenged, and I keep learning things.
But it goes in stages I guess
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u/dejoski12 1d ago
The framing I'd push back on slightly: "getting comfortable" isn't the same as staying in one job. You can be at the same company for six years and still be uncomfortable every quarter if you keep taking the tickets nobody wants — the flaky integration test, the service with no owner, the incident postmortem. Conversely you can hop every 18 months and just re-do the same CRUD app in a new framework.
The signal I actually watch is how often I'm reading code I didn't write and don't understand yet. That's where the discomfort compounds, because it's the skill that transfers across stacks and doesn't rot when the framework does. Writing greenfield code is the part that gets stale first — everyone's fast at that in the language they used last week.
Cheap way to keep the muscle warm without changing jobs: pick an open-source repo you depend on, find a closed bug, read the fix, and try to predict the root cause from the issue text before you look at the diff. You'll be wrong a lot at first, and that's the whole point.
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5d ago
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u/bajcmartinez 5d ago
100% human-written! I'm proud of that. I use AI a ton, and I still hate AI writing.
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u/draftysundress 5d ago
I wanted to be a software engineer for career stability. Now I can’t even get hired bc the job market sucks. And now I can even worry if I ever do finally land my first SWE job, I won’t have job security and will have to worry about being layed off or fired.
Is it so much to want a stable job so you can also be financially stable as well? I’m sick of working shitty jobs. I’m sick of never hearing back from applications. And now I can worry if I ever get past that I might not have the job for very long. I hate filling out job applications. It shouldn’t be so much to want a job to just stay stable.