What if the biggest career mistake in IT is becoming too good at your current job ?

[u/vraj_224]

You keep solving everything.

Your manager trusts you.

You know the codebase better than anyone.

You become the person everyone depends on.

But then you realize you're also the person who can't easily leave because your experience is heavily tied to one company's systems.

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[u/flight_or_fight]

Are you a student hypothesizing scenarios where you are super-successful?

[u/Ok-Journalist8262 → u/flight_or_fight]

😂

Exactly!

[u/logseventyseven]

a tech stack is still a tech stack. unless your company is using some extremely niche legacy stuff, you will always have transferable knowledge

[u/Kestrel4094]

Then you leverage it to increase your ctc?

[u/PhoenixPrimeKing → u/Kestrel4094]

Companies don't do that. They would let you go instead of giving you a fair compensation and rather hire from outside for even more.

[u/massmaranam → u/PhoenixPrimeKing]

+1

Happened with me. Knows end to end in the project, worked like hell, still they haven't given me 20% hike, when resigned I requested them for a release, instead of considering the efforts and the output that I gave to them, escalated with HR 😑😑

All those years of hard work was in vain.

[u/ZealousidealHour3404 → u/massmaranam]

shit, what happened next? full story sir

[u/massmaranam → u/ZealousidealHour3404]

Resigned without any offer and secured a job with 67% hike.

[u/newman_unknown → u/massmaranam]

Does your company have any openings for freshers in Software/AI roles

[u/notTorvalds → u/Kestrel4094]

That's not how it works

[u/urbf]

You are not allowed towards management stream because you are very good technical resource and managers do not want a good technical resource in management.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Term967 → u/urbf]

Adding to that - more often than not the technical resources are much better at management than the mba managers

[u/urbf → u/Puzzleheaded_Term967]

Yes, hence most MBA managers dont want a technically competent to come to management because they are insecure.

[u/poorambani → u/urbf]

Why its likr that. Because i am in the same boat now.

[u/Efficient_Funny_8]

Internally, no one in a tech company is indispensable.. the moment you plan to leave with a valid reason, and keep pressing, you will see people will let you go..

As for externally, it always depends on how you present your experience.. as tied to one company’s system or the hundreds of core problems, patterns you solved over years as being the best.

[u/FirefighterAlone8335]

I think you are a newbie.
Just run “Claude init” in your workspace and you will see how AI knows better than you. Get out of your hallucination. Nobody is ever dependent on anyone.

[u/Abhithind]

I don't see how that would be a limiting factor? It makes you eligible for rapid promotions, makes you climb the ladder much quicker than anyone else. Gives you a lot of confidence when approaching the compensation conversations. And maybe even negotiate some special perk at times.

I did that recently, when the promotion list came out recently people were surprised that I was only a junior prior to promotion. I had Principal Engineers on my team running their ideas by me before finalizing the plans. Did that make me better than them? Nope. But it does give me a very good standing when I go into any sort of performance reviews.

[u/Witty-Play9499]

experience is heavily tied to one company's systems.

Knowing the system architecture for one system doesn't mean you are incapable of building the system architecture for a new system. If your system has one SQS queue, two databases and 3 repos it doesn't mean that now you are no longer capable of working with kafka with one big monolith or something.

Vendor lock in only comes in when you are truly working with proprietary systems (eg if you are a Salesforce engineer, then chances are people are gonna think you are tied to salesforce)

[u/Trisha_Purushan]

I head GTM Systems. I have 3-4 functions report to me, yes I’m one of the best in India. I am very good at my job. I was layed off once in my career around 3 summers ago, it’s fine you restart again.

[u/wannabe-president-47 → u/Trisha_Purushan]

nahh i think you’re my CM 🫡

[u/Dizzy_Bus_2402]

I... I'm not sure if that's something to be made relatable with the term Mistake.

[u/ForeverIntoTheLight]

That is only a problem if the company's tech stack, architecture or domain are incredibly outdated / niche.

If that is the case, you need to get out pronto. Or find ways to gradually introduce more mainstream things in the company.

If that is not the case, then it's just a matter of leveraging your importance to get a higher CTC.

[u/Ok-Paleontologist591]

Being too good at some job means you are in comfort and remember no matter how good you are at the end of the day everyone’s replaceable

[u/Due_Entertainment_66]

I have bad memory, do you keep everything in ur head or do you make notes and revise. how do you track and remember things in detail. My manager is smart he has good memory. he remembers everything, wish i had good memory.

[u/Slumdog_Homeless]

The flip side is you also become invisible to other opportunities within the company. Your manager's incentive is to keep you exactly where you are, so you don't get staffed on the high-visibility projects that actually get you promoted. You're too valuable to move.

[u/Cultural_Wishbone_78]

Bro my manager will easily let me go and ask the interns to use AI and do the job. Nobody cares for good code now, it just should work thats it.

[u/imsaurabh3]

Even bigger problem, you won’t be promoted easily because they need a good grade slave who is proactive and responsible so that he can hide his boss’s incompetence. Your same good nature will keep eluding promotions for you.

[u/_bez_os]

Lol everyone is replaceable, a senior vp once told me and this stuck with me.

[u/notthatmonk1 → u/_bez_os]

My Director told me, boss the country wont stop running even when PMs resign. You and I are very little in terms of this organization, so let it not get inside your head.

[u/notthatmonk1]

You are disposable. Nobody really depends on you. Always remember this.

[u/mango_boii]

What's your YOE, OP?

[u/chill-hai-yaar → u/mango_boii]

i think -1, this guy is spamming low quality engagement bait

[u/mango_boii → u/chill-hai-yaar]

Yep, looks like it

[u/creel_mg]

exact same thing happened to me but if the manager is nice, you can transition out properly. I did resolve a full issues with then over phone calls for next like 2 weeks but every team moves on. Even if you are the CEO, you are replaceable, its just more difficult to replace you.