| ▲ | alexpotato 6 hours ago | |
So a bit of my thoughts + open to suggestions from other folks on HN. I've been a DevOps/SRE essentially my entire career and almost always in Finance (banks, FinTech startups, multiple hedge funds etc) and most recently in crypto. It's seemed that for SWEs the path was always something like: - junior - team lead - manager - manager of managers - CTO (or VP of Engineering etc) For SREs/DevOps it always felt a bit fuzzier after manager and most of the manager of managers I know ended up being that role in an "infra" department (e.g. k8s, networking etc). I would love to know what folks with my background ended up doing later in their careers/age mid 40s and above? (all of this is even more fuzzy due to LLMs/AI and part of me feels like it's time to start pivoting into some kind of IRL service or manufacturing role given the speed at which things are developing. e.g. maybe I should buy a bakery...) Open to all kinds of stories and suggestions here as would most likely benefit me and also lots of other folks reading the comments. | ||
| ▲ | jonpurdy 6 hours ago | parent [-] | |
> I would love to know what folks with my background ended up doing later in their careers/age mid 40s and above? I'm 41 now, started working in education but pivoted back to tech quickly (DevOps specifically) since tech is a better match for me. After a few years, fell upwards into management then pivoted into Technical Program Management roles where I've remained since. Love this since I get to interact with teams of people working in my program(s) but don't have the responsibilities of a people manager. Personally, my roles focus on infrastructure and things at least loosely related to my DevOps background. Worked at two blockchain companies (I've been into blockchain tech since 2012) but considering moving into green energy somehow. I think in most cases including yours: choose roles based both on interest and total compensation. And it's a lot easier to get roles (especially TPM roles) if you're already technically competent in that particular field (in your case FinTech and crypto). | ||