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Top-level
 @scottgal My take was "rewrite the stack" was hyperbole for a ju-jitsu-like "make the right set of changes to dramatically change things" rather than a literal Musk "we need a total rewrite!!!" which sounds like NIH. Often that's still a challenging project, like a rewrite of a key component, but yeah, not an end-to-end rewrite. (Maybe I was overly generous in my interpretation of the post. :) 5 comments
@scottgal I've seen people successfully keep doing such stuff, really well, at the expense of "career advancement", but yeah. On the other hand, you get more opportunities to teach/lead others to do so. Although that's not to everyone's taste I guess. @sgf Part of it's just practical. You price yourself (either financially or skill level at stuff like architecture etc) of the 'fun' dev jobs. Staff Engineer jobs exist but they tend to be at big corps; using someone like me as a dev is EXPENSIVE when I add more value *not* writing code. @sgf Example this last go-around I applied for DOZENS of 'senior dev' jobs but the constant refrain was I was 'too experienced'...no idea if the lead thought I would be unmanageable / they though I was so old I'd croak, it never gets that far. @scottgal That seems pretty a pretty fair assessment, and I'm sorry that it sucked for you. My experience has been mostly big tech and (old-school) finance (and specifically the London market), where they can pay for experienced devs, so my view's clearly biased. |
Gregory's Server
@sgf Yeah I think the fancy name is 'Transformational Architecture' or less fancy 'code jenga'; changing a running app and making it better while keeping it running I think only really comes from experience. The irony is that the more able you are to manage that sort of thing the less likely you'll be in a role which allows it.