alt Hacker NewsThere are rare software companies where this is exactly what programmers do. The pay is lower than at FAANG & SV/LA/NYC startups, but work-life balance is great, stability is great, and most of all they get to just focus on doing great work. It's not about making quarterly goals, it's about stewarding (or perhaps gardening) a software project for many years. Engineers grow a lot from all the deep, focused feature work and problem solving.
I worked at such a place for 15 years. The downsides for me were lower pay, no equity, and not getting broad industry experience. I ended up leaving, and I now make a lot more money, but I do miss it.
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the saddest thing is that it used to be possible to do it at at least some of the megacorps too. "senior engineer" (one level below staff) was widely accepted as an "I have reached as high as I want to in my career, and just want to work on interesting problems now", you would basically never get a raise other than cost-of-living but you could do your work and go home and live your life too. that's still doable to an extent but the recurring layoffs have added a measure of precarity to the whole situation so now you have to care more about all the self promotion and "being seen to be doing something" aspects of the job a lot more than you used to.
Google lets people stay at L4 forever and Meta does at L5 with no expectation of further growth.
Yes the expectations are probably still higher, but these companies don’t expect everyone to grow past “mostly self-sufficient engineer” as the parent comment suggests, and for people that do want to do that there’s a full non-management path to director-equivalent IC levels. My impression is that small companies are more likely to treat management as a promotion rather than as a lateral move to a different track (whenever I hear “promoted to manager” I kinda shudder)
I think no equity isn't necessarily worse than equity followed by bankruptcy :D
Not in 2025, sadly. Those kinds of companies are the first to freeze hiring and some probably won't make it through the storm.
It would be nice to have that, though. But my industry isn't known for stability to begin with.