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Discussion on: The seniority trap

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Kasey Speakman • Edited

Hmm. You might consider me trapped. I wouldn't say I "barely" code. I do so at least weekly. Most of what I code is infrastructure (but I would be happy to let others do that as well). I also research and implement improvements to our code base (alleviating pain points). Examples: improving our MVU organization to make pages more easily nest-able. Centralizing validation and access control in our infrastructure, making them hard to forget and easy to get right. I also help a lot with design guidance on features.

This is my chosen path at this point to be more R&D / architectural / vision keeper. Frankly I am quite bored with writing features. I have done so for 19 years. I've implemented many things dozens of times over using many different tactics and paradigms, and don't find it that interesting anymore. I'd much rather have a design session with other devs and discuss different options with their trade-offs and let them make their own informed choice and let them implement it. (We use impure edges / pure core design, so it is usually not particularly risky for us to fix things later.) And I believe the math works out better in the long term with me as a force multiplier for the rest of the team, rather than coding a lot of features myself.

I lead the team, but I am not anyone's boss. I don't really want to have that dynamic with my team. We are in it together, serving our customers and supporting each other in doing that.