Ask HN: Career Advice

Good grief. That's not a normal team breakdown, especially for a new project.

If you really like the work you are doing at the current company then use that offer to get the promotion. It's not clear though if you want to manage people or if you just want more money.

Always good to heat check your earning potential every 2 years though.

But I think this sort of situation is common at many, if not most, companies. It seems like it's trial and error to find a company that will treat you right. That varies by person and manager. I work for a company that is consistently one of Computer World's best places to work and all sorts of other awards. I see people join fresh out of college and become managers within 5 years. Yet I've been mistreated, passed over, put in bad situations, etc. I'm 10 years in and only a midlevel, eventhough they had me fill a senior role for a year and tech lead for a year.

I guess I'm saying you might as well try another company, but don't be surprised if it's the same or worse. Your other alternative is to give up like me, being frustrated all the time and making under $100k.

Change organisations to one where you don't have teams starting with 1 dev, 1 prod manager, 1 scrum master and 1 manager. Move to one that has a clear way of developing and moving people up and on.

Do the highest quality work you can figure out how to do, for the sake of the art. When you're ready for a promotion (like now) if the company doesn't give you one just leave and let another company do it.

It sounds to me like there may be more to learn in your current role though. You could think of this as an opportunity to take ownership and responsibility for the problems of the team, even if they aren't your fault and work on learning how to be a really good lead, even if that isn't the title.

Titles and money are easy enough. The actual bottlenecks are skills, insight, and experience.

Also have this same discussion with your grand-boss or even the CTO. It sounds like you have one foot out the door mentally so YOLO.

Leaving is certainly one good option too. Starting this effort shows good initiative which is great to talk about in interviews.

- Leadership at certain companies can include a lot of people management, and so being in a team of one possibly does make the case for progression in the eyes of HR.

- The company isn't big enough to facilitate career progression for everyone.

- The project may be seen as innovative, but possibly something that will be absorbed into the best practices of all teams over the coming years, and so there may be less of a case to promote anyone in the team because of this. (this is where you need to read between the lines a little, as PO's will omit plans like this for obvious reasons)

- Unknowns.. the people who briefly worked on the team may have raised concerns during 1-1's / exit interviews that you're unaware of.

The best advice i could give is to leave any frustration at the door during the next few months, and keep an eye open for you're dream role at another company.

>the other Senior developer is now Lead ( we were only two senior in the previous team 1 year and half ago ).

>I honestly don't know what to do anymore, I feel like I hit a brick wall, I talk about this with my manager every two weeks and he always says something will be done. Work has become de-motivating, I ended up in the team that does one of the hardest work in the company and that every other team now depends on, and this has only set me back.

You've got all your answers here. Time to move on.

Find a new job, that gives you the role you want.