Look for teams that have no business being as big as they are. On a over-staffed team, the devs take one piece of work and divide it up (sometimes it’s laughable even to us, but we have to fill up Jira with stories). So long as no one on the team is pretentious, you guys should be able to have very piecemeal amounts of work and a dependable squad to pick up slack as needed.
It sounds like I’m describing a normal company with healthy redundancy, but apparently in tech you can end up on unhealthy lean teams. Your boss also needs to be a long timer who ‘gets’ that all of you divided up the simplest task evenly, and that ‘this is the way’. If he/she scrutinizes it, then it’s no good because the lie must be believed by all (with the underlying acceptance that this is better for everyone versus having heroes and rockstars).
Wait for the pandemic to die down and the froth to return in hiring, where companies will define ‘growth’ by building out more teams. No reason not to stay a developer since you already invested the time to do the work in your sleep.
The hard part is you will have to find a company that is successful enough that they can afford it.
Places like this can actually bring back some sanity if you have a life outside of work. You’ll die if work is your identity though, as others have mentioned (super unfulfilling, no one will be allowed to architect or go nuts, since predictability is paramount).
Last thing I’ll say is, absolutely under no circumstance should you lower your salary expectations. The companies that pay developers lower expect more. They seem to not believe the cost is worth it, and that you are lucky to even be getting as much as you are getting. You’ll be pushed much much harder at those places. The 10k luxury purse only gets taken out on special nights. The $200 one gets taken everywhere.
It sounds like I’m describing a normal company with healthy redundancy, but apparently in tech you can end up on unhealthy lean teams. Your boss also needs to be a long timer who ‘gets’ that all of you divided up the simplest task evenly, and that ‘this is the way’. If he/she scrutinizes it, then it’s no good because the lie must be believed by all (with the underlying acceptance that this is better for everyone versus having heroes and rockstars).
Wait for the pandemic to die down and the froth to return in hiring, where companies will define ‘growth’ by building out more teams. No reason not to stay a developer since you already invested the time to do the work in your sleep.
The hard part is you will have to find a company that is successful enough that they can afford it.
Places like this can actually bring back some sanity if you have a life outside of work. You’ll die if work is your identity though, as others have mentioned (super unfulfilling, no one will be allowed to architect or go nuts, since predictability is paramount).
Last thing I’ll say is, absolutely under no circumstance should you lower your salary expectations. The companies that pay developers lower expect more. They seem to not believe the cost is worth it, and that you are lucky to even be getting as much as you are getting. You’ll be pushed much much harder at those places. The 10k luxury purse only gets taken out on special nights. The $200 one gets taken everywhere.
Become the luxury item and find wealthier buyers.