You don’t need to constantly learn or grow
It’s Saturday, so I thought I would write about something a bit different today: the “need” to grow. The idea that you must grow, get promoted and become a leader is a very American point of view – and very capitalist I guess. It’s a way of thinking that exists in Europe but to a lesser extent than in the US.
Let’s start with an obvious statement: not everybody can become a principal engineer/director, not because of their own skills but just because there aren’t enough positions – levels distributions are shaped like a pyramid. From there it doesn’t make sense to think that you need to get constantly promoted to be successful or happy.
The same goes for learning – you don’t need to constantly learn. You can learn things if it makes you happy, you can work hard if you enjoy it but you can go on long runs if this is what makes you tick – but you don’t have to force yourself to improve to crush your peers.
In my case, I climbed the software engineer ladder relatively fast to L7/senior staff and it would be easy to say that it was easy, done on purpose and that you all should do the same (I’m fairly confident it’s the type of content LinkedIn would like after all) – but that would be lying. Getting promoted wasn’t my purpose nor my primary goal. It just happened because my interests lead me to impactful projects and that I had the chance to have good managers.
Chasing a senior title is like chasing FAANG, a top university or money – it’s nice to have, but it may not bring your long term happiness. Grow/learn if this is what makes you happy but you don’t have too – there’s nothing wrong being a software engineer with a stronger passion for something else.