Posted by TheAlchemist 12/22/2025
If you guide your own direction too strictly you will both risk moving yourself into a dead end, but also miss out on unexpected opportunities.
"If you don't have your own story, you become part of someone else's."
Honestly? I don't feel a massive need to grow beyond where I am. I earn in the top 5% in my country. I live a comfortable and flexible life. I continue to learn like any dev with a passion for technology does - but i'm not constructing my life around an endless climb. If my role naturally transitions upwardly, great. If I stay where I am, steadily taking on more responsibility,that's also totally fine. The diminishing returns of chasing a CTO title or another arbritrarily large sum of money just doesn't seem worth it.
If you don't design your career, in most cases I guess no one will. In the comments are good examples, like the random walk of the drunken sailor. The cases in which you could use the phrase "someone else designed it for me" in a meaningful way seem rather rare to me.