A tale of two software career paths

Software can be the best of careers, it can be the worse of careers. It's up to you.

Path 1: Write sensibly-designed software, resilient to change, on a fast update loop. You aggressively squish bugs, of which you have fewer than do your peers because of your unit tests. You talk to people early and often. Work isn't killing you, so you have time to learn stuff--cool stuff that improves your designs, makes them more fault-tolerant or speeds your update loop. You can take on more responsibilities as your services take care of themselves and process is automated away. There's a lot more work up-front, but your tech improvements keep paying huge dividends. You have the option of decreasing your workload even as responsibilities increase. Increasing responsibilities increases your visibility, influence and rewards. You're a star individual contributor. What you do matters. You learn enough about corporate politics to magnify the influence you have from your technical prestige. You're good at that, but do you understand business? You have a nonzero risk of becoming part of The Problem at your company. If you're The Problem now, that's fine. You're a star IC, we're happy to have you.

Path 2: Continually accepting one-off shortcuts to deliver the task at hand. You deliver results fast, or you don't have to work as hard at the beginning, or you don't know how to squeeze in long-term improvements. You get into constant Fire Drill mode. Work is exhausting you. You don't have time to learn anything cool or try anything new. Extra responsibilities are punishments. You fear them. You're stuck working nights and weekends to keep your head above water for things that shouldn't be that tough. Your projects aren't important. You become very political to compensate for an inability to deliver. You're good at that, but do you understand technology? You have a nonzero risk of becoming part of The Problem at your company. If you're The Problem now, try again somewhere else and try to be more like that #1 guy.