I have been working at a large bank for a few years. Although some coding is needed, the bulk majority of time is spent on server config changes, releasing code to production, asking other people for approvals, auth roles, and of course tons of meetings with the end user to find out what they need.
I guess when I was a junior engineer, I would spend more time looking at code, though I used to work for small companies. So it is hard for me to judge if the extra time spent coding, was because of me being a junior or because it was a small company.
The kicker, is when we interview devs, most of the interview is just about coding. Very little of it is about the stuff I listed…
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Pretty common everywhere. https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes/
The better programmer you are, the more likely you get promoted in hopes of making the whole team good like you, the less time you spend doing what you were promoted for.
Senior backend developer here . I have been refusing positions as tech or team lead for exactly this reason. All my colleagues that ended up in those positions basically stopped having any time to code. Some of them left to go back to coding in another company as they were burning out from all the meetings and admin stuff.
Same boat. Nuh uh, you’re not promoting me. I don’t want to have to deal with offshore support, meeting 6 out of 8 hours, making sure Jira board is up to PM’s standards and only reading code when any of the devs have an issue they cannot solve by themselves or something breaks. I tried management career path and hated it with all my heart, quit when they wanted to promote me higher. Let me do what I enjoy, I’ll deliver.
Bonus points - developers make more than managers up to 2 or 3 levels up where I live, so it doesn’t even calculate.
That’s interesting, where do you live?
Poland.
A lot of development and other IT related jobs get outsourced, so experienced devs are in very high demand. We usually work in a B2B arrangement, a developer starts their own company (sole trader I think it’s called in the US) and invoices an agency that deals with corporate customers.
Salaries are around 3-4x average national salary, with smaller taxes than on a work contract and less safety (which is not a problem due to high demand). Locally, managers do not usually play any role, I report directly to the customer’s managers, usually far away from Poland. If I were to sign a contract with the customer, that’s no longer B2B usually, the salary is less and taxes are higher.