Hey everyone and welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. There is a natural tension, a natural tension between wanting more money, wanting to get paid, wanting a raise, wanting to get a promotion in order to get a raise, wanting more power, more financial stability, more freedom, more agency. All of these things kind of come with more money usually. There's a tension between that and wanting to have meaningful goals. At some point, all of us have hit a wall in our careers, whether that's because we felt like the only way to get to the next level in the pay side, in the money side, is to do something that is a trade-off that we're not sure we can make. Either because we're not confident we literally are capable of it, or it could be because we're trading off something that we really do care about. A third possibility here is that we feel like we're kind of stepping towards a life that is less meaningful. We're trading off a job that we really buy into, maybe the mission of the company. We really identify with the work. We like the people that we're working with. We're saying, in order to get paid more, I have to leave behind all of that purpose and all of that connection that I have, but I'm going to get paid more if I go to this other place. There's a tension between these things. Sometimes this tension is very real. A lot of you listening right now probably resonates with you. We're going to talk about this more in depth today because a listener named Abdul, sent in a question. It's an excellent question. I think it illustrates what a lot of you are going through, what a lot of you will continue to go through into the future because it talks quite a bit. We'll get into the email in a minute, but it talks a lot. I want you to pay attention to this idea that you've hit a wall of some kind and that you're not really sure how to make a leap. You're not really sure how to make a shift, a transition, and you're not sure. In this case, Abdul talks about not being sure whether it's the right transition in the first place. Thank you to Abdul first for having the courage and taking the time to write this email. If you want to write an email, you can. It's developertea at gmail.com. If you're not watching this on YouTube, then you won't get the pleasure of seeing me look off screen for a minute to set this email up and make sure that we're going to get all of Abdul's excellent. Questions up for discussion. Okay. So Abdul wrote in. He says, Hi, Jonathan. I've been listening to your recent career growth series. I want to thank you for it, particularly the episode. I'm breaking out of the autopilot loop, moving away from vague goals like make more money towards more intentional and instructive ones. A lot of it resonated with me. I want to share a bit of context and ask for your perspective. I'm a front-end engineer with 10 years of experience. I enjoy the work. I like tech. I enjoy the work. I like technical challenges. I'm disciplined about developing my skills. From a salary perspective, I'm getting by, but I have no real wealth buffer. I support a family with young children, also help elderly parents. So that financial pressure is a constant and it's a very real constraint. Now, at the same time, I feel like I may have hit a ceiling as a front-end engineer, especially in the current job market. Despite enjoying front-end work, I'm not convinced it's the best path to achieve my financial goals at this stage. I've been advised by others to consider pivoting into back-end platforms. I'm struggling with the practical reality. How does someone with my background credibly make that jump into a higher-paying role rather than starting again at a lower rung? So my question is this. How would you recommend reframing career strategy when financial necessity is the dominant constraint? And more concretely, how should someone in my position think about targeting higher-paid roles or domains without making unrealistic leaps that the market won't reward? I really value your thoughts. Whether that's around role-planning or job placement. Whether that's around job placement. Whether that's around job placement. Whether that's around job placement. Whether that's around job placement. selection, skill positioning, or even challenging some of my assumptions. Thanks again for the work you put out. It's genuinely thought-provoking. Best regards, Abdul. Abdul, thank you so much for sending in this question or set of questions. Really, it's a full situation that we're going to get to talk about today. And I love this stuff. What we're going to do today is kind of like a coaching session. Unfortunately, you're not going to see the Abdul side. And normally in coaching, there's a lot of back and forth, but hopefully this will give Abdul, it'll give you some idea of how you can step forward in this situation. And you're absolutely right. The first thing we're going to start with is questioning some assumptions. I'm noticing in the email that you sent, Abdul, I'm noticing there's a little bit of what feels like kind of a self-judgment, some self-evaluation that your vague goal of making sure that you're not going to be able to do what you're doing is going to be a little bit more money. Okay. Is not instructive enough. And I want to push on this assumption. I don't know whether that's true to you, Abdul. I know that someone is listening that this is true for that you feel some sense of discontinuity with your own personal values and setting a goal like make more money. And maybe, you know, maybe some of that comes from listening to people like me. Uh, because I'm very much, uh, I think a lot about why not just what do you want to achieve, but why? And I think in this case, Abdul, and people who are listening, if you have a similar situation where money is beginning to dominate your thoughts more and more, I'm going to ask the same question. I ask you why? Because the non-instructive version of this goal is make more money for the sake of making money. Right? So if somebody came to me and said, Oh, I just want to get a raise. What I really want to know if I'm their coach, if I'm their, if I'm their friend, right? If, if, uh, if, if my, as my children grow up, if they came to me and said, I really want to make more money, dad, I would say the same thing. Why? What, about more money is important to you? How does it change your life in a way that matters to you? Because your real goal here, your real goal, isn't just to make money. It's to take care of your young children. Your real goal. Isn't just to make money. It's to future-proof the opportunity to take care of your elderly parents. Uh, goal is not just money for the sake of money. You've recognized that you're just getting by. You have financial goals. I don't know what those are, aside from what you mentioned, your children and your parents. You don't have a buffer. That tells me that's instructive as well. The word buffer, usually this implies some kind of risk mitigation. I challenge you, Abdul, it's possible that you haven't done this yet. I don't know your financial goals. I want you to think about the financial goals in terms of what does that produce for you in your life? If you want a buffer, why? Is the buffer a risk mitigation? Are you trying to avoid a negative outcome from, let's say, job loss, for example? Then your goal is financial in its expression. But in its outcome, in its effect, in the intent, it's not just financial. It's about risk. You don't want to end up having to go get a second job in order to support your parents. You want a financial buffer so that if something happens, you have the space and time and the energy necessary to go and get another job. Or if there's, let's say, a medical emergency, you can handle the medical emergency without going into debt. Presumably, the long term here might be to pay for, I don't know, depending on what kind of parenting and culture you're a part of. I don't know. It's a very typical thing in the culture I'm a part of is to pay at least part of my children's school. Maybe you want to save money to be able to do that. Maybe you want to help them buy their first car. Maybe you want to go on vacations. Maybe you want to visit them when they go off to college. I don't know. I don't know. But in order to do those things, we have to avoid these potentially catastrophic scenarios. And so you want a buffer. This makes total sense to me. And so it may feel like those things are not instructive, but your intent is very clear. And I want to be careful. I want you to be careful. I want whoever's listening to this to be careful in condemning your own intent. Right? And trying to prejudge that your goal is not good enough. That is definitely not the message of this show. So your goals in this case, based on what I'm reading, Abdul, are not use-oriented. It sounds like you've recognized what the function for you, what the function of that financial success would be. And so if you are considering weighing out your values and your purpose in this, then there's plenty of room, right? There's plenty of room. Right? And so if you're considering weighing out your values and your purpose in this, then there's plenty of room, right? There's plenty of room. better financial position is in line with your values, right? That is a completely normal and very typical thing, right? And I would caution you or encourage you to try to identify if you have feelings coming up about this, because you have to get okay with your own goals first, right? That's kind of the, you have to buy into the idea that this is actually totally in line. with your values before you can take any action on it. Okay. So, so that's the first thing and question your assumptions here about whether these are actually good goals or not. I actually think it is a completely reasonable thing to say, I want to seek, you know, a job that better optimizes for money. All right. And there's plenty of people who are listening to this show that you have already gone through this kind of exploration. I'll say on the flip side, if you are just saying, oh, I want to see how things work out for me, then that's not really a good time to do that. Okay. So let's say that you haven't thought about how that impacts your values. For example, you're trading away a bunch of time in order to just climb the corporate ladder, right? The opposite applies, right? You should do the same kind of exploration. There is no, let's say, you know, there's no blanket approval for these goals. You need to do the exploration and align it to your values and recognize, you know, what kinds of things are you willing to trade in order to achieve that? And Abdul, I think in this case, you're asking the right kinds of questions. You're saying, okay, you know, I need to figure out or I would like to figure out how can I position myself? How can I get from where I am to where I need to be in order to become more financially stable, to de-risk myself, you know, to improve my, you know, my wealth, you know, preparation and, you know, start to actually build on these wealth goals. I'm not a financial coach. I'm not a tax advisor. So everything that I say here is entirely from my own experience. And you certainly shouldn't take my advice on taxes. That's something I definitely don't know about. But what I will say is there is often an illusion that there's multiple illusions about how to gain more money, right? And one of the illusions is that the role that you're in. Is static. All right, what do I mean by this? It means that you're going to get paid what you get paid here or anywhere else doing this role, that the role itself is more established, that it has, you know, really strong, you know, history or it has, you know, that it is that is kind of a concrete setting. And that in order to get paid more, you'd have to move roles and it would break the concrete, right? You'd have to get certified in some other skill. And this is kind of the theme of a lot of what I want to talk about today for your situation, Abdul. I want you to think less about the role boundaries. Because a lot of the language that you use, you're not going to be able to do that. A lot of the language that you use in your email, and let me go back and read a little bit of this. You say, you know, you're a front end engineer. You've got 10 years of experience. You are developing your skills, but you've hit a ceiling as a front end engineer. Hit a ceiling as a front end engineer. Especially in the current job market. You enjoy the front end work. You're not convinced it's the best path to hit your financial goals. You've been advised to consider pivoting into back end platform AI roles. You're struggling with the practical reality. How do you do it? How do you pivot? How do you break out of the concrete? How do you go from where you are to these totally different roles? And what I would suggest to you is that if that is true, it's most likely true mostly at the place where you are. At the company where you are. Within the team. Maybe it's... It's true just to you. Even. Right? So when I say where you are, I mean your mental state, your beliefs, as well as your environment. If you were to leave that environment, if you were to break that assumption that the role itself is well defined, you know, and that it is distinct and heavily different from another role. If you were to break that assumption and try to question whether that's true, it is... In reality, it's more likely to be a spectrum of difference. And the shades between the different roles are less defined than they might look from the outside looking in. Why do these roles exist? Why do roles exist in the first place? Mostly, roles exist in the first place to bucket skills. Right? What does that mean? It means that we're going to take some set of skills. That align to some kind of deliverable that we can hand to a person. We say we have, you know, some amount of work. We're going to hand this person this amount of work. And the composition of skills that that person has, they're going to be able to do whatever the work is that we just handed them. Okay. So then we should put skills in that skill bucket that complement each other. Right? This is why as a front-end engineer, you probably know JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. If you are missing one of those things, then life would be hard for you. Right? Being a front-end engineer is a lot harder if you're missing one of the key skills. However, if you are missing, let's say, some kind of DBA skills or data engineering skills as a front-end engineer, it's unlikely that that's going to break you. Right? So if you're building a company, in order to scale that company, instead of evaluating, every single long list of skills from every candidate, you create roles. And the roles, or you create job positions, job descriptions, these roles are aligned to those deliverable types, generally speaking. Okay? And this allows for your company to hire another person who can deliver in that lane. And hopefully if your company is well laid out, you're able to identify what percentage of your company is going to deliver in that lane. What percentage of work kind of falls within those roles. You know, you're able to say, okay, we can compose a team with these three or four job descriptions, and they would be able to do a deliverable like that. Right? And point at a project where those skills are needed, or the composition of skills are needed. All right. Why are we talking about all this? Because you're at the company now. You've gotten past the job description part of this, for the most part. Right? You're going to come around to your performance review, and the job description comes up then. You know, maybe if you get a promotion as a front end engineer, let's say you were previously in a mid-level, and you got a senior level promotion, your job description may expand a little bit, or your responsibilities might expand. But largely speaking, the critical reason for that job description, which was hiring you in the first place, you've moved past that. Right? So you're in the door now. So once you've gone past that door, it is much more like a spectrum. What do I mean by that? When the company pays you on payroll, they're not looking at, you know, whether or not you are coloring perfectly inside the lines of your job description. In other words, let's say that tomorrow, the skill requirements change. You were hired under one job description, but now what it means to be a front end engineer has shifted, and you've shifted with it. So you've learned new skills, you've learned new tooling. No longer is that original job description role contract as defined as it was on the day you were hired. So why is that? So why does that matter? It means that you shift to meet the need. You shift to meet the need. So if your company starts adopting new front end technology, uh, the easiest thing for you to do as a front end engineer is to go with the company, right? To adopt the new technology by learning the new skill set and, you know, starting to put it into practice, et cetera. Okay. Well, in that case then what we've learned through that process is that, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, is that our skill set is not concrete. Our skill set is not set in stone on the day that we walk into our job. And it doesn't have to stay within the boundaries of the job description or even the role description. All right, so my recommendation here, Abdul, I have a reason for saying all this. My recommendation is for you to break your idea, break away from the idea that your job is deeply tied to your role or your title. I want you to break from that a little bit and start thinking about your job as an opportunity to produce value in the role you're in, in the position you're in, with the relationships that you have, with the opportunities around you, right? Talk to your manager. And this is really the biggest, the easiest piece of advice I can give you is talk to your manager and express that you'd like to learn more. You'd like to start integrating some backend work into your work. Could you work alongside a backend engineer so that you can understand it more? Would that be valuable to your company, right? In most companies, an engineer is saying they'd like to become more capable in the stack. They'd like to be more useful in more places. And a good manager usually is going to be amenable to that idea. Why wouldn't they? You're offering to create new value. You're offering to kind of de-risk your position, to become more flexible. Now your manager can say, oh, I've got a backend ticket. I've got something like an AI integration that I want to do. Let's give to Abdul. He knows what he's doing with that, right? So now what you're doing is you're starting to recreate and shape your job. This is a really critical point, okay? And if you're a manager listening to this, if you're Abdul's manager, maybe Abdul, you can send this to your manager. One of the highest job satisfaction factors, okay, is how much shaping do people have over the years? How much do people have over the years? How much do they have over the years? How much autonomy do they have to define their working tooling, their working style, when they have meetings, what kinds of things they're going to focus on? Are they able to align their interests and their strengths with their work? These are all things that are very impactful to somebody's enjoyment of their job. All right, so Abdul, talk to your manager about this and say, I really would like to grow my skills in these areas. I would even share your long-term goal and say, look, and you know, and this, Abdul, this is something for you to answer for yourself. Is your long-term goal to move past front-end engineering regardless of the pay? Let's imagine that you're not going to get paid anymore. Do you want to continue down this pathway or is the skill set, you know, kind of irrelevant to you? And it really is solely about the pay. In either case, if you were to say, I'm going to get paid the same, but now you're going to expand your skill set, then you're probably going to de-risk yourself and you're going to give yourself an opportunity to move into those other areas if your job was to come under fire. Right. You're going to de-risk. And we already talked about the fact that you probably are interested in de-risking. Right. So now it's not just a financial buffer. It's also a, it's like a job market buffer. Right. Which turns into a financial buffer. So there's a lot of reasons to consider, you know, kind of growing where you're planted, let's say. So I want you to back away from the idea that this is one big jump. Right. That you're going to switch tracks, you know, that it's going to take a huge commitment. Instead, start to develop these skills where you are. If you're enjoying the front end work, then work alongside your, your backend coworker on, on a feature. Ask, maybe there's a backend engineer who's interested in learning some front end. Maybe you can trade, trade a ticket, right? See if your manager, is okay with you all trading tickets, as long as you, you know, you know, review each other's work and mentor each other. These are ways that you can, you know, start to develop these, these pathways without having to, you know, up, kind of uproot your entire career. And eventually you could say, okay, well, now that I'm doing a bunch of this, you know, front and backend work, maybe we could retitle me to a full stack engineer. Is that a, is that a role that exists at the company? Talk to your manager about it, right? And this is an opportunity to, to reconsider what your job description is in a more formal way. And now you can have the conversation with your manager that says, look, I think I'm, I'm delivering more value than the average front end engineer. Can we talk about how, you know, what my financial future looks like with a company? How, how can I, you know, make this a compelling, compelling enough, you know, value proposition? That the company is willing to compensate me for it, right? So, I think there's an important thing to think through here that you asked, and you asked specifically this question, and it has a slightly different answer. The question you asked is, how would you recommend framing, I'm sorry, reframing, how would you recommend reframing career strategy when financial necessity is the dominant constraint, right? The dominant constraint. And more concretely, how should someone in my position think about targeting higher paid roles or domains without making unrealistic leaps that the market won't reward? Okay. So, we just talked about that latter question, right? Targeting higher paid roles or domains, higher paid roles, you know, this is, this is going to change a lot. There may be a higher paying front end role at a different company. Switching companies is one of the best ways to get a financial increase. So, here's what I'll say about your first question, though. How would you recommend reframing career strategy when financial necessity is the dominant constraint? If it is the dominant constraint, then a perfectly optimized strategy would only look at what your pathway for financial stability is. That would be your only qualifier. Now, a lot of people listening to this probably hated that. They probably hated hearing that. Abdul, you may have hated hearing that. But if you could switch into a different career path entirely, I'm talking about not even a software engineer, if financial necessity is the dominant constraint. Now, I want to be clear here because this is a very big answer to a very big problem, okay? If we're talking about financial necessity, there's a lot more value in the financial necessity than there is in the career path. There's a lot more variables involved. For example, is it a short-term financial necessity question? Is it a sustained necessity question? Is it you're okay with extra risk as long as the upside is sufficient? In other words, you're okay with becoming the owner of a company as long as you could potentially make a lot of money? Or would you much rather go with a stable... Now, I think I can kind of fill in the blanks with your situation, Abdul. But for other people... people who are asking this question, I want to make more money, that's a very typical assertion, then the reframing comes down to not only how can I get into a new role, but you're also asking the question, what is the timeline and the shape of this financial necessity? Is this something that I expect to be true for the foreseeable future, decades even? Do I need to make this much? Is this something that's going to be true for the next five or 10 years? What is the shape of it? How critical is reliability? It's possible that the answer to your question is actually that you take a lower paying job that you're almost certainly not going to lose. So model out and really think about the key financial outcomes. And that is the reframing of the career strategy that I'll give you, is that the financial constraint here has to take precedence over a lot of other things. But you need to know what the shape of it is. Because the reason I'm saying all that is, if you're looking at, let's say I want a stable career for the next 15 years, then it's very likely that you're going to start asking questions like, how do I future-proof my career when AI is starting to write more and more code? Now those questions start coming into frame. Instead of thinking about, how can I grow my skill set? You're thinking about, how can I de-risk myself from being set to the side? By the way, there are a lot of answers to those questions. There's a lot of ways to arrive at those same outcomes. You could, for example, shoot for a very high paying job and bank a bunch of the money that you make, right? Hold on to it and use it in the downtimes, right? This is a very typical thing for consultants. Consultants will charge a lot more than if they were getting paid that consistently over many years. They charge a lot more for, let's say, a six-month contract because it's a feast-famine kind of industry. And so maybe they get paid really well, but then they don't have a client for the next six months after that. Again, feast-famine cycles. So really get specific about what financial necessity really means in your situation, right? Because from the way that you wrote the email, you have already met your financial necessity goal. Right? Oh, that changes things, right? So in other words, you're not in an emergent scenario right now. This is part of the reason why my recommendation for you, Abdul, was to look at ways to integrate these skills into your career now, into your job now. Instead of trying to make a big jump, you're financially stable today, right? You're getting by, as you say. If you're getting by, then you're not going to be able to make a big jump. And use what you have. Use the fuel that you've been given to try to grow your career where you are. One ticket at a time, right? One opportunity at a time. Break away from the preconceived ideas of what your role is meant to be. You take control. You take ownership over your career. And once you decide, you know, that your role is not really the key thing, it's not defining where you are, then you'll have the opportunity and the confidence, the more confidence, to go talk to your manager about your real goals. Abdul, I hope this is helpful for you. You know, there's a lot more that we could talk about with your situation. There's a lot more that people are going through. And, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market right now. But I can encourage you by saying, if you're thinking about this right now the way that you are, if you're already seeking, you know, to improve every day, that's the key. That's the core. And you just work on that core, work from that core. And I believe that you have a good opportunity in front of you if you stick with the thing that you have and make it better. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to Abdul for sponsoring. Excuse me. Thank you again to Abdul for emailing us at developertea.gmail.com. If you want a question talked about on the show, you can email at developertea.gmail. You can also join the developertea.discord community. Head over to developertea.com.discord to join that. That's totally free. And it will always be free. We have a handful of people in there. We've got a book club that reads books that are relevant to things like this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.