
Career advice, should I search for a new job? - trymetryme
Dear HN,<p>I started my career as a developer little more than 3 years ago in a growing startup (nothing high profile), in a team of 4 devs: me, one intern, one junior and our manager, a senior with 10+ years of experience.<p>With less than 1 year in, the team recycled aside from me. Our manager and the more experienced devs left for other places, and the team responsible for our C++ codebase was rebuilt with junior devs and interns, and we were left to work things out on our own. The next in line in the hierarchy was the CTO, and he had a hands off approach. With 2 years of experience, I was made tech lead for our C++ team, 5 people at the time.<p>One thing that always nagged me was that for most of my (admittedly short) career, I had no mentors I could learn from. Even as a tech lead, I was the first one assigned with this role and our CTO had no idea what was I supposed to do.<p>A couple of months ago I got a new job in a very small company, to work with 2 senior devs. In my mind it was an OK opportunity to branch out in technologies and to learn closely from more experienced devs. I recently learned that both are leaving the company, and that they already hired 2 interns to work with me to carry on the current project, with me as architect. This got me really worried.<p>While I do feel that I am learning day to day, I fear that my career will be stunted if once again I am left working somewhere as the seniorest dev (with barely 3 years of experience) this early on. I know I learn a lot by myself, but I feel I could learn more with more people, and more experienced people.<p>Are &quot;leadership&quot; experiences attractive in the job market for developer positions? Should I be searching for a new position, somewhere where I won&#x27;t be tasked with training new hires or leading projects, just put into a position where I can learn more about the specifics of working day to day as a developer? Can someone provide me some career advice?<p>Thank you very much!
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WheelsAtLarge
No brainer, yes. Always be on the lookout for what the job market has to
offer. The bottom line, employers will drop you if they feel they can get a
better deal with another employee. You should have the same mindset. If you
find something better you should take it.

As far as learning goes, don't expect to be assigned a mentor or to find a
mentor at work. Most startups just don't have the ability to provide one.
There are just too many things that need to be accomplished for it to stay
alive so they won't be focusing on mentoring developers. Plus highly
experienced developers are looking to get paid for their abilities so they are
job hoppers looking for the best job for them so don't expect them to stay too
long unless your startup is exceptional. Your best bet is to learn by doing,
move on to another startup and learn from the experience.

Also, map out your career. Where do you want to be in 5,10,15 and 20 years? I
can almost guarantee you won't be a developer in 15 years, and I don't even
know you,so plan for that.

~~~
trymetryme
Thank you for the advice.

