I've been working in the SW industry for around two decades now, and I see a distinct difference since the last 5 years, which is that everyone is optimizing all their actions towards their next promotion.
Prior to this time frame and more so in the last decade, there was a lot of focus on mastery of SW skills and even towards random exploration and learning, and all of that appears to have been lost. I personally felt all this has accelerated with the increase in big tech compensation, and levels.fyi and blind information.
The challenge with a greedy approach is that a career spans over multiple decades, and a lot of careers plateau over local minima and often one may have to down level or restart careers to find their true calling and excellence and the career growth that follows. This is better done at the beginning of the career when risks are lower than at a late career stage.
Deep software skills are critical for success. But we've found that many software engineers are surprised with how many other skills they need to build in order to advance in their career (and I'd argue these skills have always been important).
Prior to this time frame and more so in the last decade, there was a lot of focus on mastery of SW skills and even towards random exploration and learning, and all of that appears to have been lost. I personally felt all this has accelerated with the increase in big tech compensation, and levels.fyi and blind information.
The challenge with a greedy approach is that a career spans over multiple decades, and a lot of careers plateau over local minima and often one may have to down level or restart careers to find their true calling and excellence and the career growth that follows. This is better done at the beginning of the career when risks are lower than at a late career stage.