The mental health aspect I think is often overlooked. When young engineers are eager to climb the ladder into senior/principal/distinguished positions (this was me, btw) they often overlook what it does to your mental health. The beginning seems great. Big problems, big solutions, everyone knows what’s their role in it and how to get it done. Over the years that view will fade. The certainty of success replaced by tooling up, research, supporting articles, still engineering hard stuff, fielding workshops by the business to help educate and rehash the vision to this next set of recent college grads. The complexity of the job increases as the responsibility increases.

My brother is also an engineer and instead of going after titles and management he decided to stay as an engineer for as long as he could. He’s extremely happy working on things without having direct reports. There’s a sweet spot for everyone here. Some like more freedom and time to recharge (this is me) and some can balance the demands of the work with the demands to explore work (my brother). Then there are others who dive so far head first into work they burn themselves out.

Please, take the time to find your balance. Not only will you be happier, people around you will be too.