As long as you have a choice, focus on technology or switch to management. It will be all right. But for most programmers, there is no choice. To focus on technology, you must have a foundation, but the foundation is too poor, and the ceiling for technological development is very low; if you want to switch to management, although the threshold is not as high as focusing on technology, there are very few management positions in the company, so why should you be given the opportunity?
If you like technology and have the ability to research it yourself, then it is very good to be a technical expert. There is really nothing more fun than doing something you love every day. And the saying that technology changes the world is not just talk.
If you are unable to focus on technology or have reached your technical ceiling (you can feel it by thinking about whether your technical ability has improved in the past two years). So if you have the opportunity to switch to management, you must seize it. Even if you think you can't manage or communicate, don't give up. At least try to be a team leader and bring a few people to work together. What reason is there to refuse to study in a new position? It’s also good to be a technical manager. If you like technology, pay more attention to it. If you feel that it is difficult to improve your technical skills, you can improve yourself through your management skills.
What I said is that most people have no choice. This is true. Many programmers actually live off their youth. After the age of 35, let alone a salary increase, if the company collapses, why don't you try changing positions? You don’t need to actually leave your job, just publish your resume and see how many people will contact you. Really very few. I did this test in 2015. There were a lot of invitations for interviews at that time. I also did this test this year. Sorry, very, very few.
Every time we change jobs, we have to answer a question: What advantages do we have compared with engineers who have been working for 3-5 years? You can say that the code I write is of good quality and there are very few bugs after writing it for many years. It can also be said that I am fast at coding and can complete more work in one day than a person can do in two days. The gap in technical capabilities is not visible when it is small, but once the gap widens, it is still easy to see. You can do this job but others can't. This is the gap. Without a big gap, it will be difficult for you to compete with others.
The same goes for transformation managers. You still have to have something to offer. Is it okay to have strong project management skills? I have built a technical team of dozens of people from 0 to 1, is that okay? I think it works. But how do you prove it to others? What technical management needs to pay attention to is the pace of transformation. Don't give up the ability to write code prematurely, because if you are a pure manager, you will face a problem, what should you do if the manager loses his job?
This is a very real problem. If you have professional skills and can write code, companies need this kind of people the most. There are many positions. If you are purely in management, as I said at the beginning, each company has very few management positions, and most of them will be cultivated internally. Changing jobs means there are few positions to choose from. Management positions in most companies are found through headhunting or internal referrals, and very few actually fall into the recruitment market.
There is no shortage of jobs in the market. In fact, many companies are short of high-end technical and management talents. You will know just by looking at how much headhunting fees large companies spend. The problem now is that the more high-end the position, the more you need to show your true abilities.
How to get it? You need to have endorsements, and you can ask friends who know you to make referrals. You can also use your past achievements as an endorsement. Good academic qualifications, good companies, and good products are all plus points. Of course, I recommend that you publish the knowledge you have learned at work and the problems you have solved by writing articles on the Internet. Because the threshold is low, everyone can do it.
Most people don’t prepare for the future in advance, but the difference between preparing and not preparing will be very big.