Where to grow in a position without giving up programming?

Question

Career in IT

We became programmers because we love to write code. But at the same time, it's not a matter of sitting in one position forever, is it some kind of stagnation?
Technical Product Manager - more in analytics and marketing, from technical only that you understand what techies are talking about.
Team lead - if you have enough time, and people (both your team and coordination with other teams) with their questions and problems will eat up your working time.
An architect is not programming again. Analytics, coordination with other teams, drawing pictures.

Am I missing some direction?

Answer 1

The most obvious is to remain a developer, you can switch stacks, learn related things (full stack). At the moment, there is practically no salary ceiling for the developer, if you like it and it works for you, you retain the ability to learn, stay a developer.

Answer 2

nowhere, alas (
but the rest of the work also needs to be done by someone.

Answer 3

But at the same time, it's not a matter of sitting in one position forever, is it some kind of stagnation?

Nothing like this. Just programmers have excellent opportunities for horizontal growth.

Answer 4

And the most important question what for?
So you became a programmer, chew money with your ass, realized yourself as you want and where you want, travel around the world, any hobby, everything is available to you.

Answer 5

As for me, if you want to remain a developer, then you can probably code as a team leader (it can be called differently depending on the office, maybe the chief programmer, etc.), but no matter how technical the position is, you still have to deal with administrative tasks like agreeing/approving decisions/plans, and promotion usually means managing people and taking responsibility for their actions (most people don't really like being punished for other people's mistakes).

But at the same time, it's not a matter of sitting in one position forever, is it some kind of stagnation?

In fact, if you work as a programmer, then you are always in the same position, the competence is different and for which part of the project you are responsible.
Not exactly growth, but as an option, you can try to create your own product, but again, it’s quite difficult to implement it alone. The bottom line here is that the programmer is the final performer and, in fact, his growth can only be in technical terms. Roughly speaking, even you have created your own product, but you remain a programmer (of course, you can come up with a beautiful job title, etc., but it will not change the essence).
Alternatively, you can come up with / improve development approaches, optimize algorithms, but again, do not say that this is an increase in position.

Answer 6

Am I missing some direction?

It seems to me that you are missing out on the banal growth in writing code.
Perhaps, in the companies where you worked, programmers (conditionally) received 100-200, a team lead 300, and you think that in order to grow in salary, it is necessary to leave programmers for management.
I saw situations when a business needed a good specialist in a certain area, where other ordinary programmers could not cope - and the salary there was several times higher than that of a team leader.
In general, develop in your stack to senior+, learn English, go to American / European companies - you will write code and get many times more than most Russian team leads and leaders.
PS There are low-paying languages, if you are in one - you can think about switching to another, more paid one.

Answer 7

You can develop into a T-specialist. This is when, in addition to basic technical knowledge, there are additional ones. They can also be technical, in related areas. Then you become a full stack. They don’t always pay extra for this, but it can be interesting as a techie.
Or you can build the same career in the domain area and become a subject specialist. The easiest way to do this is if your main specialization is machine learning. But others are also possible. For example, an agronomist developer, a logistics developer, a business process automation developer. In any areas in which you can apply IT, growth in the second career is unlimited, as is growth in salary. Back in 2014, I read stories about specialists in ML + logistics with a salary of 300k, which, even with a buck sagging by 2 times, is considered a normal salary today.