I'm interested how this community is spread in the different career levels. If you want you can add, in the comments, if you would rate yourself the same, which level should be the end of your career and since when you are in the business.
I will start. 😅
My current contract level is "intermediate/advanced" (backend developer). In my opinion I'm more like a senior - that's why I will get Lead level next year.
I'm in the PHP business since ~13 years (this year I've earned the "do it half your life" achievement 🎉) and since 2013 with a employment.
With the lead role I'm pretty happy and nearly at the end. Possibly Head of but this depends on my tasks. I never want to do the most of my time theoretical tasks. I'm a developer and will "ever" be.
But I have some ideas beside my regular job. So doing part time freelance work is a possibility.
Yeah, will be similar in next company. But decided for "only" lead to make it easier for a possible future head/CTO.
Yea, I get that.
I'm more on the management/big picture side of it… which is fine. There's definitely a niche for developers who have experience to then go into the dev management/head of/cto side, as not many devs really want to.
I know some - but most times between 45-50+ if they get too "lazy" to run after every hype framework. Which I totally agree with - primary because head/chief is something where it's more about your life experience than your skill. And you have to step back to see the whole museum instead of the single picture.
So could be that I end the same in the future. 😅
I've been a freelancer since 2012. Completely self-taught, I started coding back in 2000 for I was running a netlabel and we needed a website to distribute our music. I first started with PHP and HTML, and now I'm working with Symfony, a bit of Laravel, and VueJS. I spent 9 years in a shitty job with a shitty boss (but I met the mother of my kid there, so hey), and finally took a leap of faith thanks to my best friend who's the CEO of his own startup.
It's been a long road and I'm still learning every day. 🙂
What a great question! 😃
In the office I'm called a "web architect", in other words "Senior Developer (and Operator)". I'm the one who tries to help when anything is already burning or will start burning.
I've made my first steps in the development world when I was 11 years old (which will be 20 years ago next year).
This was my first book, the one that I started with. I've still got it on my shelf:
So like @Gummibeer I've been a developer most of my life. 😄
For the future: Maybe management when I'm old(er). But for now, I do enjoy my devops work too much to change something.