Personally I have found a rather different factor has been at play in my career - I have been in the industry for 15 years and made several side-steps, including working as employee #1 at a startup (which I cashed out from a buy-back), working at a GPU company on the driver and much else. I've also contributed to the linux kernel, chromium, the go programming language and a number of others.
I have never lacked the ability to make a change in my career even when it was scary, including taking the early stage startup job at a >30% reduction in pay + they only had 2-3 months money in the bank max.
However I've found that my career progression has been stalled by each and every move. I'm back at the bottom of the ladder and those years of experience? Worth absolutely nothing.
It's felt like every move to another position for whatever reason (typically to have a more interesting, fulfilling career in my case) has absolutely reset my career every time.
I'm 39 years old and last week a 25 year old was promoted in my company above my position after he'd been there for 3 years. It's pretty galling to think that I could be in the same position as not far off a graduate engineer in my early 20's.
My experience has consistently been that only your experience at $CURRENTJOB counts for anything when it comes to progression.
By all means, seek out the best job for you, but don't be surprised if there's a cost in progression of any kind. I don't regret taking risks and aiming for happiness but I do regret that I was naive about how to do it in a smart way.
I think part of the issue is that many technical roles (note: I have never worked for FAANG so maybe different there) do not have a well-defined or sensible technical promotion route, so only managerial experience matters in terms of progression.
I have never lacked the ability to make a change in my career even when it was scary, including taking the early stage startup job at a >30% reduction in pay + they only had 2-3 months money in the bank max.
However I've found that my career progression has been stalled by each and every move. I'm back at the bottom of the ladder and those years of experience? Worth absolutely nothing.
It's felt like every move to another position for whatever reason (typically to have a more interesting, fulfilling career in my case) has absolutely reset my career every time.
I'm 39 years old and last week a 25 year old was promoted in my company above my position after he'd been there for 3 years. It's pretty galling to think that I could be in the same position as not far off a graduate engineer in my early 20's.
My experience has consistently been that only your experience at $CURRENTJOB counts for anything when it comes to progression.
By all means, seek out the best job for you, but don't be surprised if there's a cost in progression of any kind. I don't regret taking risks and aiming for happiness but I do regret that I was naive about how to do it in a smart way.
I think part of the issue is that many technical roles (note: I have never worked for FAANG so maybe different there) do not have a well-defined or sensible technical promotion route, so only managerial experience matters in terms of progression.