I got a question at an interview today asking what type of developer do you want to be and what's your long term technical goal. Right now I'm a senior software engineer at a pretty well known solid mid sized tech company. I work across the stack but I really don't know what type of developer I want to be.

Which way technically are you directing your engineering career? How and why did you decide this is the type of work you want to do?

Preparing for OSCP right now because just developing got boring after ~10 years for me(web dev full stack including ruby, php, java).
Ordered a shit ton of books about pentesting, just started OSCP course and told my company to either pay everything and benefit or lose me. They happily agreed.

@ExGetMessage thanks! How'd you decide you wanted to get into pentesting instead of saying platform engineering and architecturing scalable systems in a larger company or joining a new company to develop from an earlier stage or something else?

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That’s a smart question. You should work there.

Got bored and felt incredibly stuck and burned out after close to six years as a full stack dev at a consulting firm. I realized I needed to grow since this was obviously killing me, but in which which direction?

So I took a leave of absence to figure things out. I looked back at the times I hated the most, the things that wore me down. I reflected on that. Then I looked at what energized me, the times I was proud and excited, all the times I felt I grew.

I realized two major things:
1. I want to be a part of the team that owns the product, not a mistrusted consultant - the outsider.
2. I like front end. I also think design and layout is fun and I find UX really interesting.

So, no more consulting and I want to do front end.

I quit my job when my leave was over, after first pitching a new role as a tech lead and initially getting a green light (I also love learning, teaching, and helping). They missed a great opportunity.

Anyways, I'm starting a new job this Monday where - by the looks of it - I'll get to use my full stack knowledge while simultaneously being responsible for front end stuff, they got some big project coming up and they think I'm just what they are looking for. I'll be doing technical work but also making sure things don't look and feel like a programmer designed it.

I'm optimistic, these next few months have the potential to be great. I'm not experienced in either design or UX but I'm taking the plunge and we'll see how things pan out!

@thinkbonobo I’ve already built larger projects using aws(did the solutions architect certification). I work for a pretty big company and I’m pretty happy there, would never go back to working in a startup.
Developing only just got boring and pentesting/security needs a lot more skills and knowledge, I just need a new challenge.