I've been at my current company for just over 9 years. It seems a long time to be in a single place, but when I think about it, it hasn't really been the same job. And I think that's why I've managed to stay there for so long.

I started as an iOS Developer, then I was dabbling in some SpringBoot services, and also a bit of Terraform. That was about 2 to 3 years. Then the company was acquired, so we had a year of picking up a new bespoke tech stack, middleware, and ways of working. It started off with some back office functions as a way to understand the new system, then I moved to third-party integrations, and now for the past 3 years or so I've been focusing on card issuance, card processing, and the 3DS process. I think to an extent, when you change the domain you work in, it can feel like a new job. It helps to stop the job feeling boring.

Then there's the progress side of it. While I started as an "iOS Developer", it was my first professional role, so I was practically a junior. So I had the normal progression of moving up to becoming a senior engineer, and then in the past 2 years I've had the opportunity to become a team lead. That started as just taking more of a role in the architectural design process, helping with planning projects, and also being more of a lead in the team.

I'm now at a point where I manage 2 junior engineers, and one senior engineer, with another junior on the way. It's definitely going to force me to learn new skills, probably more coaching and delegation, but I expect it will be interesting.

All this isn't to say, "wow look at me, my career is so interesting", more of a reminder to myself and maybe others, that staying a long time in the same company doesn't always mean doing the same thing, and if you are finding your role boring, there are more options than just leaving and finding a new company.

For example I had someone that joined just after me, and for the first few years they had a similar progression, from mobile to backend, then moving to a new domain. But they were a Senior engineer from the beginning, and had no interest in learning new domains, or progressing in their role, either to become a team lead, or just progress as an individual contributor. After a while they sort of regressed into a mid-level engineer. Job satisfaction wasn't great in their latter years.

Before they eventually left, they were questioning me about how I've managed to stay for so long. In a way you could think that odd, seeing as we were there practically the same amount of time. But the question was more about how I've managed to stay for so long and managed to both stay interested in the job, and cope with the stress of keeping up with high demands of delivering projects regularly, supporting existing projects, and having the time to also learn. My answer was along the lines of "well I haven't exactly been doing the same thing for 9 years." Which is the truth, but not the whole truth. I could tell that they felt as if we were having totally different experiences.

The truth is that I haven't been doing the same thing for 9 years. As I described at the start, I never went longer than 18 months or so without a change to my role, my level, the domain I worked in, or generally the type of work I was doing day-to-day. But it's not something that magically happened to me and not to them, and it wasn't about skills or simply who was better.

It's comparable to the phrase "make your own luck", which is essentially taking actions to increase your chances of success, with a key behaviour being open to new opportunities. When I was presented with the chance of moving to a new domain, learning a new language for a short project, or a new skill that had to be learned and shared with the team, I was always curious enough to put myself forward. That was replicated across the team, in both similar and different scenarios. Whereas the person I'm talking about never tried anything new, was never interested in any progression, never wanted to put any time into learning. A near zero level of curiosity. Which, to be honest, I felt was odd for a software engineer. Isn't that why we tinker with computers?