I'm not doing shit now. I gave up a few years ago. I was an acting senior dev for a year and a tech lead for another. I had great reviews and was performing beyond my role. I was involved in stretch assignments/groups too. I even had a tech lead from another team I was working with send an email to my manager praising my help. Then that project was outsourced and I helped bring the sourcing team to speed.
I went to another area of the company and volunteered to be a security champion (above my level at the time) which turns out I was the only one for 6 teams across 2 departments. I had awesome reviews from the people I worked with on this. I volunteered for other assignments too and "won" (asshole manager would give teo people a task that one person could do to see who would step up). I was a regular attendee and contributor at the tech lead and manager meetings (like a design/architecture/SoS for the app). When I was leaving that team one of the tech leads asked what role I was taking on a different team. I told them it was a midlevel dev. They then asked why I was taking a demotion - they thought I was a senior dev the whole time. Maybe just to be polite, but a few others echoed the same sentiment at hearing that.
The security and tech lead years were a lot more than being in the code. In fact, I was focused on a lot of PM related stuff during the tech lead year and feel my lack of coding actually hurt me in the future because I was no longer coding on a daily basis but doing stuff like coordinating, troubleshooting, etc. So then I wasn't as fast at actual coding.
I went to another area of the company and volunteered to be a security champion (above my level at the time) which turns out I was the only one for 6 teams across 2 departments. I had awesome reviews from the people I worked with on this. I volunteered for other assignments too and "won" (asshole manager would give teo people a task that one person could do to see who would step up). I was a regular attendee and contributor at the tech lead and manager meetings (like a design/architecture/SoS for the app). When I was leaving that team one of the tech leads asked what role I was taking on a different team. I told them it was a midlevel dev. They then asked why I was taking a demotion - they thought I was a senior dev the whole time. Maybe just to be polite, but a few others echoed the same sentiment at hearing that.
The security and tech lead years were a lot more than being in the code. In fact, I was focused on a lot of PM related stuff during the tech lead year and feel my lack of coding actually hurt me in the future because I was no longer coding on a daily basis but doing stuff like coordinating, troubleshooting, etc. So then I wasn't as fast at actual coding.