{"id":900624,"date":"2026-08-20T10:18:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T17:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/?p=900624"},"modified":"2026-08-20T12:30:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:30:56","slug":"in-tech-career-options-narrow-every-year-manage-your-career-deliberately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/20\/in-tech-career-options-narrow-every-year-manage-your-career-deliberately\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Career Funnel: In tech, career options narrow every year. Manage your career deliberately."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><br><strong>In tech, career options narrow every year. Manage your career deliberately.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"577\" src=\"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-1024x577.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-900625\" srcset=\"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-1024x577.png 1024w, https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-768x433.png 768w, https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-1536x866.png 1536w, https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-2048x1155.png 2048w, https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-at-10.12.18-AM-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s important to carefully manage your career in the technology industry. This is a controversial post, but I want to put it out there in the spirit of helping:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>At some of the fast-growing unicorns, ageism starts at age 30. It gets worse as you get older.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As you approach 40, there are only a few roles people can gracefully age into. To make the pressure worse, there are fewer roles toward the top of the organization.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some of the roles I think have longevity: Serial Founder, Big tech Executive, Top 10% Subject Matter Expert, or Investor.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The challenge with my above bullet, there\u2019s very few of these roles, options narrow as you get older. Tech careers are like an (opportunity) funnel, wider at the beginning of your career and it becomes more narrow with each passing year.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Unlike other industries, staying in a role 2 to 4 years is considered ideal. Under two years shows you might lack commitment.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you stay at a company too long (10 years or more?), recruiters and hiring managers may think you&#8217;re not hungry enough, unless you&#8217;ve catapulted your career internally into the executive suite (1% chance).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The other mistake I see people make: they get so engrossed in the role that they forget to look at broader market trends, network, go to industry events, and rekindle relationships. Then they find themselves in a difficult position, lacking resources or the right connections.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I consistently have observed people that did not follow the best practices listed above struggle to get new roles and are sometimes off the market for up to two years or much much longer.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I believe, If you are working in the S.F. Bay Area, it&#8217;s important to eventually get a real estate asset (ideally a SFR), or you will be priced out as the rent has tripled in the last 3 decades.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Career longevity is challenging in the tech industry, but it&#8217;s filled with innovation, a chance to make a big difference, and frankly, the opportunity to amass incredible wealth that no other industry really can provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are 100% my ideas, I use Wispr Flow for dictation and then Claude for a fast edit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also posted about this on <a href=\"https:\/\/lnkd.in\/p\/gZQ9gPZG\">LinkedIn if you wanted to leave some comments.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In tech, career options narrow every year. Manage your career deliberately. It&rsquo;s important to carefully manage your career in the technology industry. This is a controversial post, but I want to put it out there in the spirit of helping: Career longevity is challenging in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/20\/in-tech-career-options-narrow-every-year-manage-your-career-deliberately\/\" class=\"more-link\"><span>Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tech Career Funnel: In tech, career options narrow every year. Manage your career deliberately.<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":900625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900627,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900624\/revisions\/900627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}