My manager keeps pressuring me to go for a promotion, but the payoff is terrible. I was passed over last year, so now I feel good about my decision to resist. It's basically endless paperwork and corporate politics for a tiny bump in salary. I'd much rather continue writing code remotely, do my job, and stay under the radar. Is it okay to resist the push to move up?

How are your daily standups run? Yeah, some people throw in blockers here and there but it’s really just people talking about how productive they were the day before by listing their accomplishments. It’s not the time or place for that. I think stand ups should just be revised to “is there anything stopping you from during your work that the entire team needs to know”?

Ageism sucks. And I see older folks constantly subjected to it. But let's be clear, ageism isn't *just* towards older people. A common occurance is older people trying to pull rank on younger developers, even when the younger devs are clearly more qualified. It seems the more meaningful distinction is not age or years of experience - but whether or not you care about your work, and have continued to refine your taste and explore new ideas. Maybe we need a new metric: "Years of new experience".

Is anyone else nervous about getting pushed out of tech as you age? I love software engineering and can’t imagine doing anything else, but I worry the industry won't love me back in ten or fifteen years. Is this a realistic fear, or is it just standard mid-career anxiety?

What’s your take on oversized Pull Requests? Knowing that it’s the norm of AI assisted development, automation hasn’t still caught up with humans reviewing the changes.. I would and still reject overly large PRs for reasons outside of testing and fixtures.