Next career steps after delivering major success?

Question

I'm an experienced IT professional working in various roles in the industry. About 2 years ago I was hired by Bigcorp in a specific role, head of Devops for one of their products.

In this role, I took over the management of 6 individuals. The project overall was not in good shape, struggled with instability in the infrastructure causing major outages and long deployment time, slow developer velocity due to technical infrastructure etc. Task was to help turn this around.

Fast forward 2 years, the current state of the project is much improved in this regard. This was acknowledged by my management and all the way up to top level (C-level) management, and it's also acknowledged that my contributions played a major role in this.

To achieve this, besides the technical improvements, we also changed the team setup: 3 of the old team were not a good fit for the technical roles. Despite numerous upskilling attempts, it didn't work out and 1 person left the company and 2 found another role in the company. So over the course of 2 years I worked very heavily hands-on, mainly with remaining 3 people instead of 6.

Nowadays (after the success came), management even decided to hire 2 more senior people, which was much needed. Although the 2 new people only joined recently, I can already notice how the work load for the team and in particular myself (as the so far most senior contributor) gets better distributed. In fact, I can see in 3-6 months that my day to day involvement will not be needed anymore! That would be a major success for me, if the team can actually deliver based on principles we established, but without my daily involvement.

My question is where to go from here after delivering a universally acknowledged success like this and given my hands-on involvement won't be needed soon anymore? I talked to my manager how he sees it and I got a relatively general answer that there is always room for me in the org and I shall come up with a plan what I want do to from next year onwards. But all the spots I'd be interested in (say, Software Architecture) are already taken by senior colleagues, so I find it difficult to force myself in there.

I feel like I reached the end of the road in this project - 2 years go they needed to have some specific skills for a while, but maybe that's it now. I actually like the company though and can imagine to stay, but I don't want to have some role that's actually not really a fulltime role anymore. Anyone has experienced a similar situation?

Answer 1

I've worked and automated myself out of a couple of jobs. At least to the point where I was treading water easily rather than under pressure.

I think it depends on the stage of your career and ambition. Treading water in safety is paradise for many but it's not challenging enough for others. Right now with the end of my career in sight, treading water looks good. A decade ago it was inconceivable.

So analyse your career and temperament (did you enjoy those two years?) and if you decide you want more of the same, search for and get it. Usually this is easiest done outside your company, but also look for interesting options within it.