Riff: Don't become an Engineering Manager
There is an assumption baked into manager (Anton) piece: take a bad job now because it leads to a good one in the future.
I’m not stranger to the concept of sacrifice today for the good of tomorrow, I would say it drove and drives a lot of the choices I’ve made in my life, and yet, taking a job you hate, a job that is not good for you, a job that is plain bad, because in the future you could get something you want, is such a boneheaded decision that I can’t sit on my hands.
Would you date someone bad for you so that in the future you might date someone that is good for you? No? Then why the hell are you doing it with work?
Money
More money is always nice, but unless we are talking about survival levels, then chose the job that gives you meaning and satisfaction, you don’t need a new TV/phone/car/clothes/holidays, you need to wake up in the morning without questioning what you are doing with your life and why you are stuck living a life you hate.
Meaning comes from doing
Life is experienced time, that’s it, you have lived when you have experienced time passing (that’s why we lock people up as ultimate punishement bar death btw) and your experience of time passing is, for the most part, work!, so you better chose wisely, or you will quite literally destroy your life.