How to Write Less Code for More Money

The post says mid-career tech workers can avoid stagnation by moving into roles that pay more and often require fewer lines of code. It points to paths that reward planning, tooling, coordination, and specialized experience instead of repetitive feature work.

Reading notes

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• Proper QA and test automation can mean building end-to-end test suites, UI tests, and performance fixes that require planning, research, and understanding the codebase.
• DevOps can reduce overhead by setting up build pipelines, improving deployments, and removing problems like bad production configuration files.
• Specialized consulting can work well when it is tied to a real product and a real team, especially when prior long-term maintenance gives practical expertise.
• Good people managers know how coding work happens and can absorb overhead, explain technical blockers, and protect the team from bad management.
• The “Bouncer” role is a hybrid path where a person moves across tasks, helps teams, teaches newcomers, and refactors or optimizes when needed.
• The post frames these paths as ways to find steadier work, more satisfaction, and better pay without burning out.