Help me choose: Senior SWE vs Reliability Engineer

Thanks a lot Alex! Your point about developing higher-order skills really resonates. During my interview with one of the architects for the Problem Management role, he described it as "SRE without the E" - which really crystallized my concern about the technical depth.

My experience in current and similar post incident response positions has been that coding opportunities were mainly limited to bug fixes and tooling. The challenge I faced was being completely out of the loop with actual development - you're investigating systems after they break rather than building them, so it was a bit hard to develop that deeper technical understanding.

I am 16 years into my career, and I'm viewing this Senior SWE opportunity as potentially my last realistic chance to pivot into hands-on development. The Problem Management role pays about 40% more, which is significant, but I'm wondering if I'm trading short-term financial gain for long-term career flexibility.

A few questions for you:

• Have you seen people successfully transition from problem management/incident response roles back into development later in their careers?
• Do you think the communication and negotiation skills from Option B might actually be more resilient than coding skills?
• For someone at my career stage, would you prioritize the financial security of Option B or the skill diversification of Option A?

I'm genuinely torn because Option B feels like the logical next step in my current trajectory, but Option A feels like it could open doors I might not have again.

(Edit: I used some AI to polish my language and make it clear)

Have you seen people successfully transition from problem management/incident response roles back into development later in their careers?

To be 100% honest, I feel like that former category is pretty rare. Maybe I've seen a bunch of engineers who had those roles, but it was labeled differently. But overall, I have seen successful pivots from coding-lite roles to coding-heavy ones.

Do you think the communication and negotiation skills from Option B might actually be more resilient than coding skills?

100% yes, but the awkward part is that you sort of need both. As I talk about in my promotion courses, especially L4 -> L5, coding is the foundation of every top engineer's career. The softer skills then go on top of that.

Coding skills are your ticket to entry. The more fundamental skills are what allow you to stay and thrive. There's a nuance here.

For someone at my career stage, would you prioritize the financial security of Option B or the skill diversification of Option A?

It's really tough. For most people with so much experience like you, I tell them to double down on what they already know and have carved out a niche in the market for. This is especially true for folks with families where they can't expend as much mental energy pivoting and learning new domains from scratch (it's a huge cognitive task).

However, I don't know what the resiliency of your current role's job market is. But to play Devil's Advocate again, AI is decreasing the value of coding skills. The present-day tech landscape is just a big ball of confusion right now.

Thanks for the thoughtful response Alex. Your point about coding being the foundational "ticket to entry" really helps clarify my thinking.

I've been preparing for this transition for the past 2 years by studying system design concepts and practicing algorithmic questions, because I knew the opportunity window wouldn't stay open forever as I accumulate more non-dev experience.

I think I'm leaning toward taking the dev role and enhancing my higher-order skills by finding opportunities to use them in cross-functional settings.

Thanks for helping me think through this!