Why Philip Su Wanted a Demotion
2026-09-22
Philip Su found relief below the peak. The former Meta and OpenAI engineer said promotions gradually stopped feeling like prizes because each rise brought larger expectations, wider responsibility, and exhaustion. That sounds backwards. Yet his wish for a demotion exposes a familiar fault in technology careers: status can expand faster than a person's appetite for the job itself.
The ladder is often badly designed. You get rewarded for doing work you like, then find your calendar consumed by coordination, hiring, reviews, and decisions made far from the code. The title rises. Your hands leave the craft. For an engineer, that trade can feel less like growth than a swap of feedback loops: fewer direct results, more organizational drag.
Su's account cuts through a lazy assumption: that ambition always points upward. You may want influence, pay, and recognition, but you may also want to build, solve, and finish a day without carrying everyone else's unresolved problems. That is not failure. It is preference. If you were offered the bigger title but lost the work that made you care, would you take it?
Loading...
