title: Happy developer
lang: en

> The main thing to remember as a senior developer struggling with having no role to aim for is to aim beyond that role. Your company invested a lot in you and relies on your judgement when it comes to technical delivery. It also relies on you to lead a team and keep them happy. You also deserve to be happy and to make that happen you can’t keep things as they are.
>
> One of the biggest mistakes we make as technical people is to make ourselves irreplaceable. We put a lot of effort into our technical products and it is hard to let go. Often we stay in a position even after all the joy went out of it and we don’t believe in the company any longer. Because we want to finish that project and see it go out of the door.
> 
> <cite>*[What comes after senior developer?](https://christianheilmann.com/2018/04/02/what-comes-after-senior-developer/)* ([cache](/david/cache/29d865f220f4d4b4eda8fb41106de62b/))</cite>

Terrific article from Chris about what comes next when you consider yourself a [senior developer](/david/blog/2016/senior-developer/). This is something I think about quite a lot these days trying to assemble a consistent [professional identity](http://larlet.com/) (more on that later, feedback welcome). I  also stumbled upon [The Webflow Tech Lead Guide](https://github.com/webflow/leadership/blob/master/tech_lead.md) ([cache](/david/cache/94698ca94c727a3688d38b8d3652eb90/)) recently which is inspirational about the role I want to build given the experience I accumulated.