I transitioned from product work to platform/dev productivity work (think frameworks, internal tools) surrounding the web stack, which is a form of extreme specialization. It effectively means I'm not directly dealing w/ useEffect stale closure sort of crap, but instead I work w/ things like supply chain management, CI flakiness and build optimization, which involves developing a skillset that doesn't really fit into the "jack of all trades, master or one" narrative; it's more like developing depth in a wide array of obscure things plus a large dose navigating "working groups" to complement a workforce composed largely of React experts.

Career growth is currently primarily coming from increased internal impact at a large company. In terms of future career growth, most of the recruiter spam I get for Senior/Staff/Principal roles is below my current pay grade, so I expect that further growth will require shifting more and more into director track.

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