The fear that the demands of you will rise after successfully finishing the current job is irrational. You will still have some autonomy to make an informed decision later. Don't fret about it now.
I've been in that position with bad management where finishing a project quickly would get you a look like, "Is that all you're going to do? I thought I figured out how to make you productive, but I guess I have to try again." With the wrong kind of management, finishing a project puts a cap on the credit you get from it, and finishing a project quickly can create an impression that you're getting nothing done. A three-week project is worth 50% more than a two-week project, a system that requires constant patching in production gives you a constant flow of achievement, etc. Good management with strong technical chops will remember the systems you built that are humming along problem-free. Good management with strong technical chops will not base their estimations of difficulty entirely on how long you take to build something and how much trouble it is afterwards. Good management will appreciate you not adding functionality of uncertain value to the codebase. Bad management can make engineers reluctant to wrap up work too quickly lest their work be perceived as lower quality than it should be, and engineers can always find ways to gild the lily if that's what management demands. Especially coming up towards review time, if you have no chance to add an extra line to your accomplishments after completing your current project, it is tempting to find a way to add an extra week to inflate your achievement —- if that's how your management thinks about it.
The opposite problem (with the same kind of bad management) happens when they ask you to incrementally add more and more functionality to a system, but because they keeping using the same label for each additional increment of work, they end up feeling that you took forever to complete a single simple project. The worst form of this is when they don't let you deploy the system. A few years back I spent the bulk of two quarters adding new capabilities to a system that was never used. (It was deployed in production, but for business reasons related to the customer it was built for, it was idle. Another maddening factor was that I was building on a codebase that had been half-completed by two developers who were writing Scala for the first time, but that's a different story.) Good management would apologize for wasting my time. Bad management blamed me despite their ongoing direction to continue the work. (When you hear someone say they want developers who are "entrepreneurial," that means you're supposed to go outside the process to talk to product teams, because management is going to get the business priorities wrong, and it's your ass on the line when they do.)
Bottom line, when you find a great manager, do your sanity a favor and stick with them as long as you can! There's enough wrong with you already without your manager compounding the problem.
If anyone is in Norway and is good with Java or C# I might be able to get you an interview somewhere that has good managers. Email should be in my profile.
Probably not. I didn't think an engineer here can expect cross 100k€ without either 1.) running his own consulting business well or 2.) having huge performance bonus and perform well or 3.) cross into management or sales.
Do you know many engineers in Norway who earn > 100k €? I was not able to figure out from your profile if you know Norway or not.
I've been in that position with bad management where finishing a project quickly would get you a look like, "Is that all you're going to do? I thought I figured out how to make you productive, but I guess I have to try again." With the wrong kind of management, finishing a project puts a cap on the credit you get from it, and finishing a project quickly can create an impression that you're getting nothing done. A three-week project is worth 50% more than a two-week project, a system that requires constant patching in production gives you a constant flow of achievement, etc. Good management with strong technical chops will remember the systems you built that are humming along problem-free. Good management with strong technical chops will not base their estimations of difficulty entirely on how long you take to build something and how much trouble it is afterwards. Good management will appreciate you not adding functionality of uncertain value to the codebase. Bad management can make engineers reluctant to wrap up work too quickly lest their work be perceived as lower quality than it should be, and engineers can always find ways to gild the lily if that's what management demands. Especially coming up towards review time, if you have no chance to add an extra line to your accomplishments after completing your current project, it is tempting to find a way to add an extra week to inflate your achievement —- if that's how your management thinks about it.
The opposite problem (with the same kind of bad management) happens when they ask you to incrementally add more and more functionality to a system, but because they keeping using the same label for each additional increment of work, they end up feeling that you took forever to complete a single simple project. The worst form of this is when they don't let you deploy the system. A few years back I spent the bulk of two quarters adding new capabilities to a system that was never used. (It was deployed in production, but for business reasons related to the customer it was built for, it was idle. Another maddening factor was that I was building on a codebase that had been half-completed by two developers who were writing Scala for the first time, but that's a different story.) Good management would apologize for wasting my time. Bad management blamed me despite their ongoing direction to continue the work. (When you hear someone say they want developers who are "entrepreneurial," that means you're supposed to go outside the process to talk to product teams, because management is going to get the business priorities wrong, and it's your ass on the line when they do.)
Bottom line, when you find a great manager, do your sanity a favor and stick with them as long as you can! There's enough wrong with you already without your manager compounding the problem.