
Ask HN: Should I switch from software eng if I want to be an entrepreneur? - lmdol
Hi everyone. I&#x27;m a software engineer with 2.5 years of experience. I&#x27;ve built a lot of frontends, backends, and I can take care of DevOps&#x2F;infrastructure stuff.<p>I&#x27;m wondering if I should switch careers (maybe to sales&#x2F;marketing) in order to learn new skills. I don&#x27;t want to be good only in software development. The cons of switching careers would be that right now I work remotely (so I have time to spend on side projects) and I earn good money (so I can save).<p>What do you think?
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LouisSayers
My advice: If you want to be an entrepreneur, then be an entrepreneur. Don’t
“switch careers”, just be an entrepreneur.

Find and talk to people that have a problem, and come up with the simplest way
possible of offering a solution in exchange for money. Ideally the v1 solution
doesn’t involve creating any software.

Regardless of what you do you need to be able to cover food, rent etc. Whether
that is living with your parents, working as a software dev etc you need some
way to survive as you work on your business. Make sure you have that covered.

Find mentors for the areas you are lacking, get their feedback if you can, and
learn as you go.

Optimise and prioritise your life for spending as much time as you can on your
business. Only work as much as you need to survive, cut out Netflix and other
less important things (yes even if it means limiting socialising), and work on
your business. Don’t worry about automation or scale until you’ve started
making money in your business.

Make progress every day no matter how small, and if you’re serious make
adjustments when you need to but never give up.

Good luck!

~~~
uxcolumbo
Great summary.

What are your ways to find people that have a problem?

How do you avoid potential burnout if you spend as much time as you can on
your business.

~~~
LouisSayers
Great questions.

> What are your ways to find people that have a problem?

Below are some very generic ideas around how to find people. These same ways
of finding people are going to help when it comes to actually marketing and
selling products, so if you can't figure things out at this stage, it's going
to be potentially difficult later down the track.

The key idea is to go through a problem solving process asking questions such
as:

Are there places these people hang out? Forums / Facebook Groups / Events /
Subreddits etc

What complementary products or services are these people using? Can you
partner with them in order to reach your potential future clients?

When people have this problem, what do they do to try to solve it? Are there
things they might do that can identify them as potentially having this
problem?

When you can answer these questions it should become clear on how you could
potentially reach out and get in touch with these people.

> How do you avoid potential burnout?

It pays to probably emphasise "as much time _as you can_ ". _As you can_
without going insane, _as you can_ while maintaining your mental and physical
health. _As you can_ while being able to survive and pay your bills.

It pays to solve a problem that resonates with you personally so that you will
still have drive when times get tough.

Something I've been working on is cutting out as much unnecessary stuff as I
can, dropping email subscriptions, dropping commitments to things I don't care
so much about. You can tell when you're pushing your limits, you just need to
keep an eye on it and manage yourself as is appropriate for you.

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medialucky20
I personally feel, entrepreneurship is learning on the way as it demands. You
never know everything or your acuired skillsets may never be sufficient to be
successful entrepreneur. As you build your product, keep updating your
knowledge in other fields like marketing and sales. If you build really useful
product you definitely get succeed even with no prior experience on marketing
because people buy it.

Coming to making some money, you can use your strength so you don't spend too
much time or energy in making money and use rest of time on your project

~~~
kevsim
Completely agree. I’ve been in engineering and engineering management for
years, but starting my own company has forced me into a whole new skill set,
particularly around getting distribution for a SaaS product. It’s all hands on
a deck when you’re trying to get the word out about your startup

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econcon
I moved to partime work as my software job was getting boring and mind
numbing.

Yes I ended up working remotely from a suburb where I could buy more land for
my experiments and hobbies.

Now I am selling 3d printer filament that I manufacture in my garage lab:

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-
ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-
cheap-6c908bb09922)

I don't know about you but I like experimenting with processes and turning
them into something that could be sold and something which people will pay
for.

------
kanobo
I'm not a great software engineer, but I find engineering a great tool to
learn new subjects. For example I built a sheet music analyzer in the browser
to learn music theory and it forced me to really understand the subject
matter. I would suggest you use your talent in engineering to tackle a project
related to sales/marketing and trust me you will on a path to becoming an
expert. Maybe a product will come out of it?

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giantg2
You could look for a job as a 'sales engineer' or similar. You would work with
the sales team to make sales by giving demos and answering technical
questions. This would be a good way to watch sales techniques being applied
and decide on how to transition. Making friends on the sales team could build
your sales network too.

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nicholas73
In the end you have to play to your strengths and do what you enjoy. If you
think you would like a sales role and a sales driven company, then go for it.
If not, you are spinning your wheels for a chance to glean something. If it's
an avenue you would take anyway, then you have more possible positive
outcomes.

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sdwedq
You can learn sales and marketing when you have a product. In mean time, read
books on these topics.

~~~
iamricks
I would argue the opposite, you can have the best product in the world but if
you don't know how to get it in front of people who need it, who cares.

Make an MVP and try your best to sell it, if you cant sell the MVP its
probably not worth it to continue to work on the product.

It's important to validate your ideas before going head first into something
that nobody really needs/wants

------
zubairlk
After being where you are a few years ago, I'm 3-6 months into
entrepreneurship journey and can share thoughts.

Incoherent Mind dump incoming

Some people want to jump from job to product/own startup.

Personally my risk appetite is low. So I went down the job ->
consultant/freelancer -> agency route.

Next step is product but not sure when.

I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve
soft skills.

Conferences travel, trade show advice is correct.

Trying to be closer to customers advice from others is also correct.

Most advice works. But nothing beats real experience.. you can only prep so
much.

What I wish I had done better before taking the jump

\- build LinkedIn/Twitter/any following audience. \- throw myself out there
with a blog or something.

The above are two you can do right now.

Find me on LinkedIn. Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel. Happy to connect and share
more thoughts.

Thanks

~~~
troughway
>I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve
soft skills.

Since you're doing a mind dump; do you mind sharing some of the books that
stuck with you?

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matt_the_bass
Stay in tech role but figure out how to get closer to customers. Find a
position that allows you to go to a few tradeshows (whenever those happen
again). Trade shows are a great way to get some experience learning about how
to learn about customer needs.

------
jack__
I don't have much entrepreneurship experience but I'd suggest, find a problem.
Narrow it down. Find the MVP(Minimum Viable Product) and MVA (for Minimum
Viable Audience, reminds me of 1000 true fans), and start charging... Iterate
and iterate, keep track of what's working and what's not... It's like finding
an answer to a equation in MCQ, exam, where the faster way is to just put the
values in the equation to get the results instead of solving the equation from
scratch.

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krm01
Almost always, the best entrepreneurs end up being people in a particular
profession that identify a problem and build the solution. They dont choose
entrepreneurship.

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_448
There is something called "TME" i.e. Technical Marketing Engineer. Some big
companies have these roles that are a go-between the technical teams and the
prospective customers. Try to find these type of roles. Another option, as
suggested by other here, is to collaborate with the sales team to help them in
understanding technical details of the project.

~~~
nicholas73
I've done this job. Sure you do learn some sales, but you don't really
practice it. Nor does it necessarily expose you to market needs that aren't
going to be covered by your bigco.

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throw03172019
Sales is something you will learn while being in the trenches. You’ll learn
something new on each call/meeting which will help you on your next sale.

I am an engineer with no sales training and I’ve learned how to sell (good
enough) to get us to the point where we can bring in a real sales team member.

------
DougN7
IMHO there aren’t that many concepts to learn in sales and marketing that it’s
worth switching careers. Eric Sink used to (still does) had an excellent blog
series about marketing for engineers. Great place to start if it’s still out
there.

~~~
libertine
The value of marketing degrees is mostly understand de fundamentals
human/society behavior, as well as communication processes. It's boiled into
sociology, psychology, anthropology, semiotics/semiology, etc.

Technical marketing (narrowing it down to digital) is pretty dumbed down these
days, specially with setup wizards. So execution wise, any tutorial can get
you up and running.

What you're executing on, that's a different subject, and I dare to say most
people do it because it's "what marketing people do".

I tell you this as someone who was on CS and switched down the line to
Marketing and Advertising degree - was painful coming from a sciences
background, because of social sciences, yet I found both experiences great and
such path gave me quite a unique understanding/perspective of the how the
world, and how we, function/work/interact.

Plus a lot of things became extremely easier for me, while others struggled.

But I agree with you, I think OP should maybe try to find someone with
marketing background to work together with and pick his brain/learn from him.

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thomk
Don't switch. Having a skillset like software development will help any other
endeavor when the time comes. If you are good enough at coding, and you like
business, sooner or later you'll learn what you need to learn.

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calebkaiser
In general, I would say no.

You're 100% right that sales/marketing/growth skills are necessary for
building a startup, but I'd offer up two key points:

\- Your product is everything, and having a gifted engineer fully bought in to
developing the product from the jump is a huge advantage for any startup.

\- Running growth for an early stage, 0-to-1 startup is not the same as doing
it at a larger company, where you're likely to get a sales/marketing job.

All of this is just my experience, but I think the only way to learn how to
grow a new startup is to do it. The biggest advantage you can have in that
situation isn't previous experience with sales cycles or PPC advertising, it's
the ability to build a great product.

TLDR: Continue to develop as an engineer, learn the business side when you
decide to start a business.

I should also add, however, that if you're unhappy as an engineer and that
sales/marketing seems attractive, that's a different situation altogether.

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diegoperini
> ...and I earn good money (so I can save).

This is the first safety net you will be sacrificing if you do the switch.
Make sure your decisions are informed enough to make it worth the risk. Good
luck.

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mharroun
I would suggest joining a very small startup that will let you learn/observe
from watching others tackle those challenges.

There is a a lot to learn and it can shift greatly as a company grows.

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raztogt21
Easier to teach an engineer sales/marketing, than a salesman/marketer to
build. Don't switch, just learn.

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sheeshkebab
No

