
Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to? - novask
I&#x27;ve had 7 development jobs and I haven&#x27;t enjoyed any of them. I&#x27;m not that great at it and I can&#x27;t handle the stress any more.<p>I need an exit plan but I have no idea where to go. I want a job that&#x27;s about half as technically demanding as fullstack-wear-every-hat jobs at $70k-80k.<p>Could I get some ideas?
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non-entity
I've wanted to leave the industry for a while for various different reasons
and it seems the golden handcuffs are very real. The only realistic options
seem to be moving towards adjacent business roles (various management,
business, or customer facing roles mostly) as you'll see these are pretty much
the majority of suggestions you'll see on these threads. Occasionally you'll
see the person who left for a trade or something completely unrelated to tech,
but ofc with those you risk starting from the bottom again and not making
anywhere near your target salary. IT roles can make around what you want, but
i imagine you'd be unable to start in roles paying that without experience.

Another option, which may be unpopular is to find a less demanding job. No one
wants to hear it, but theres a plenty of development jobs, especially in non-
tech companies where you don't have to be that good, you won't do much outside
the standard 9-5 hours, pay what you want,and you can coast at for a very long
time as long as you aren't a total incompetent. These ofc come with their own
issues, but it might be the most realistic option you have, although you
haven't gone into much details as to why you want out.

~~~
iKevinShah
> Another option, which may be unpopular is to find a less demanding job. No
> one wants to hear it, but theres a plenty of development jobs, especially in
> non-tech companies where you don't have to be that good, you won't do much
> outside the standard 9-5 hours, pay what you want,and you can coast at for a
> very long time as long as you aren't a total incompetent. These ofc come
> with their own issues, but it might be the most realistic option you have,
> although you haven't gone into much details as to why you want out.

What / Where are these companies and where could one look for such?

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burntoutfire
Government, banks, big non-tech corporations in general. In particular, my
observation is that anything "data" related (big data, data warehousing, any
kinds of report building) can be technically easy (certainly easier than a
CRUD app - also easier to maintain, since it's typically not running 24/7),
well paying and populated by not that strong people. These data applications
often have a lot of value to the business and hence they're willing to pay for
smart people who will swallow their pride, handle the boredom and just get the
job done.

Bear in mind that by being a borderline slacker you exclude yourself from any
promotions and from doing more "interesting" work, but in many places you'll
still get paid. Also, tech moves fast and, if you don't learn, you'll have
problems 10-20 years down the road.

~~~
throw51319
Do you think the 10-20 years down the road thing is just because from the late
90s until now there's been a huge change of paradigms, etc...

But now things are bit more established. If you're a good Java 8+ engineer
who's worked on complicated large systems... do you really think that will go
away?

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throooooway1
Field Application Engineer or Solutions Architect are excellent transitional
roles to other things. You get to work with customers, a variety of customers.
Then you arent stuck being with the one customer (whatever product company you
are working for). Variety is good.

If you work with a range of external customers, opens more avenues for escape,
also. Pure development is pretty tedious, you are treated like a cog.

Not enough people talk about how much software engineering actually can suck.
I couldn't stand having a "SCRUM MASTER" breathing down my neck, demanding
timelines for every bug, dragging and dropping tasks on me.

~~~
iKevinShah
Please do not take this the wrong way, I am genuinely curious, apart from
constant learning / re-learning, what are the other things which people don't
talk about when talking about Software Engineering (developer role).

I have worked as a consultant, sysadmin and developer but I was a fresher
(when developer) at a $BIG_FIRM and everything had a process (Requirement
gathering, analysis, etc. etc.) so it was not that Agile. curious to see how
it is right now.

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mitchellst
My advice would be to think about what you _do_ want out of work. You can
straightforwardly make that money as a math teacher, a welder, a healthcare
administrator, a banker. All of those are “less technically demanding.” Hell,
you can make more than that as a truck driver, if you can handle hazardous
materials. Some of those options may be attractive to you, others not. Ask
yourself why you feel the way you do about each, and work from there.

Another thing, though. Depending on how old you are, 7 dev jobs is a lot of
dev jobs. You should consider whether you think the technical demands are
really what’s making you unhappy. Because that many changes, depending on
career length, suggests maybe you’ve given up too easily on a few. A
successful career change requires both optimism and commitment. So keep your
chin up, zero in on what you do want, and consider whether leaning into your
current career and doubling down on your commitments could get it for you.
Otherwise, best of luck. Go pick up a welding torch/green visor/trucker hat.

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adventured
Specialized consulting, narrow your focus. Take an aspect you enjoy and are
decent at, narrow in on that and then work for yourself. It's difficult to get
started, highly rewarding as you get rolling, and can eventually pay very
well. Part of the point would be to stop wearing every hat, pick the hat/s you
want to wear and do those. You don't have to be great/elite at the hat you
choose, you just have to be good enough.

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viburnum
It was React/GraphQL/Apollo that broke me. I liked it better when just knowing
ruby and sql were good enough. Those jobs are still out there but they’re
getting harder to find.

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untog
That pushed me away from web dev but not dev in general. Got into native
mobile dev, now playing around with Rust. Wondering if I’ll end up full
circling back to the web with WASM.

Anyway, point is, there’s plenty of variety out there!

~~~
iKevinShah
> Anyway, point is, there’s plenty of variety out there!

Where can we find those? Almost every job posting ever needs 6-7 different
technologies with multi-year experience in almost every.

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nanonic
Are you someone that gets energy from working with people or working solo on
tasks? I used to have a similar challenge, I stopped enjoying my technically
demanding job until I realized that there was just as much value to be had
from my time share my experience and skills with other geeks in my field. It
made what I do enjoyable again and also got me to accept my value as a story-
teller and education when I had convinced myself that I probably would only
ever have my technical abilities to lend to my job.

~~~
novask
Working solo. If I could maintain some servers or gear in a remote location or
something, that would be perfect.

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dave_sid
What about moving into sys admin / devops?

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novask
Azure would compliment my previous work with MS technologies. I think AWS is
more popular though so might be more amenable to a lateral move. But I'm sure
Azure has their own path as well?

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auslegung
Technical project manager, product manager, product owner. Engineering
manager. Scrum Master. As long as you enjoy leadership any of these options
should do quite well. Being technically-savvy is usually an asset in these
positions, and you should be able to make good money.

~~~
giantg2
What if you can't tolerate the BS that comes with those positions?

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ilikeatari
That is an interesting point of view. What if you choose to be no BS project
manager or no BS product manager etc. Unless you mean the BS that comes from
dealing day to day with humanity?

~~~
giantg2
I mean in those positions you deal with BS from both directions - upper
management and/or the business as well as the personnel under your command.

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BusterStatus
I work as an application engineer for a SaaS company and I do a lot of
troubleshooting up and down the stack, but I do not write code except for some
console apps or scripts. I do a lot of DB work, some DevOps stuff like cert
renewals, custom reports, write bug tickets, etc. The job is not that
stressful and I earn close to what you are looking for in terms of salary. I
actually expect the amount to be in that range in the near to mid term after
some restructuring of our department and reevaluation of the position. They
are actually going to be hiring in Q4 for two similar positions, possibly
remote. Please let me know if you have any interest!

~~~
jbpnoy6fifty
I have a similar job as a technical support engineer, which requires a lot of
DB querying as well. I've optimized a lot of my job by investigating the data
through jupyter notebook, which is typically a data analyst / data scientist
tool, but works really well for troubleshooting impact and behaviors through
data. I highly recommend trying it out, it's made my work more seamless.
Learned the job twice as fast as anyone of my other my peers; commended by my
boss, in how surprised she found learned the material; seems to be a
reoccurring event for my last three jobs.

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dglass
How about a technical support role? You still get to solve technical problems
and you're helping/interacting with customers directly without being
responsible for shipping new features or fixing production downtime incidents.

~~~
godelmachine
I am in tech support and I am expected to fix production downtime incidents.

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toomuchtodo
That’s SRE work with garbage pay. Seek employment elsewhere when able!

~~~
godelmachine
What makes you think it’s garbage pay?

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toomuchtodo
In my experience, there is a large delta in pay between tech support and SRE
roles (~$45k-$60k/year). Tech support pay is fine if you're just doing tech
support.

~~~
godelmachine
I am referring to an enterprise SaaS company based outta Houston. Technical
Support Analyst > 4 years exp makes around $80k-$90k/ year.

Another question if you don’t mind -

>> _Seek employment elsewhere when able!_

Were you talking about some specific roles? Like software developer or
something?

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you’re capable of resolving production issues, performing technical
support, and have at least some proficiency with software development, I would
recommend exploring SRE or software engineering roles to capture more
compensation (based on the skill level you’ve communicated in thread).

~~~
godelmachine
Will do, but may I ask for some examples of jobs I should be looking for. I
get it you are saying SRE and software engineering but some links giving a
fair idea about position and salary ballpark would be gratefully reciprocated.

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tomcam
I wonder if a government job slinging PHP would do the trick? Pension too.

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joana035
Take a look at this video:
[https://youtu.be/G2SqqjRn_c0](https://youtu.be/G2SqqjRn_c0)

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alexfromapex
Project manager. Lots of companies need a PM that has some of the technical
knowledge you do to help make decisions on processes.

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giantg2
I'm in the same position. Management wants a full stack / multiple stack
midlevel dev for like $85k per year. I think the expectations are ridiculous,
especially since they wont train.

I loved the first 3 years of my career, but then the company showed its
politics and started to screw me over... and over...

I'm upvoting and hoping to see some good responses.

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aryamaan
Maybe try PM role? You have been working for long, you might have an idea how
things work in shop.

Here, the most of cognitive load of will be talking to people, thinking how to
design product and getting work done.

Okay, this might seem a lot at the moment but this is something to think in
your position.

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tboyd47
What about it stresses you out? Is there anything about the job that you like?

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ralphc
Look into Salesforce. You might do well as a Salesforce administrator. You can
set up your own small "org" and do their training, Trailhead, try some
administrative training and see if it's up your alley.

~~~
collyw
I had to integrate an companies booking software with Salesforce via API. It's
dreadful software from that perspective

~~~
ralphc
From the outside, developing, it can be. But running and configuring the
platform from the inside pays well and has several "low-code" way of doing
reasonably scoped tasks.

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alexmingoia
If the problem is you really dislike it, then I’d start with what you do like
and go from there.

If the problem is stress, consider discovering the source of that stress and
if there’s a solution besides leaving the industry.

~~~
matfil
(Not the OP, but this question does resonate...)

It's a good set of questions to keep in mind, but I'm not sure it always leads
to a feasible course of action.

What _I_ like is working independently on a gnarly problem for some extended
period of time. That explicitly includes spending the odd day "spinning my
wheels" without being immediately being pushed to ask others for help --
because bumping my head against stuff while working alone is the way I like to
learn stuff.

This way of working seems to be under fairly vigorous attack in favour of
"everything needs a team", and I'm not quite sure how to work around that.
Just pointing out that I'm getting things done does not seem to be sufficient.

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muzani
What about the typical career moves - design, product, sales, or management?

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b212
How about relocating or going fully remote with company from overseas? I feel
like US market is 10x more demanding than European.

~~~
throw51319
What do you mean by more demanding?

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gardenfelder
Consider specializing on some technology (e.g. Javascript) and focus on that.

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1ba9115454
Management.

