
Ask HN: Software Engineer to trainer career advice - gorpgorp
Has anyone here made the move from engineer to trainer?<p>And maybe even moved back?<p>Thoughts on career impact moving to a training role, if you want to go back to engineering&#x2F;architecture in the future.
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muzani
Yeah, I became a trainer and moved back.

Side by side, training part time actually pays much less than engineering
work, but it's also a lot easier and repetitive.

Then again, half the richest people I know on the freelance tier are full time
trainers. It's a way to make about $200k/year working 20 hours/week. You'll
also get called to do training in a lot of distant areas, fully paid, so it's
nice if you want to travel.

It's actually very possible to keep a main engineering job. Nobody believes a
trainer who hasn't done a lot of work themselves ("if you can't do, teach").
So for most people, I'd recommend you do 20% of work training, 80%
engineering.

Career wise, it has been very good. As I teach for certifications, it's worth
far more than having a certification. All the last jobs I got made the
decision to hire me on training experience.

The downside is that it is physically more tiring. I can work remotely with
programming, but not training. I can't take the day off if I'm not feeling so
well. You'll also have to be wary of unpaid hours doing things like
researching new technology, making slides, iterating on improving your
material.

1 week training involves about several weeks of work to do the first time, but
you can repeat the same material in the future. Ideal are things like
certifications, bootcamps, and corporate training, where you can reuse the
same material across many different people.

~~~
jackthetab
Yeah, what he said. :-)

In addition one side effect of moving to and fro is that, as a trainer, you
have to know _everything_ about your subject (not on the first day but you
will eventually). Most people learn just enough about a topic to get by. As a
trainer, you're expected to know _everything_ about a subject so you do learn
everything[0], which means when you transition back to engineering, you have a
_lot_ of deep knowledge about your technical field(s). With that deep
knowledge, I've been able to walk into problem situations that people have
been poring over for hours and go "Here's how you fix that problem" and
suddenly everything is working again.

Also, it's a great way to learn how to present knowledge. More often than not,
technical presentations I make within my current company elicit applause.

[0] In a class I had been teaching for years, a student ask me a question
about the some command. I didn't know the answer, so I spent several hours
that night figuring it out, coming up with examples, and a small presentation
so I could explain it to them the next day.

