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Ask HN: How to find a new role as a very senior software engineer?
23 points by TheMog on Jan 18, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 30 comments
Those HN readers who have been software engineers for multiple decades, still enjoy the work and decided the management track is not for them, how and where do you actually look for new roles if and when the time comes to move on?

I don't necessarily want to work for one of the FAANGs, even though they do seem to occasionally look for this type of engineer. This is partially due to location, plus I've done the megacorp thing and am not a huge fan. While I get fairly regular inquiries from recruiters, those don't seem to be roles that are a good match for my experience and skillset. A lot of them seem to equate "senior developer" with ~5-8 years experience and can't get their head around someone who's in his third decade as a professional developer.

Is there a job board for grizzled software veterans out there somewhere that I don't know about, or is it 100% network at this point?



You need to think about the following to really define what you are looking for:

- What percentage of time do you want to spend coding vs doing other things like helping/guiding other devs, project management etc. 80 20 ? 60 40 ?

- Are you willing to come in to a team/company and use what they have versus redoing everything ? Do you have a preference for language/stack ? If there is a team that does PHP, would you be interested or only want to work in <latest_hottest_language> ?

- How do you expect to grow further as an Individual Contributor ? What could you do to make yourself more valuable to the company/team every 12 months ? I ask because you want to grow further and you have to define what that is exactly. One of the reasons senior devs start managing because that is easier to measure in terms of growth and impact. If you are a great developer, how can you keep justifying growth (salary etc) every year ? What should be metrics for it ?


What's not clear to me from your text: what kind of role are you looking for? I.e. what are you missing from the "senior developer" roles?


That's a very good question, and not necessarily something I find easy to explain concisely. Let me try anyway :). Note, some of the bad impressions may come from the usual clued up recruiters who are trolling LinkedIn for keywords and then crank up the spam.

So what I expect from a role that's commensurate with my experience (trying to avoid "senior" as that's usually a pigeonhole):

- You tell me what you need to have built, I'll figure out the how (architecture, design, technology) and when it'll be done, based on the usual cost/velocity/quality constraints.

- I'll work with, guide, mentor and lead a team of developers if the size of the project needs it. However, I'm technical first, so I'm not interested in roles that are management only. This generally seems to be the crux of the matter - not a lot of companies seem to have these roles.

- If you give me the responsibility to deliver X, I also need to have the authority to make it happen. Don't ask me how I figured that out ;)

I can usually find roles that fit two out of three, but I don't seem to be able to find something that matches all three. My current role probably rates as 2 1/4 out of three, and is definitely a good fit, but with very limited growth potential (aka I'm close taking as far as I can take it).


Points 1 and 2 describe the jobs of most Staff Engineers (or higher) at large tech companies like FAANG that I know. Smaller companies rarely have these because, perhaps unsurprisingly, small shops rarely have big enough technical challenges to need more than 1 person like this, and they double as management.

3 is likely to be a sticking point however. Once you have responsibility for large projects you are often in a certain amount of resource contention, the chance of avoiding political battles there is small unless you are a known superstar within the company.

If you're ok with that, I'd prepare for a whiteboard interview at one of the big well-paying tech companies.


That makes sense. I think that I may have consciously been trying to ignore the point you're making that there are only a handful of companies out there that have the sort of problems where they can justify having this level of people on staff, and more than one to boot.

I guess it's a choice between that and consulting, because i suspect there are a whole bunch of smaller companies out there that can use help with problems like that, but they don't have enough of them to justify having someone like me on staff full time.


> That's a very good question, and not necessarily something I find easy to explain concisely.

I've been where you are. One tip I have is to spend a little bit of time (an hour or two) and work out exactly how to explain it concisely. What's your elevator pitch? If you ran into the CTO of your dream tech company at a friend's party, and they asked what kind of work you would like to do, what would you explain in 60 seconds?

For what it's worth, I think what you have above is pretty close. If you can tweak it slightly, you can likely get to a "Here's what I want to be doing and this is why you should hire me" in the same sort of pitch.

I know it's difficult to explain sometimes, but it's worth your time to figure out how to frame it concisely. Good luck!


You should take a look at senior solution architect roles.


Aren't those relatively sales oriented in general? At least they seem to be in those companies that I seem to work with.


In the European companies they are not. From my experience (UK Financial Services primarily), they are equivalent to a US Staff Engineer with authority over Design and Implementation. Typically looking after a team or two of engineers of various levels of experience.

There's also a broad amount of "socialising" the design/system internally to generate "buy-in" across the organisation. Which is the tedious bit for me, but hey, the money is good.


That makes sense - I'm in the US right now, and here a Solutions Architect is mostly a pre-sales engineer.

Pretty much any growth in my work will require me working on the people skills side of things, which is something I'm already working on.


Sometimes they are, but that's not what you want. Other times, it's like what you've described but unfortunately with much less (or even zero) hand-on work, and more meetings and dealing with internal bureucracy.

BTW to me, it looks like what you want is a tech lead role.


Tech Lead with some business involvement. I've run my own small consulting companies in the past, just haven't had the nerve to do that here in the US, mainly due to cost of health insurance.


I know one thing that if people in this thread write books, I'll buy a copy. Contact info is in the profile for when it's out.

All the best to you all,

Just an idea you probably have thought about... Have you considered opening a boutique consultancy and doing business through it? It won't be the megacorp, and the person in charge, you, will actually be capable of wrapping their head around someone like yourselves? I say "yourselves" because there may be people in your situation who'll find it interesting. Name it "Cache", a pun on "cash" and invalidated grizzled software veterans to pool in their networks and save the day.


I have thought about this many times. I even had consultancy once doing webdev. But now I have no idea how can boutique consultancy can succeed? Who do you market to?

Mom & pop shops are best served by Shopify or Wix.

Large corps with work with other large consulting companies or hire.

Mid size corps maybe. What would be your strategy to market to them?


>Large corps with work with other large consulting companies or hire.

We've worked with large organizations and the large consulting companies these organizations hire as well.

Tectonic cracks are big enough for a tiny human to get in there.

When a large organization wants something done fast for $100,000-$200,000, it's not really a job for a huge consulting company, because it's basically pocket change. But for a smaller consultancy? That's a nice amount and these are projects that can actually be done by a couple of individuals.

What's important is introductions and getting a foot in the door. Some large organizations are difficult to get in, but once you're in and you deliver, they'll come back with a bag of problems for you to solve.

We work with large organizations and solve one problem for them in one segment. Then they'll come back and say "Oh, we also have that problem in that other segment? Can you help?". Again, and again. Repeat business.

We also work with large consulting companies who'll come and say "We have this client and they have this problem, can you help?". We deliver. They come back and say "We have that other problem with that other client, can you help us?". We deliver. Then they come and say "Remember that client? They have that other problem, can you help?". We deliver again.

They aren't in the business of changing partners. When you deliver and they trust you, they'll want more. They'll want even to invest. They'll want to set up a joint venture. They'll want to make a product. This is of course a biased opinion as we've dealt with people who are good at what they do, honest about what they want, and respect your time.

Two success parameters in that heavily survivor biased perspective:

1. Introductions and networking: our CEO is a tireless specimen. When we align six meetings, I've seen him pitch at the 19:00 meeting with the same enthusiasm, energy, panache, and humor as the 09:00 meeting. Tireless networking and selling and a sharp mind for business. He dares to sell, but he doesn't sell what the team is not making, and he doesn't shy away from correcting a mistake. We were once in a conference where he made a presentation on something we were making and there was an inaccuracy in one sentence he said to an audience of state officials, high ranking armed forces officers, "serious" people. He got back to his place and I told him about it. He stood up in the middle of the amphitheater of around 500 people, whistled with his fingers to get the attention of everyone, and then proceeded to say "I said ZYX during the presentation. I was wrong. Just to clarify: it's XYZ, not ZYX like I said".

3. Board members and advisors who have been around the block: they ran large companies and have a network as well. They make things easier.

2. A team that can deliver and manage expectations. They say this will take time. This we cannot do right now. This we can do. This we already have. This client we won't work with for ethical reasons. This is not ready. This is almost ready. This we can also do for another client.

Most of the business comes from networking. However, it used to take us time to satisfy inbound requests for machine learning projects. There were more projects and clients in the pipeline than we could execute on, which is why we started building our internal machine learning platform[0] to be able to do it faster. Way faster. Then turn that into a revenue stream for companies like ours to be able to do machine learning projects. We couldn't build this platform if we didn't have experience actually doing the work, which is the case of many startups in that space who jump right in and build a general platform/tool without having dealt with the specifics first.

I wrote a tiny bit about this in a twitter thread[1].

- [0]: https://iko.ai

- [1]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...


This is great advice. Your company is a small consultancy though, not an individual consultant.

I read your Twitter thread. It makes sense but I am still not sure how I as an individual can get my foot in the door. It seems you are saying I should incorporate and work as a company. But my current company and pretty much every company I worked for has a process to vet vendors. They would easily see that this LLC is a brand new company with one owner/person.

My current Fortune 50 company has a policy that requires additional approvals for newer and smaller companies. My friend has 10+ years old recruiting firm, I tried to get him to work with my company as a vendor. But it was rejected because they said his company was too young, and had too few employees (it is just him and his wife). They asked him to work through one of their vendors, and all of our vendors also rejected to work with him because of his size.


>But my current company and pretty much every company I worked for has a process to vet vendors. They would easily see that this LLC is a brand new company with one owner/person.

You're right, but if you hit on enough doors, you might get lucky. We had our first client, a large multinational, before having a company.

Furthermore, it depends on what you are selling: selling a payroll, procurement, or HR system that changes the entire process of an organization or requires adoption, training of all of their employees, and tight maintenance requirements, is harder than selling a product that is more contained to a small team or can be used to accomplish something without impacting everything.

>But it was rejected because they said his company was too young, and had too few employees (it is just him and his wife).

Sure. Then your friend talks with another company, and another, and another. If they want to work with large organizations, that is. There are many who don't like it after a bad experience or for other reasons.


> very senior software engineer >> they do seem to occasionally look for this type of engineer

I have worked for one of those giants as a senior engineer with almost as much experience as yours, I don't remember many engineers actively developing beyond the senior level (level 63/64 at MS for reference) but we did have quite a few old guys (and a bit less girls) at those levels.


40 years and still programming here. I get freelance gigs through contacts, word of mouth, and an agency that represents me. Before freelancing I got f/t jobs for a long time solely through contacts and former co-workers. I’d start with your professional network. Job boards and gig marketplaces are a last resort, IMO.


Thanks for the perspective. I'm trying to build my network up again - I moved countries a few years ago and the majority of my network in back in Europe.


A great question. I'm partially-grizzled (only 20 years experience) and looking for the same thing. Some sort of Principle Software Engineer with technical focus and no direct people management responsibilities. Searching LinkedIn brings back plenty of job hits...but it's mostly MegaCorp jobs like you mention.


Please don't take this personally, it isn't aimed at you at all. You simply provided the trigger for the thought, likely without intention.

It's not "principle", it's "principal".

Other examples of this exist, "your", "you are" or "you're", etc.

As someone who has hired many engineers, let me tell you (plural) why I think accuracy in written communications is important. It's quite simple, really:

Software development is about minute attention to detail. Syntax, spelling, formatting, data structures, algorithms, etc.

When someone makes one of these mistakes in emails or a resume, they risk raising a question in the mind of the person evaluating them for a position. As the saying goes, these things stick out like a sore thumb.

Of course, none of this matters in the context of writing comments on an online community. It is utterly irrelevant. Even worse, sometimes autocorrect will easily do us in while writing comments on a phone or tablet. Again, this is not criticism of the comment I am responding to. Not at all.

Since we are talking about how to find a job, I am using the opportunity to highlight a variable a number of people might not recognize as potentially important.

English not your first language? Fantastic! Nor is it mine. Nor is Python, JS, C, C++, Forth, APL or assembler my first language. If it is important, you take the time to learn and write it correctly.

Here's a simple example:

I've been coaching a good friend who has been trying to land a sales engineering job that required understanding HTML, CSS and JS. This would not be a developer job, yet being able to understand API's and generally work with customers requires comfort with these technologies.

I had him enroll in a few online courses. He made a huge effort, learned a lot and was able to go from virtually nothing to being comfortable with the technology within a few weeks. That was fantastic to watch.

The other thing that was very interesting was watching what problems he had along the way. We ran daily zoom meetings where I would coach him, ask questions, have him write and explain code, etc. When one has been coding for over 30 years you tend to forget that some of these concepts can be very strange to people coming up from nothing.

One of the most important things I tried to correct was consistency in the way he wrote code. It's about the proverbial sore thumb I mentioned above.

Some can have great comprehension of coding, and yet, if they write something like this they almost guarantee not getting the job:

    function doSomething (){
         let myvar1=23;
            let myVar2 = 56;
      let MYvar3= "1234";
      //...etc
    }
    
    
    function do_something_else(){
    if (some_condition)
    dothis();
    else{ do_Somethign_else() }
    // ...
    }
In other words, mostly code that will run just fine but looks absolutely terrible, is difficult to read, is filled with inconsistent formatting, inconsistent variable and function naming conventions, etc.

Fair or not, to me --and I am sure others-- lack of attention to detail in written language tells me I might need to be concerned about similar errors in coding that might lead to wasting time or, worse, potentially serious bugs and issues. Three years later this person leaves the company and you discover the code they wrote is a rotten stinking mess nobody wants to touch.

It is better to avoid raising that question in the first place.

I think anyone looking for a job, developer or not, needs to understand that every word they put down on an email, resume or letter is an opportunity to either make a good impression or cast doubts. Be sure to take the time to create a favorable image on paper and not create questions that might deny you being considered for the job.


It’s also about efficiency my friend. I don’t grammar check every message I send to a colleague during the day. I think you’re thinking of lawyers rather than software engineers.


I'd concede your point if this were a formal forum where precise language is necssary. But it isn't.


You did not read my comment.

I was explicit in saying that this is irrelevant in the context of a discussion forum.

I also said my comment has to do with not making bad impressions when applying for a job.

Please read what I said, all of it.


Is this comment written by GPT-3 or sometime similar? It reads like it.


Speaking of details: your usernames. Lol. Awesome coincidence.


Didn't notice. Very funny!


I know very good engineers who have dyslexia.


How is that an impediment? Are you saying a person with dyslexia is incapable of authoring a resume that makes a good first impression? I disagree.

Dyslexia does not preclude someone from doing a good job at all. Spell check. Use grammar tools. Get someone to proof read. Not that hard.

If I were interviewing someone who told me they have dyslexia and their resume is perfectly written, I will know, without a doubt, they will be detail-oriented while on the job. Once again, the resume is a valuable opportunity to make an excellent first impression.




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