I made this change a year ago for similar reasons to you - I didn't want to be coding for the rest of my career. I can say this is one of the decisions in my career that I truly regret. For me at least, it felt like I was completely starting over. My comp was a modest bump (a 20% increase but with a much bigger portion of that being variable and not guaranteed.) The skills I have been developing are sales/ storytelling skills. I rarely end up writing any code. Unless the thing you are missing in your current role is talking to customers I personally think there is a lot more opportunity as a software engineer with a business focused mindset.
Ask HN: Transitioning to a Solutions Engineer / Sales Engineer
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Re: Ask HN: Transitioning to a Solutions Engineer / Sales Engineer
#22Also consider product management!
Re: Ask HN: Transitioning to a Solutions Engineer / Sales Engineer
#23OOH! I JUST DID THIS! I transitioned into a sales engineering role after 15 years of being a sysadmin/SRE/DevOps consultant. I really like traveling for work (can't do that as a full time engineer) and focusing on positioning our products into where companies want to go long-term without sacrificing my engineering chops. > Would love it if someone can share similar moves - how did you go about it, how has it worked o…
Thanks for the detailed write up ! Helps. I'll check out the book and the subreddit. > This adjustment is challenging. It's weird to not have my technical abilities be the thing my performance is measured against (though you definitely need to have it, and having more of it is an edge, if your sales/soft skills can counterbalance it). This is actually one of the reasons holding back as I feel like I am giving up a ta…
I would read the book regardless of whether you choose to make the move or not. It'll give you a good idea of what the day in the life of an SE is like. I found it to be accurate.
As for being afraid of giving up that hard skill:
1. Unlike going into actual sales or management, you don't give it up entirely. Your technical skills are still very valuable. It will give you confidence when you demo stuff and clout amongst engineering types (which are key to getting the technical win). It's just not THE thing that your performance is measured against.
2. Having presales experience will help you significantly if you choose to go back into full time engineering. You'll have a better idea of what customers want and how sales are made. This will help you gauge when/how to build the right thing and approach sales-y/business people.
In fact, my biggest pet peeve with engineering is that unless you're working at the earliest stages of a startup, you're so far removed from what customers actually want but are incentivized on your tech prowess. This creates perverse motives that tend to be more complex and anti-customer in the name of software craftsmanship and scalability.
Re: Ask HN: Transitioning to a Solutions Engineer / Sales Engineer
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say the roles are quite different. You could argue about ICs / SDE / SDMs - but Solution or Sales Engineering require different skill sets. They are more client facing and your KPIs (or OKRs) are more tied to sales, client relationships or contract renewals.
> KPIs (or OKRs) is this sarcasm?
You should probably spend some time speaking to folks outside of your dev team and learn how businesses tend to operate