Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#21

Post by itake » Thu, Dec 12, 2024, 7:04 PM UTC

purple-leafy wrote: post #18

itake wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd caution you about giving up a well paid career. In "The psychology of Money" the author warns the reader to don't make bets that need to go perfectly to plan. Creating a project every month until somethings sticks, requires that at least one of them can become a sustainable business. But if you can't achieve that, its very difficult to catch up to your peers or re-enter the workforce. I spent the last 5 years wor…

Why not just work part time, seems a no brainer to me. Work 10 less hours a week, you'll keep up with your peers easily, and you'll have fresh time and projects on the side

8 years ago, the startup I worked at folded with an eng team size of 8. I spent 3 years working part time and side projects, my coworkers joined big tech (LinkedIn and Airbnb). They road the 2021 boom and ended up 1-2 levels higher than me with 3-5x more pay. 5 years after returning, I’m just now catching up to them.

TL;DR: part time basically pauses careers.

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#22

Post by itake » Thu, Dec 12, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #19

itake wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd caution you about giving up a well paid career. In "The psychology of Money" the author warns the reader to don't make bets that need to go perfectly to plan. Creating a project every month until somethings sticks, requires that at least one of them can become a sustainable business. But if you can't achieve that, its very difficult to catch up to your peers or re-enter the workforce. I spent the last 5 years wor…

I’ve seen this advice before but I don’t personally know anyone who’s done it. What makes it so hard to reenter the workforce?

I have a few friends that left tech for personal reasons and layoffs.

The ones that stayed out for a while, lost their ‘drive’ to reenter. They tasted the good life of no leetcode or on-call duties.

They make enough to support themselves but still less than half of what they could make in tech.

They realize their good life isn’t on the right trajectory and would like to reenter, but just don’t want to put in the effort, especially since the roles available to them are behind their friends that didn’t take a break

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#23

Post by purple-leafy » Thu, Dec 12, 2024, 9:21 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #21

purple-leafy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just work part time, seems a no brainer to me. Work 10 less hours a week, you'll keep up with your peers easily, and you'll have fresh time and projects on the side

8 years ago, the startup I worked at folded with an eng team size of 8. I spent 3 years working part time and side projects, my coworkers joined big tech (LinkedIn and Airbnb). They road the 2021 boom and ended up 1-2 levels higher than me with 3-5x more pay. 5 years after returning, I’m just now catching up to them. TL;DR: part time basically pauses careers.

Thats unfortunate I'm sorry to hear. But it is also a sample size of 1.

My experience, working part time for 6 months, is that my side projects have differentiated me from other candidates, and get me a foot in the door for interviews. They usually say most candidates are the exact same, and the only way to differentiate and get an edge is: Perfect GPA; Successful projects; Sought after niche skills; Leadership experience.

But I've also had 2 relatively successful side projects (and tens of failed ones), so without those I'm not sure how I'd go

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#24

Post by aosaigh » Thu, Dec 12, 2024, 10:13 PM UTC

I'd stop worrying about your skills and start looking for opportunities. Start networking and finding people who have problems that can be solved with software and have a good market fit. Lots of people say "solve your own problems first" but software developers have a very unique set of problems that 99% of people and businesses don't have. Once you start to see how other non-devs work you'll start to see enormous inefficiencies and people crying out for solutions.

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#25

Post by muzani » Fri, Dec 13, 2024, 12:32 AM UTC

I joined an "experimental" team, basically working on low ROI strategic projects. A lot of them are from scratch, and there's a lot of ex-entrepreneurs who find it home.

B2B or unicorns usually have an experimental team because they have a major product that needs to be stable, and a team that isn't held back by all these processes. The NASA vs SpaceX combo, where one has to be really careful and make absolutely no mistakes, while the other tries to move fast and fix problems faster.

If you want to use a broader set of skills, try working in a developing country. Solve the kinds of problems that companies like Uber, Amazon, and Stripe can't. There's a lot of gap in existing infra and it's usually the unicorns that build it. Regulations are tighter because we have a lot of corruption to deal with - terrorists, business people, politicians, all the same risk category. They're also changing all the time because of this. Underdeveloped means documentation is constantly out of date and someone who can put together a hack while waiting for a partner to fix would be great.

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#26

Post by authorfly » Fri, Dec 13, 2024, 4:37 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #16

og2023 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can totally feel the 'half-assed' part. One of the real reasons I am avoiding getting a well-paid job is because it feels that it's impossible keep it and dedicate enough time to anything else really, let alone building a business on the side.

I'd caution you about giving up a well paid career. In "The psychology of Money" the author warns the reader to don't make bets that need to go perfectly to plan. Creating a project every month until somethings sticks, requires that at least one of them can become a sustainable business. But if you can't achieve that, its very difficult to catch up to your peers or re-enter the workforce. I spent the last 5 years wor…

There are a few "The Psychology of Money" books/talks including by Charlie Munger. Which one are you referring to may I ask?

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#27

Post by authorfly » Fri, Dec 13, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

muzani wrote: post #25

I joined an "experimental" team, basically working on low ROI strategic projects. A lot of them are from scratch, and there's a lot of ex-entrepreneurs who find it home. B2B or unicorns usually have an experimental team because they have a major product that needs to be stable, and a team that isn't held back by all these processes. The NASA vs SpaceX combo, where one has to be really careful and make absolutely no m…

How did you find this kind of team? I know you note B2B/unicorns can have these, but I have never found them myself. I find it difficult: Reach out to the CPO/CEO with something innovative or genuine passion for the industry area, and they either get you in excited and others in the C/tech suite are against you / already busy with projects, OR they see you as a threat and just talk to learn.

I am also wary because I have seen such teams before (e.g. a HTML5 team, yes silly as it sounds, web sockets and SVG felt like they opened entire new ways of making games), and a data science team using BERT etc (outdated totally by ChatGPT and made useless). Likewise I lead a team to adapt React (before it was predominant) which helped, and I was liked on the team by most for helping them code with less bugs (some of the old guard did not like using React). However, once that happened, it was done. My managers were changed, for someone who loved making lots of plans. I then got over-managed to the point I changed my career as it was obvious this manager had no interest in any future risks in the next 3-5 years of their time in that seat.

I just don't see stories where these teams somehow make a 2nd product for the company which actually successfully scales. They usually get eaten by being overtaken technically, or eaten by the main product. So what do you do after the "eaten" point? Does the company keep your around?

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#28

Post by muzani » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 1:15 AM UTC

authorfly wrote: post #27

muzani wrote: post #25

I joined an "experimental" team, basically working on low ROI strategic projects. A lot of them are from scratch, and there's a lot of ex-entrepreneurs who find it home. B2B or unicorns usually have an experimental team because they have a major product that needs to be stable, and a team that isn't held back by all these processes. The NASA vs SpaceX combo, where one has to be really careful and make absolutely no m…

How did you find this kind of team? I know you note B2B/unicorns can have these, but I have never found them myself. I find it difficult: Reach out to the CPO/CEO with something innovative or genuine passion for the industry area, and they either get you in excited and others in the C/tech suite are against you / already busy with projects, OR they see you as a threat and just talk to learn. I am also wary because I…

The textbook approach is:

1. Find product market fit

2. Get dominant market share

3. Work on the next cycle - the core business will go stale

4. Everything else in support - legal, finance, HR

Look for the Step 3. People think of experimental teams as the ones that build Gmail or Android, but they're more the ones building Gemini. It also happens quite early on, maybe as early as Series B companies.

You might want to avoid 'toy' teams. Gmail was probably the most successful toy project, but they're very rare.

One example is a product that has lots of TPV/GMV - payment gateways, marketplaces, listing sites. This usually doesn't translate to revenue/profit, but they're in a good position to sell things that are profitable.

Another is fixing problems in scale. Like FB was built on PHP which wasn't enough, so they ended up building Hack, React, a bunch of mobile stuff.

Some of the work is to build features requested by the core. An elliptical example here might be if you were Rolls-Royce and needed a specialized exhaust system, the specialist team would build it and then try to mass produce or sell that exhaust part to other companies.

There's going to be a lot of failed products and that's okay. The fail rate is usually higher than the core product, but lower than startups, so it's ideal for former startup folks.

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#29

Post by ensemblehq » Sat, Dec 14, 2024, 2:09 PM UTC

As someone whose transition to being more of a consultant, entrepreneurship is such a broad term that gets misinterpreted. There is no real job title called entrepreneur. What it sounds like you're really describing is that you want to capitalize on your skillset in order to generate additional income in which case it would be useful to think about what sort of activities do you actually want to do with your time? What fulfills you the most?

Here are some ideas that generate income but are quite different in terms of activities: - fractional CTO advisory services - engineering team coach - teaching at a local collage - writing a book

Re: Ask HN: How can a software engineer with a broad skillset make money?

#30

Post by mettamage » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 7:34 AM UTC

og2023 wrote: post #13

datadrivenangel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you should do some reflection and evaluation on the emotional side of things. What part of your dream of being an entrepreneur actually sounds good to you? If you want fame, software entrepreneurship may not be optimal for example. Ultimately a job can be evaluated as: ( Money * Job Satisfaction * Impact ) / (Time * Energy )

Thanks for the question. I believe it's impossible to answer once and for all. Currently, I like doing many things, finding the bottlenecks, and overcoming them. Today it's demand generation, tomorrow it's product and tech, and ultimately it's me being inadequate in some capacity. Which means lots of growth as a person, which feels very real, like you can be shy of being in front of another person and therefore avoid…

I'm really similar to you. I could've written this post. You might have ADHD, at least subclinical. I know I have it. I don't see it as a disorder but as a difference - in my case that is (given that it is subclinical). Sometimes the difference is empowering, sometimes it isn't.

What you could do, if money is not too much of a concern: job hop to different jobs. I'm currently re-entering the job market as a data analyst. I've been a SWE for 4 years. I might get back to it (probably on the data science or data engineering side) but man I'm happy to have a different task set for the next 2 years.