Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 65 posts

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#31

Post by muzani »

giantg2 wrote: post #8
auslegung wrote: post #5

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.

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

I find that BS levels are lowest in high growth companies. The ones that make enough money to pay their bills and not take on BS projects, but also not big and slow enough that it rewards politicking and blame. At that stage it's all about making better products and improving user experience without some clueless person with a MBA trying to adopt tiger teams and functional programming.

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#32

Post by iKevinShah »

non-entity wrote: post #11

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 so…

> 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?

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#33

Post by iKevinShah »

throooooway1 wrote: post #27

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. N…

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.

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#34

Post by iKevinShah »

untog wrote: post #21
viburnum wrote: post #16

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.

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!

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#36

Post by collyw »

theonething wrote: post #20
viburnum wrote: post #16

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.

Wow, you echoed my sentiments exactly. I just hate frontend development so much for some reason.

Most apps would work just as well with server side rendering and a bit of jQuery. We have a spa at my current place and it doubles the complexity for no real gain. Debugging is painful.

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#37

Post by collyw »

ralphc wrote: post #30

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: I can't do development any more, what should I transition to?

#38

Post by collyw »

nanonic wrote: post #6

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 convi…

That depends a lot in who you have to work with. One prima Donna dev can make your job suck
Post reply on HN