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Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#61

Post by apohn »

Part of the issue might come from being from PreSales. Does your resume strongly reflect that you were in a PreSales role? Should it? If you are applying for PreSales roles, then yes. If you are trying to get out of PreSales, then no.

In my last job I was part of the PreSales organization and my official title was a PreSales one. My team was very technical, but IMO PreSales people are technical "experts" only in the sense that they are knowledgeable about the product they sell and the architecture around their product. Basically, they can talk the talk but how much they can actually do is very narrowly focused. Many PreSales people typically aren't truly experts, even in the products they sell.

I decided to get out of PreSales and into a lead technical role and spent 4 months applying to positions and getting nowhere. Eventually I figured out it was because my resume reflected I was PreSales person and this was a huge "Jack of all trades, master of none" red flag for people. I changed my resume and completely de-emphasized the PreSales aspects and focused on all the deep technical consulting work I had done. I did the same thing in interviews, and made sure people understood I was in a very technical role and I was not spending 40 hours a week giving demos.

It still took me time to land a new job, but I started to get interviews and eventually offers after those changes to my resume.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#62

Post by apohn »

privateprofile wrote: post #60
vvvv wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is absolutely nothing wrong being a pre-sales guy. Good pre-sales people with technical knowledge and some commercial acumen are like gold dust.

TL;DR: That's me, but I can't understand how a presales specialist with broad experience and a demonstrated skillset can't get anything other than offers for "developer" or "project manager" or more presales. This is something that I have given a lot of thought in recent years. I'm in my early 30s and have a CS degree, ~11 years of experience in business intelligence and analytics, and I worked my way through consult…

>> However, the feeling I get is that presales only lead to more presales roles, where most of your time is spent meeting clients and producing countless presentations to get to an eventual prototype...and there's more presales to do, so your involvement on most projects (even those you sell) is marginal at best, and that makes it harder to move to other roles.

This was one of the main reasons I left PreSales. I love technical work and I did really well with and clients who needed somebody who could deeply understand hard questions and solve problems that took longer than 1 day to solve. But at the end of the day most PreSales organizations reward demo experts who can sell quickly, not people who sell based on solving tough technical problems that take longer to solve.

The end result is that a lot of PreSales people either lose the deeper technical skills they once had and IMO the profession attracts a lot of people who had a technical background but truthfully weren't very technically strong when they did have a technical role.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#63

Post by JPLeRouzic »

Hi,

I am retired, but I worked at a European Telco as a R&D engineer my last 12 years and as a manager before that. I was 58 when I left. When I was in my forties I experienced the same rejection as you when I tried ti find a new job. Fortunately is was during the Internet bubble and there was a great demand for people speaking English and having knowledge in IP/Web and Java programming (nobody said "coding" at that time). So I was a bit astonished to be accepted but all in all those 12 years in R&D were deeply interesting, sometime frightening and often frustrating. But I am grateful to the people who recruited me. I never experienced some difficulty to learn or to adapt, even now at 60. I look to start a new business right now. My tip would be to not be impatient, stay where you are while it pays well. Things change quickly in the tech domain. No technology or business process is adopted in a tsunami manner, adoption is usually very slow (decades) and there are always several technologies in competition. But meanwhile you might get some orthogonal or complementary knowledge (Coursera/eDX) to what you have today in an effort to show dedication and capacity to learn. Who knows, in a future job this new qualification could make the difference. Good luke!

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#64

Post by probinso »

whack wrote: post #35
innomansland wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is gold! Can't thank you enough for your input. Just as a side note, while my professional life is very "narrow", I have been doing stuff on the side! I own 3 dropshipping sites (WooCommerce & Shopify) and 2 pseudo-SaaS sites (one MEAN stack and the other Meteor.JS). I started these projects last year just so that I can get my hands dirty in the latest web technologies (last time i made a full fledged website, I…

Off topic but I had the same experience as well. I had a side project which was twice as challenging and impressive as anything I had developed in my 9-5 job. But for some reason, interviewers only ever wanted to know what I did 9-5. I never did figure out why. My best guess is that they figure it can't really be all that great if no one paid you for it.

The term side project is often associated with Hobby. Those who do not appreciate side project also do not appreciate the amount of work that can go into 1. If you put real hours into it, your best interest is sharing your side project as if it was a part-time contract. You never have to divulge how much you made on a side project.

This is a lot harder if your side project is a solo work.

Just treating your project like this, can allow for you to control the conversation better during an interview.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#65

Post by thinkxl »

I wrote about my pivoting story in here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13532415

tl;dr: was 28 sales manager in Mexico, no English. Today I'm 33, frontend lead developer in US.

Sorry for the link, I don't want to write everything in here again.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#66

Post by soneca »

mxuribe wrote: post #57
soneca wrote: post #7

I am at a similar position but have not yet to started to actually look for a job. I am a 37 yo marketing guy and now I am learning to code to become a software developer (web). My approach is to take some time to learn the basics, create some projects that a potential future employee would recognize as demonstrative of my hard skills and then start looking. When you talk about software development, this path is obvi…

This is interesting, in my almost 20 year career, I took the opposite approach: started out as a web dev. ("coder"), then moved to marketing...Actually it was as follows: web dev. > tech lead > project mgr > product mgr. It is weird for me though; whenever I am in interviews, and the interviewer finds out my past, their eyes light up (because I can straddle both the tech and non-tech/business/marketing sides), and al…

Thanks, I will try to have it in mind when starting to actively pursue a job.

Actually, a possible desirable outcome is to become a Product Manager. To get the really interesting jobs with this role, I felt that I needed to have practical knowledge of software development.

Any tips on how to direct my career toward that path?

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#67

Post by navalsaini »

fecak wrote: post #50
innomansland wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey dave, really awesome feedback! I couldn't thank you enough. I actually agree on most points, especially on the ageism bit considering I am not exactly old. It is been my sneakiest feeling that it is my resume and/or cover letter. I saw in your profile that this is an area of expertise. Will it be ok if I engage you for some help? I will send an email via my personal account later in the day if it's fine with you.

My email is in my profile, feel free to send me what you've got and I'll take a look (you may not need resume help at all, so don't order anything).

unsolicited - I mailed you my CV too.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#68

Post by mxuribe »

soneca wrote: post #66
mxuribe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting, in my almost 20 year career, I took the opposite approach: started out as a web dev. ("coder"), then moved to marketing...Actually it was as follows: web dev. > tech lead > project mgr > product mgr. It is weird for me though; whenever I am in interviews, and the interviewer finds out my past, their eyes light up (because I can straddle both the tech and non-tech/business/marketing sides), and al…

Thanks, I will try to have it in mind when starting to actively pursue a job. Actually, a possible desirable outcome is to become a Product Manager. To get the really interesting jobs with this role, I felt that I needed to have practical knowledge of software development. Any tips on how to direct my career toward that path?

I've only ever worked for "conventional" large, multi-national non-software type corporations, so can't help with smaller orgs., or startups, or software companies...so my notes should be taken in that context...

That being said, within non-startups and non-software companies, any folks in any organization who have any inkling of software dev. (or any tech knowledge) are usually respected...so you will want to highlight that. Not necessarily that you CAN CODE...because the orgs specifically hire devs for that. Simply that business/marketing folks believe you can act as a translator, BS detector, etc.

For example, technology to this day is still dark magic for many people...So much so that whenever a dev. or digital agency or freelancer/consultant gives project/product stakeholders a development estimate - e.g. the platform will be deployed in 3 months, etc. - stakeholders have no expertise to call BS on that estimate, or wherewithall to pose questions about it. Your exposure to the desires/wants/needs of the business/marketing side, and your exposure to deeper tech than the typical person will uniquely position you to become an advisor to the higher ups. Most higher ups will respect you, a small percentage will abuse that...but with this dual-expertise, its straight-forward to bounce to other jobs.

My overall recommendation:

* Gain tech experience, whether that's dev./coding or system admin, or even just a general survey/overall understanding of "how stuff gets done".

* Continue to improve your communication skills...your value will be shown when you can act as the translator between the "techs" and the "non-techs". The good techs will learn to appreciate that they can speak with and through you, too.

* Highlight the heck out of the above sets of skills. That could be with S.T.A.R.-type bullets/notes on your resume, or through side projects, etc.

I hope that helps!

Good luck...And you can always reach out to me for networking (bam! This is another skill, that i admittedly don't do enough of! ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#69

Post by soneca »

mxuribe wrote: post #68
soneca wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I will try to have it in mind when starting to actively pursue a job. Actually, a possible desirable outcome is to become a Product Manager. To get the really interesting jobs with this role, I felt that I needed to have practical knowledge of software development. Any tips on how to direct my career toward that path?

I've only ever worked for "conventional" large, multi-national non-software type corporations, so can't help with smaller orgs., or startups, or software companies...so my notes should be taken in that context... That being said, within non-startups and non-software companies, any folks in any organization who have any inkling of software dev. (or any tech knowledge) are usually respected...so you will want to highli…

Thanks! It helped a lot already! Opened my eyes to the potential of doing that on non-software companies. I was indeed only considering startup/software companies.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#70

Post by superplussed »

Chris2048 wrote: post #41
superplussed wrote: post #8

And let's be real regarding ageism, you only get about 10 years of not being "too old", and then for the rest of your career it's going to be an issue whether big or small. Part of being a professional is navigating all of the BS you will get if you are not under 35, white, straight, and male.

> white, straight, and male Nice flame-bait. But are you talking about employability? Because western tech employers literally compete for token females.

Nope, wasn't trying to bait any flames, just making the point that virtually everyone has to deal with some sort of -ism, even straight white males will find it eventually with ageism.
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