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Blacksmith. If it was possible to go back in time, I would be a blacksmith. This is my conclusion after working several years as consultant. The last project was horrible, hundreds of thousands of lines in C++ wrote by monkeys in ten years, layers of layers of crap. When I say layers I'm not speaking about architectural layers, but geological layers, like the sedimentation that trap the skeletons of dinosaurs. They i…
For me personally, when I had a lot less experience the attraction was mostly a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I could make a machine do exactly what I envisioned in my mind. As I accumulated more and more professional experience, the source of my satisfaction became increasingly distant from the actual code itself, e.g. analyzing a business need and identifying a technical solution that met it became more satisfying than writing the actual code itself. 10+ years down the line now and in my current role I very rarely write any production code. To the extent that I miss it, it's probably mostly down to nostalgia. I typically get more satisfaction from working with strategic technical problems, enabling developers, doing high-level designs, liaising between tech and other departments, etc.
So TL;DR - yes, it's perfectly normal to find non-coding software development activities more gratifying :)
I still code, I still keep up, but I get to do that because it's fun and interesting, not because if I don't do it then I can't eat or have a roof over my head. There's a huge happiness difference in wanting to do it and needing to do it.
If like simplifying difficult concepts and explaining them to people you might want to look at a Sales Engineer role. There's a really great YC graduated bootcamp called Flockjay (https://flockjay.com/ and also read through https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727360 from a few weeks ago). I've been lucky enough to be accepted for the inaugural batch of students. The whole process with them and the first classes have been so much better than I expected. DM me if you've got any questions.
Sometimes what you need is change. I am sixty-five years old. I was a programmer for fifteen years, started a consulting company, then a software business. Was acqui-hired. Became VP Product Dev over 27 locations, 1200 developers, hundreds of products, then semi-retired for four years and worked on digital audio production. Got bored, did another startup, wrote code. Sold it and became CTO of a product division. Late…
... asking for a friend.
Definitely. I did it for +10 years and I would hate to go back to coding for a living. Now I'm on the "dark side" as a pentester and breaking stuff instead and I love it. When you reach the point where you don't want to code outside of work, you've lost the passion and you're slowing starting to deteriorate as a developer. It's time to do something else.
I started out programming in RPG III on an IBM AS/400, a mini computer. Then had to unremember a lot of that stuff and move onto fat client-server architecture and RDBMSs (visual basic, oracle). Then had to unremember a lot of that stuff and move onto N-tier. (C#, application servers, MS-SQL) Then had to unremember a lot of that stuff and move onto the internet stacks (HTML, CSS , XML, Javascript and so many damn frameworks i cant even count at this point) now, unremembering a lot of that stuff so I can go serverless over at AWS.
try coding in the language/stack you are most comfortable and knowledgable in (even if it's old and out of date) and see if that doesn't rekindle the passion. If it doesn't, then its pre-sales tech support for you my friend.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How easy would you say it is to move back into a developer role if I say switch into product management role? I am scared I will be asked a lot about why I am switching back into coding and why I left it in the first place? I am scared of coming across as indecisive
Developers trying a management role and then returning to development is relatively common. You shouldn't worry if you wish to try it out for a year or two.
As a bonus, they tend to have more empathy for what i have to deal with, so when they ask for support or process changes their ideas tend to be practical and reasonable.
There was a time I liked to travel. Now I prefer spending my holidays at home or my parent's home, relaxing.
Earlier I used to devour fiction. Now I am more into Non-fiction.
I didn't care about politics, now I do.
Life is just like that. Enjoy what you like now. Cherish the memories of what you used to in the past. And try to not to worry too much about future.
Good luck.
There's a job title for exactly this - Solutions or Sales Engineer.
I've worked in this role in the past and here's a bit caveat. Due to time pressures your technical skills may (will!) erode and it's very easy to reach the point where you simply become a talking head for a particular vendor's architecture and you hand wave around the hard/technical questions. It's entirely possible to end up in a position where you simply regurgitate the same architecture slide decks over and over.
You have to decide how technical you want to be and how much time you want to spend talking and pick roles accordingly. When a technology is new and probably half-baked (e.g. Hadoop in the early years), you'll be of higher value by having technical skills. When it's mature and has a GUI, being good at selling and demos is more important.
One of the nice things about some (not all) Solution/Sales Engineer roles is that you code enough to enjoy it, but not so much that you find yourself caught up with all the stuff that's needed when you are a full time developer building stuff for production.