Ask HN: What else besides writing code or managing people?

Hey HN, long time lurker, hoping this awesome community can help me (and others like me) figure out the next step in my (thier) career(s).

I spent 2006-2012 on three self funded ventures that didn't come to fruition, which left me tapped for spending ability, several maxed credit cards, and a job in Seattle thats not advancing me career-wise.

I am starting to feel a slip in my creativity, which I think is attributed to some drop in self confidence / depression / anxiety that's been creeping up.

I'm in love with business strategy, project ideas / planning, budgeting, and architecting. I love prototyping, but that leaves me with a gap in mastery of any specific technology.

I'm starting to panic that I'm running out of time to "get my shit together."

I have a potential opportunity to work with an incubator vetting applicant's technology. I'd take that job in a heartbeat, but they are not running yet (probably 1yr+ away)

I would love to take my experience in business, engineering, and product / project management, and find a position where I am helping a growing company with a full pipeline of projects get focused and prioritized.

I'm concerned that as I get older it's harder to find an engineering job. I get bored where it's building and fixing things all day. Management-wise I struggle with giving critical feedback to people as their "boss".

My uncle used to be a manufacturing / process consultant. He had a constant flow of new challenges and companies to work with. This sounds highly interesting to me when applied to tech, but I have no idea where to start.

So, I'm interested to see the discussion about what those of us who are life long hackers (with a ton of varied experiences) can do besides keep writing code or moving into people management. And some advice on how to start down such a path.

Thoughts?

Did you even read the comment? This community only functions because people post constructive content.

Geez. In what world is that a sensible response?

The most important thing you can do is relax.

Sure, life is pretty grim in the sense that you can't do whatever you want unless you're rich. On the other hand, your life as a coder is far, far higher quality than e.g. a construction worker's or (regrettably) a teacher's.

One thing you could do is try to grow a source of passive income. See patio11 for insights on achieving this.

Also, three failures isn't anything to worry about or lose confidence over. Just remember how many times Jobs failed. Most of the successful people on here have a similar background of failures. The path to success is usually through failure, as paradoxical as that sounds. Sometimes you'll just be unlucky multiple times in a row. That's just life. But that's also a reason to keep your spirits high, because it's far less likely you'll fail ten times in a row. So, keep trying.

> I'm in love with business strategy, project ideas / planning, budgeting, and architecting.

So... do that?

If you tried 3 self-funded ventures you should know there's tons to do outside of coding. Maybe not when there's zero traction and just one person on the team, but as soon as there's more than that, there's plenty to do that's not coding. Managing systems, managing customers, managing finances, marketing, general office 'stuff'. And hell, no coder spends all their time actually coding.

One of my friends is just re-learning coding after being in startups for seven years simply because he was so busy doing all that other stuff for the startups he worked for.

Arguably, managing/dealing with people - not necessarily as their boss - is always going to be part of life, not to mention any business venture, so I'd say there's no getting away from that.