Ask HN: How can I get a tech job that's more social?

[98Windows]

I've found WFH tech to be really isolating and boring. Even with a few days in the office a week, it feels lacking. I miss pair programming and seeing people in person daily.

Are there any ways to look for tech jobs which are more social and have more in person time?

I've considered going into hardware so I have to be physically present in a lab with other people, but is there another way?

[softwaredoug]

Consulting

A lot of consulting is technical planning and brainstorming with leadership. I used to have that kind of role, and you had a mix of heads-down work prototyping and heads-up work trying to understand requirements and think with different leaders on the best path forward.

Related: Staff or Principle Eng

Similar role to consulting above, but you're in house and often part of leadership...

[ABNW]

Very interesting! I've just moved into a consulting role and am discovering that it is very much like this. If you don't mind me asking, may I ask for some general advice?

Would like to know if there are there any people / resources that helped you out in this role? Or even any general guidance you could give someone just starting out? Also - out of interest - what is it you do now?

[mettamage]

What kind of companies offer this and what kind of positions am I looking for?

[mojomark]

Technical sales.

It's not easy to find people who are personable but can also explain the underlying tech clearly to potential customers... and the best tech in the world isn't with a hill of beans if it isn't being used by sutomers. If your an inherently social, dependable and trustworthy person, I believe the sales part of it comes naturally.

[guyzero]

This. Being a sales engineer can be just as technically demanding as any job shuffling protobufs in a big tech company. But there's a lot more 1:1 interaction talking to people and gathering information about the problem they're trying to solve.

Jobs like devrel can also have a good combination of being technical and talking to people and giving presentations.

Finally roles like "Technical Account Manager" can vary really widely across companies - in some cases these are basically glorified support jobs or sales jobs where you're dealing with existing customers instead of new customers. In other places it can be more like a solutions engineer where you're implementing a customer-specific solution using your company's platform. Again, a lot of 1:1 communication with customers.

[DeanWormer]

Highly recommend this as well. And I encourage people to not get scared off by the "sales" aspect of the job. As the technical resource, you're almost never closing deals, cold calling, or any of the other salesy responsibilities. Your job is really just to help the potential customer solve a problem with your technology. You gather requirements about their problem, and have technical conversations to show how your product(s) can be a good fit.

You get to build demos, and learn new technologies and never have to be responsible for production.

The earning potential can be very high, especially if your team exceeds your sales quotas.

Look for jobs like solution architect, sales engineer, customer engineer, pre-sales engineer.

[chrismatheson]

Coworking spaces. Not the “we work” kind, but the smaller community run ones. Being social can be with people who aren’t colleagues.

This way you set your own limits on the environment, rather than joining a new place that might be too much of an over correction six months from now.

[reaperducer]

Coworking spaces. Not the “we work” kind, but the smaller community run ones. Being social can be with people who aren’t colleagues.

I recently moved to a new city and discovered that unlike my old city, this one has lots of small coworking spaces. Some are run by neighborhood boards to foster community. Some are run as startup business incubators.

One down the street I find particularly inspiring — It's co-working for mothers. So WFH moms can have a place to do their work, and the facility provides daycare right there. I think this brilliantly solves at least two of the modern working world's biggest problems.

[cpfohl]

This is the way to go. Many will also have private offices that provide the perfect balance between quiet space and socializing opportunities.

[baron_harkonnen]

I would recommend looking into decoupling your social needs from your job.

Even in the time before wide spread WFH this was an issue, during good times it feels great to go into work and get all your social needs met but when layoffs come or companies collapse suddenly that great work friend everyone loves gets let go and in a few more weeks they effectively don't exist anymore.

It's great if you can meet people at work and create a real friendship (I've certainly done that). Now that you're remote you can put more time into keeping up with those people. Schedule lunches, video calls etc.

Get to know your neighbors better, join local interest groups, schedule video chats with friends you haven't chatted with in a while that live far away, and make sure to get lunch with local friends whenever you can.

It will be a bit of transition but ultimately you'll have a much richer social life and honestly enjoy work more as well since you have more outlets in the day that have nothing to do with your 9-5.

[LindyTalker]

Tone deaf. There's still ~6 hours a day of just sitting in a room alone. Glad you've found success in life but this might not be for others

[spookthesunset]

That nice but doesn’t answer the question. WFH for a lot of people sucks. Especially roles that aren’t right software engineer. Many roles are very hard to do remote (product, UX, etc)

I can’t wait to return to our offices and go back to normal. WFH works for some people and some projects but not all.

Plus being around people that aren’t your family is nice too.

[dd_roger]

>I would recommend looking into decoupling your social needs from your job.

I absolutely hate that this is the standard answer that comes up everytime someone mentions not being happy with WFH. Not only it doesn't answer the question, but it's just a slightly more polite version of "just make friends, duh" which is not helpful at all.

To many people (myself included) 2-3 hours of social activities in a day is not enough. I need to be around people, and while it's great to meet some friends in the evening it doesn't change the fact that I just spent 10 miserable hours alone in my appartment. In addition to that, I find there are many disadvantages to remote work: I hate doing over the phone what could have been a nice in-person chat, I hate how tedious it is to show/explain things that would have been easily demonstrated in person, I hate how difficult it is to grasp non-verbal cues, etc. I don't know a single person IRL who likes full time WFH, but judging by how popular it is here, it seems I shouldn't assume that everybody is in the same situation. Conversely, don't assume everybody can turn his miserable WFH experience in something awesome just "by doing stuff in the evening". Btw no offense but I had to laugh at your suggestion that a vido chat is a social activity.

[sophacles]

Wow, what a patronizing response. Some people work better alone, some work better with others around. I'm in the later category - I prefer working with people who I would never consider friends over working alone. It has nothing to do with using work for my social life and everything to do with how I work best.

What if you answer the question instead of telling other people how to exist?

[paulcole]

Most people spend 8 hours a day at work. That's a huge amount of our lives.

There's a difference between being dependent on work for social contact and wanting to work in an environment that's social.

I don't think this person is looking for a work BFF so much as a work environment that is collaborative and isn't built around solo work.

[johnsimer]

I don’t think humans evolved to be alone/work alone 8 hours a day 5 days a week. We’ve almost always worked in some sort of a community/tribe each day

[oluwie]

You're getting a lot of flack for this response. Although, it's pretty good advice, it just doesn't answer the question proposed.

[dymk]

Find a local club for a hobby you enjoy. Take an art class at a local community college.

[jasode]

>Find a local club for a hobby you enjoy. Take an art class at a local community college.

Based on the specific words (e.g. "pair programming") the op used in his question, I think he's looking for the work itself to be more social during work hours.

Therefore, suggesting an art class or joining a club outside of work is answering a different question.

[lostcolony]

Agreed. Look elsewhere, for people with shared interests. Don't tie your social circle to work. It makes it harder to leave the job and allows the company to take greater advantage of you.

[jamesakirk]

Same. It goes without saying perhaps, but one consideration is what type of social contact you want.

I work in a technical role and I miss my colleagues immensely. I feel best when I am around people I know, and when my job entails keeping a small group of people happy.

Working in sales, consulting, or relationship management is about working with strangers.... of balancing the joint demands of both your employer and the client. I get very self-critical and anxious in these roles.

[ultrasounder]

Perhaps look into Developer Advocacy. You get generate a lot of educational material, interact with your potential customers(developers) "socially" and who knows make vital connections?

[geofft]

Do you want to see people in person specifically or just be more social? As a senior IC, over the last year I've actually become kind of overwhelmed with meetings and Slack rooms because the nature/scope of my work is across so many teams, and I'm curious if you think this would be enough for you, or you'd still find it isolating.

I work in a platform engineering organization on internal tools, which means basically the entire engineering org are my "customers". At the moment I'm in a weekly meeting on OS-level configuration. I started a weekly meeting on our build system which has turned into a reading group of Google's SWE book. Our larger group (everyone under my boss's boss) has a weekly presentation series. I have a variety of less-frequent meetings, including a 1:1 with another engineer in a very different part of the org, some cross-team meetings, etc. And I regularly have all sorts of ad-hoc meetings. I do interviews pretty frequently. So it feels like I'm spending most of the day talking to people; I actually have very few blocks of time for writing code (let alone reviewing code or reading/writing docs) by myself.

I mean, maybe I'm just an introvert who's in an extraverted culture, and to you, this would also count as isolated and boring :)

[codegeek]

If you are in Philadelphia area, come work for us. A small SAAS edtech company. I love working in person (even though ironically a lot of our team is remote in different countries)

[PretzelSweat]

Could you expand on your company and current needs?

[reaperducer]

Are there any ways to look for tech jobs which are more social and have more in person time?

If you're interested in in person time with the general public along with office people, consider healthcare.

Some of the mid-sized and smaller-sized healthcare companies offer technical people lots of opportunities to interface with the actual people who benefit from their work.

For example, my company does healthcare largely for the poor and underserved. Every person in the company from C-level down to button pushers like myself is required to attend public-facing events a certain amount of time each year.

In my case, while I'm helping these people in other ways, I also get to actually ask them face-to-face "What kind of computer do you have?" and to look at the actual phones they carry with them and to experience the kind of internet service they have in their neighborhoods. This hand-on intelligence is invaluable. Server logs are great in theory, but they are no substitute for actual field work.

Even with the 'rona scattering a lot of us behind-the-scenes people to the four winds, remote workers are still required to put in a certain amount of face time with the clients, whether that means flying back to the mother ship or driving to work regional events.

If general public isn't your thing, get into internal IT support. Walking around a call center watching people doing their jobs helps you think about the systems you build in ways that plowing through trouble tickets doesn't.

[evanfarrar]

Find a job that is (remote) pairing?

I have seen hardware shops that are eerily quiet and sparsely populated, so being in an office is not a precursor for social interaction.

[rrherr]

Can anyone recommend some remote employers that do pair programming?

[ramesh31]

Maybe look for that kind of interaction more in your normal life. Moving to WFH during covid made me realize for the first time that I had wasted my entire life investing all of my energy into the workplace. There's a lot more to life than your career. And working remotely is an unbelievable privilege that most people don't get. Take advantage of it.

[rpastuszak]

Hej, I started "office hours" when anyone can call me to pair program, get a coffee and chat or rant: https://sonnet.io/posts/hi/ (Feel free to come and say hi!)

I'm not the most social person in the room, but I've met so many fascinating people through this channel. Even though it's not the same as sitting with those people in the same room, I was surprised to see how much energy, satisfaction, inspiration I get from those calls.

It also makes it easier for me to meet people IRL and helps my consulting gig.

[red_hare]

My NYC-based startup is struggling with this from the other side right now.

Half of us are "in person people" and the other half have never been happier working remote, so we're doing it team by team. My team has decided to be in-person. We show up 3+ days a week, have in-person happy hours, grab lunch together, and optimize our meetings for in-person. I love it.

But now hiring for this team has become impossible. We have other teams that will take on remote engineers, but ours looking for someone who also prefers in-person is just filtering so many people so early in the pipeline.

[polynomial]

Curious what people thing is the reason this post is being downvoted (while also having decent responses in the comments.)

On the surface, that would seem to indicate it is a polarizing topic.

[ectopod]

What do you mean? Posts don't have a downvote button.

[syndacks]

Hey, thanks for asking this question. I feel the same way. However, I think you've already answered your question, (and I have too) which is -- it's the pandemic, not the job. Your pre-pandemic SWE job had enough socialization in it to satisfy you. My best advice would be to either continue waiting until things get back to normal, or, start applying for jobs that require 3-5 days a week in the office.

[bin_bash]

you could look into evangelism. Though I did myself a few years ago and found the pay to be much less than what I make as a normal SWE

[browningstreet]

Why are you WFH? A lot of companies are asking people to come back into the office.. what about one of those orgs?

[spookthesunset]

Ours shut down again despite almost the entire company being vaccinated. “It’s not safe”.

People have completely lost their mind (plus there are some very loud voices that are using this thing to push their WFH agenda)

[Mikeb85]

Forget about your job, use the free time you spend not commuting going out and simply socialising. Work 'friends' often aren't really friends and don't keep in touch when you move on, friends made outside of work are generally ones you actually choose and can keep longer.

[moneywoes]

Maybe start talking to your coworkers more? It could be that they feel similarly and want to see others too.

[spookthesunset]

Yes. At the office.

Zoom sucks for anything social.