Ask HN: Those of you who've left the SWE world, what did you transition into?

[volkk]

After 13 years in SWE, working for startups, bigger companies, the golden handcuffs, etc, I can finally say that I think I'm finished.

Right now I'm contracting to stay afloat, maintain flexibility and delve into entrepreneurship, but I truly don't know what the future holds for me anymore if building my own company doesn't work out. I have 0 inclination to go back to a 9-5 at a company coding for a living. I'm done. I've been an EM, which might arguably be the most miserable position that exists. I've been senior/staff at places, and honestly I just don't enjoy arguing about the structure of software anymore, I'm tired of the personalities, tired of the infantilization of the industry (frankly, it's embarrassing) but mostly, I just don't enjoy coding as much as I used to, unless I'm leveraging it to create an asymmetrical amount of value for me ($$$$) which is just not what a full time job is.

However, I don't know what to look into as an alternative if I need a full time position once my wife and I start having kids. My strengths revolve around people and strategy. I've been considering sales at a tech company because to me, working harder and having an unlimited cap in what I can earn sounds pretty fantastic.

Would love to hear any kinds of stories or tips from folks

[muffinman26]

A variation of this question gets asked semi-regularly on HN, but I think the reason the results so often seem unsatisfying is that the people who actually find a meaningful answer and switch careers aren't hanging out on Hacker News anymore. They're living their life and have found community with other people doing what they actually want to do.

As a result, the Hacker News responses are often incredulity that anyone could ever leave the software industry (even if it's a miserable soul-draining place), or slight career shifts that aren't really career shifts, with a little bit of Financial Independence Retire Early thrown in.

Now, where to find the community of folks who have left Hacker News for something they genuinely enjoy, that would be great to know.

[qqqwerty]

There are plenty of good answers here. There just really isn't anything out there that is remotely close to SWE in terms of comfort, pay, and accessibility.

For the last decade or so, SWE has been one of the most accessible and lucrative professions that mankind has ever seen. Before that, most folks needed to go the finance/lawyer/doctor route to access similar levels of financial security. And those professions require significantly more trade offs than SWE (more training, worse work life balance, etc...)

The fact is, you are not going to make SWE level salary doing hobby level woodworking in your garage. You can get into the trades and with a fair amount of time and effort you might be able to pull in the equivalent of a junior level SWE salary. But the trades are rough on your body and you will pay for that later. Or you can try and transition to other types of white collar work, most of which will never come close to what a SWE gets paid.

And of course, these answers are pretty personal. I have a few too many hobbies and would be more than happy to spend a few years making not very much money trying to turn some of those into paying gigs, but I also have a wife who has a well established career and we have kept our expenses in check. If you are the sole bread winner and sitting on an expensive mortgage and sending your kids to pricey private schools, then your options are going to be much more limited.

Also, just to keep this conversation a bit more productive. I would recommend looking into jobs that are software related (or software adjacent) in interesting fields. i.e. construction, energy, biotech, government labs, etc... You will almost certainly take a pay cut, and you will still get some of the typical SWE BS, but it is much less pronounced in my experience.

[gaws]

> Now, where to find the community of folks who have left Hacker News for something they genuinely enjoy, that would be great to know

They're in private Discord servers.

[burutthrow1234]

Nothing is gonna give you good, consistent comp like writing software. I'm sure some sales people do very well but "eat what you kill" also means lean months, and sometimes whether or not deals close is outside of your control.

My advice is to just get a tech job where you can coast, work from home, and knock out a couple tickets a day. Have lots of flexibility to see your kid and take vacations while they're young. Some places offer 4 day weeks and you still take home 6 figures.

Sales Engineering or Customer Success would be an interesting pivot but you usually make less money and have less flexibility than SWEs

[Sammi]

> My advice is to just get a tech job where you can coast

My soul dies when I try this. I can't look in the mirror and like the person looking back. I feel myself rot.

I need challenge. I need to be useful.

Most dev shops infantalise their devs and don't allow them to do actual useful hard work. So I'm currently attempting a bootstrapped startup. Because I want to work.

[itsoktocry]

>My advice is to just get a tech job where you can coast, work from home, and knock out a couple tickets a day.

Bingo. We in this field are getting accustomed to extreme compensation. But do you know how many SMBs would love to have a capable "tech person" for $60-80k per year? If you're remote you can probably work half days.

This is my plan, after I finish the grind.

[extragood]

To your last point, that's basically what I did. I get a lot of satisfaction from being the technical consult for customers, working alongside Sales and CS, and still having that link back to engineering. The kicker is that I get paid about the same. The right company will highly value a competent customer-facing engineer.

[ryandrake]

I moved over from SWE to Project Management. Yes, I make far, far less money than similarly-leveled SWEs, but I feel like I have more flexibility and I'm not on the treadmill than I was as a perpetual JIRA ticket puncher. It's not for everyone, but if you want a change of pace and would rather not leave tech entirely, there are options.

[pmarreck]

I was considering sales engineering because I get along with both engineers and salespeople and I hear they actually make more money than either, if they're any good, but someone discouraged me, saying that if you crave the creative portion of the SWE job, sales engineering is not going to cut it for you.

I'm still fascinated by the idea for some reason. Closing a big deal (and making that commission on top of a regular base salary) while understanding all the technical sides of a product sounds like a neat way to get that "dopamine hit" wave going. (you know, motivation -> work -> success -> enjoyment of success -> motivation) Building out big software features often seems like yet another lesson about ever-receding goalpost lines.

I will say that a work situation DID show me that I DO need the creative element though- I worked for Deloitte once, building out some enterprisey software for clients for a time and due to business reasons outside my control, they halted all new development on the product and switched to pure support/bugfix mode. My job satisfaction absolutely PLUMMETED.

Another side gig I found fun was... and I don't even know what the name of this job is because I only did it a couple times but it was fun both times... "objective technical performance evaluator". Basically, there are situations out there with nontechnical businesspeople who have hired offshore software engineering labor who end up jerking them around a bit to the point where they suspect they're being jerked around (you can't fool people forever) but they cannot point to anything in particular, so they hire YOU to sit in on calls and call out the BS. I can't tell you how shamefully fun it was to call out other SWE teams on their BS while the businesspeople on whose side you're advocating for are grinning next to you. Essentially, businesspeople hiring offshore SWE teams ALWAYS need an advocate on their side who "talks the talk". It basically works like this- you get github access, you sit in on some calls, you ask some very pointed questions, and then you write up a report about the code, the time things are taking, the designs being proposed or created, etc. With ChatGPT help, writing up such a report would be cake- you could basically just brain-dump a bunch of observed facts into a text file and ask it to create an organized professional report for you- you can even ask it to make it strongly-worded, etc. Easy money, everybody's happy!

[talldatethrow]

Whether deals close or not is always technically outside your control.

What's not outside your control is how many deals you currently have working, so that you aren't reliant on one particular deal closing so that you have income in the immediate next few months.

Obviously the hard part is what happens when things happen to go your way and 3 deals close at the same time. But if you can figure out how to deal with that, most problems with the ups and downs of sales are taken care of.

[piloto_ciego]

Aviation does but the road to it is challenging and you can end up like me where you end up having to do something else if you get sick

[swedonym]

I 100% agree with this. Big tech jobs, or those at medium sized firms, are easy to coast in. I've heard that at some FAANG companies Senior SWE can be viewed as a terminal level and it's totally acceptable to have a flat career trajectory here. Consistent, stable, and reliable salary with an average amount of work sounds good to me, you just need to have a high tolerance for BS.

[roughly]

Something worth considering here is that while the software industry is indeed a cesspool of shitty management, wheel reinvention, and peter-pan syndrome, software itself and the ability to write it is one of the biggest providers of leverage in the modern world.

Consider finding a role or opportunity to write software for people doing something you find meaningful - you can provide an enormous amount of value, and a good technical person is basically a wizard to people who aren't steeped in this kind of thing. The parts of my current role where I've gotten to work directly with scientists to help them solve complex problems have been by far the most interesting and rewarding things I've done in my career.

[purple-leafy]

I didn’t leave, I’m still in it.

But I dropped a day of work and took a salary sacrifice.

Really bad burnout made me hate work, stopped me from enjoying coding, made me lose my confidence in tech, and made me feel like a slave to working without an external life.

Dropping just 1 day has been the largest mental health benefit I have ever had, and I don’t think I will ever work a second over 32 hours a week. Nor will I ever work 5 days a week.

But I made major life changes at the same time.

I deleted my last remaining bastion of social media - Reddit, due to extreme political new, and toxicity. I switched to hackernews as my only form on “social” media.

I also blocked global and local news sites on all my devices. That has been incredibly relieving.

I moved out of my expensive house.

I got back into gaming, realising that giving it up removed a powerful way for me to relieve stress.

Now I’m passionately working on side projects again on weekends, and the extra day is awesome. And I’m generally happy. My phone screen time has dropped from an average 5-6hours on average over the last year, to under 2 hours a day average the past month.

Also one other thing about the elephant in the room - “AI”, I’ve changed my views on it quite some. It truly is overhyped, I’ve stopped using GitHub CoPilot completely, and mostly just use LLMs as a shallow surface search engine. Try not to worry about your job, I don’t think it’s going to take it anytime soon, and it’s also not going to make anyone a 10X Engineer.

Maybe clever people will become 1.5X developers, and people the rely on LLMs too much will become 0.5X developers, so it balances out

[nvarsj]

> I got back into gaming, realising that giving it up removed a powerful way for me to relieve stress.

Been doing this as well. It really is a great way to tickle parts of your brain that normal life can't do. Plus the stress relief.

[haswell]

My recommendation after 20 years or so in tech: if you can, take a sabbatical that’s long enough to completely reset, and then re-assess. Travel, read, try stuff, do personal projects, do nothing for awhile.

I started a sabbatical two years ago, and in the beginning I was convinced that I didn’t want to ever work in tech again. In retrospect, that was at least partially the burnout talking.

It took me over a year before I started warming to the idea again, and I’m now fairly certain I’ll go back to a tech role, but with a very different perspective both on life and on whatever roles I take going forward.

There’s something incredibly valuable about fully replacing your routines and truly taking a break.

I sold some stock to make it happen, and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.

[charlie0]

This is the way. I've heard of the idea that you should seek to re-invent/re-evaluate your life every 7-10 years. Things change, you get older and so does everyone else around you. I find that if you don't take time off to do this consciously and willingly, life will force this upon you one way or another. I'd rather do this proactively and I really do believe taking time off is the best way to break "the mirage" and re-think your life.

[nickd2001]

This is good advice :) There's a lot to like in tech but it can indeed burn people out, and some time away from it doesn't hurt. I also took a sabbatical, years ago, and ultimately returned to tech. I worked the ski season, travelled in summer and lived on little. If you're frugal and do bits of work that pays a little, its possible to do this and have barely eroded savings after a year or so. (caveat- in USA health cover can be an issue)

[SteveNew]

How long was your sabbatical? Did you go back to the same company or did you someplace else? How did you explain the resume "gap?" Do employers really want to hear that you got burned out and took a long sabbatical to recover?

[dangrossman]

I bought some production equipment (laser cutters, printers, heat presses, etc) and manufacture physical goods out of my home. Feels closer to coding when I first fell in love with it -- making the whole product from start to finish, selling directly to the customer, retaining all the fruits of my labor, etc.

[abdullahkhalids]

I see multiple comments asking the same thing. Some time ago, I Asked HN the same thing: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage? [1]. Many great answers.

My dream is alive, but no progress yet.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32141962

[codazoda]

I’m not sure how to figure out if there’s a profitable market I can tap with the thing I want to make.

As an example, I created a modified level so that my wife could set tumblers up for full wrap laser engraving. I’ve been trying to figure out how to sell the tool but maybe there is not much of a market to sell to.

I’ve tried my own website, a free DIY version as an email collection tool, becoming active on laser forums, the finished level on Etsy, and now a DIY kit on Etsy. I can’t seem to sell them. I’ve met similar issues with other items I’ve designed. So, “scratch your own itch” doesn’t seem to create a market fit for me or I have trouble finding that market.

Halp!

[agumonkey]

I think the structure is the worth here. I felt great when doing a stupid min wage delivery job for the same reasons you listed. Making the whole thing, direct customer interaction, no intermediate no structure. You carry the weight as you see fit, free to do better if you can. So much misery comes from the endless negotiation and fake social protocol sucking life and energy out of you.

[kemitche]

What sorts of things do you make? How long did it take you to learn and get proficient?

[hawski]

Could you expand? That's close to what I've been thinking about in terms of my future.

One thing that I worry about is that there seem to be quite a lot of competition in the space and to give clients I feel I would have to go through an Uber of laser cutters. At least that was an impression I've got after ordering a few parts through something like that.

How did you start our transition to it? What is your specialty? Etc.

[fuzztester]

I just checked his hn profile, and was interested to see that dan is the same person who did improvely, which was mentioned by him on multiple hn passive income threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman

https://improvely.com,

[switchbak]

How do you like it? I find myself gravitating to this as well. The little projects I've made have been outrageously fulfilling, like the first days when I was writing code.

I think if you found a niche (like Shop Nation did on YouTube/Etsy) you could do quite well?

Do you find the lack of a boss and the BS of a typical corp job freeing?

[yowlingcat]

The best advice that I can give you is that running away from something is not running towards something. You need to find something you can run towards.

Do you like what you do and not who you have to work with?

Perhaps you want a job in your field that's "good enough" where you take a pay cut for better quality of life (defense, govt contracting, big banking, life sciences, non tech companies that still have hard software problems).

Do you like building but you want to call the shots on something you want to build for a decade?

Perhaps entrepreneurship is for you. But, it's tough -- having made the transition, you trade off one set of people problems (and lack of agency) for another. Net-net it's more stressful and while the highs are higher, the lows are much lower.

Do you want a completely different field entirely?

I've seen folks purchase blue collar flavored "lifestyle businesses" (self-storage, landscaping, etc) and scratch the entrepreneurship itch "in the small". I've seen folks shift to building physical things (taking up welding or woodworking), but you run into the physical constraints of your body which can present challenges. But, this is probably the hardest path for me to answer or advise towards, in part because it requires you abandoning or at least closing the chapter you've build your career experience inside of.

Best of luck. I'd start with the first question; it sounds like you've worked at companies with "ambitious" technologists and found a common thread of misdirected ambition. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can't find a happy home inside technology. Technology is a big world.

[winddude]

I see quite a few suggestions about taking a sabbatical and/or just feeling burnt out. Here's my experience after still not having figure it out after an almost 3 year sabbatical... and still having no idea what I'm doing. I was at a company I thought I loved, but some disagreements over equity, some random marketing manager, and some code quality issues from another lead engineer who was closer with the founder, I was burnt out, and just said fuck it one day, and basically told them fuck you and left. Over the past 3 years, I've done various small projects and started startups, but haven't had the same passion since my last startup, and haven't settled on something since, all I know is I still enjoy coding sometimes... and I know I don't want to work for anyone else ever again.

I'm just burnt out in different ways... and feel like I have too many things to keep up with now. So my advice if you do take a sabbatical have a concrete plan to keep yourself busy, relaxed and motivated, something I didn't do. I just puttered around with random shit, coding projects I found interesting, renovations, small orchard, investing... etc, and I don't feel further ahead although externally I maybe look successful. But that said the company I was at and frustrations probably would have led to me driving off a cliff.

[localfirst]

There is a global surge in blue collar fields especially from highly educated crowd. In South Korea, Samsung workers, students drop out or graduate from elite degrees and opting for simple life.

White collar jobs used to be rewarding and highly paid but overtime it became a glorified day care for adults with Animal Farm dynamics. It's especially bad in Asian countries with strict social hierarchy.

It's no wonder more and more young men are ditching white collar jobs for blue collar workers.

But for some growing # of females (and even smaller number of men), it seems like they are opting to sell images/videos of themselves engaging sexually arousing or sexually explicit content while also engaging in legitimate white collar work. Again in Asia, this trend is even more rampant especially Japan, 40 years ago you couldn't dream of seeing 18 year olds standing on the streets of Tokyo but now they seem to everywhere.

I'm frightened by the whole thing. If young graduates are heading to workshop instead of office, it means they aren't going to be consuming like they used to. There is no need because there is no need to be seen with the stuff people covet here vs in office/startup environments where the rich/poor gap is not only in your face but for everybody else to judge.

[marcog1]

This might not help you, but it might help someone earlier in their career.

I was born, raised and studied in South Africa. Living costs and salaries are cheaper. I worked in California. Instead of living a lavish lifestyle, I saved. In hindsight, I should have saved even more. The important thing I did was opting for cheaper housing. I worked hard, which opened doors. I landed up at a startup that's now doing really well.

I retired after just six years. Six more years later, I'm doing what I want. I've been cycling around Europe and Africa. Next week I'm flying to Canada to explore North America for the next two years. It's a pretty cheap lifestyle, but I get to experience life around the world in a way few people ever do. I'm working on building a presence on YouTube. I've met others who sustain their travels via YouTube. Even if I don't, I can keep going for quite some time living off of savings. I wouldn't be able to do this so easily if it weren't for stock.

I'm not advocating a travel lifestyle. Instead, I'm advocating for saving up while you're earning decent cash. Don't blow it all. Then hopefully you can leave for what you really want to do, and not be tied down due to finances.

[ericyd]

Not only is this unrelated to the OP, but it's also not actionable advice. Sounds like you got lucky and got a bunch of great stock. That's not something most people can count on, and housing in American urban centers only goes so low.

[skeeter2020]

How old are you? Do you have any dependents, a partner, children? Do you have any health issues; what do you do for coverage? What are you going to do in 'n' years when you're older, less relevant and broke?

I too am a saver, and over the past 20+ years we've been suckers. The problem is I grew up as a child when a savings account, essentially a zero-risk asset, paid well over 5% interest. That hasn't been true for a long time, with inflation & taxes grinding away at any marginal gains. I wish I'd financed and leveraged more, not consumption goods but investments. The other problem with being a saver is it's very hard to be one, then flip and be a consumer of your savings. The thing that makes you able to save is also what holds you back from spending. There are a lot of baby boomers who have a lot of assets yet still live very thrifty lifestyles; especially if they grew up blue collar when you could "save yourself rich".

[insane_dreamer]

So long as you are single and childless.

[matrix87]

As an early career I agree with almost everything you say except doing it to quit and not work in industry

I mean, I save quite a bit (more than a third after taxes) just because consumerism is annoying. But at the same time getting paid to write code and learn how computers work seems like a pretty sweet gig to me long term. Especially because there's a compounding effect, the more you know the easier it gets to learn new things

And big company bullshit isn't that bad, at least to me. It's a bunch of convenient things to complain about

[cj]

Very similar thread from a week ago with 100+ comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720121

[light_triad]

Simple advice that is difficult to achieve: work with people you deeply respect and admire.

Find a manager that you can learn from that might not have technical skills but is a genius in another domain like sales. You will learn so much and the difference in culture is mind blowing. In my experience the smartest people tend to be nice and confident. There's been this assumption that being abrasive and being smart go hand in hand, especially in the tech industry. This is for the most part not the case.

You can provide enormous value to an org with your skills.

[whiplash451]

Options you could consider:

1. Taking a significant sabbatical (6-12 months) if you have runway for it

2. Meeting with people you trust (e.g. past colleagues) and discuss your situation openly

3. Switching role. People & strategy could lead to product management (but PM roles comes with their own suite of frustrations)

4. Finding a mentor or a coach and find what drives you. It's there, hidden somewhere in the pile of work that you left behind.

[sgtcodeboy]

My two-cents, I found myself in this position about six years ago. I started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - a sizable time commitment in an of itself - and for the first time really had balance. Now that by itself won't solve the problem. Around that same time I unexpectedly found myself in a new vertical in software (building game backend services). So perhaps moving to a different vertical in software, combined with something to bring the balance - might just be a possible solution. I get that I'm not answering your question, but this worked for me.

[mannyv]

When I burned out of software I went into Sales Engineering. Customer & solution focused, and still technical. You need to understand their business and how your product helps them. You could also try being a Solution Architect in the professional services division, which is more implementation oriented (though SAs can be on the sales side too).

[mrbirddev]

> I've been an EM, which might arguably be the most miserable position that exists.

It's true. I feel the same.

1. Huge cognitive load to deal with when you started taking responsibility for others code . Even worse if you still need to code.

2. No person skills growth. Managing engineers is not real world management to me. It's way too simple and just chores.

3. No business sense growth. You just implement. You don't face the customers/users. You eventually lose connection to the real world. "asymmetrical amount of value" comes from tackling real world problem instead of "arguing about the structure of software".

Maybe it's just me and OP.

[adastra22]

I’m launching a startup to make molecular nanotechnology a reality. Still engineering, but not software.

Founding a company isn’t great work/life balance no matter the field, but it is significantly more rewarding in deep tech imho.

[einpoklum]

Not quite the career choice I'd recommend for someone about to start a family (and whose spouse is not independently rich).

[maximinus_thrax]

Sounds fascinating! Can you disclose the name of the company?

[nvader]

What's the status of the software tools used in this industry? Is there a state-of-the-art "CAD" tool for Nanotechnology design?

[beej71]

Only do it if you love teaching, but I got into teaching after 20 years, and love every minute of it. This is my "retirement". I work my ass off 7.5 months a year doing what I love, and then work on other personal projects to give away during the remainder.

But if you don't love teaching, there are easier ways to make less money. :)

[daveidol]

Curious what topics do you teach and at what level / audience?

[s4074433]

Leaving the tech sector isn't necessarily the solution to your problem. Restructuring your career in a way that is sustainable and viable for you physically and mentally is the challenge that everyone goes through in life. When you are younger, time is on your side while resources are not; the opposite is true when you get older, assuming you have at least tried to consolidate and accrue some resources (people, money and skill/knowledge).

I think most people don't leave IT because they are actually not passionate about something enough to motivate them to take that leap, or they have not tried hard enough and so it leaves them no real choice other than to continue doing what they know best.

It actually doesn't matter what you do as long as you put in an honest effort. Because if you keep at it long enough, it can become something that helps you deal with the stress of the job (rather than giving the money to a psychiatrist), and if you become good enough at it then you will have a natural alternative to turn to if you really can't stand the main job anymore.

I have gone from IT to something that I am passionate about, which is related to mental health, sustainability and actually helping people for a change. It is not easy and I am not there yet, but because I have started early enough, it doesn't feel too painful (it's not the first time I have changed career either) and I am motivated enough to overcome the things that people see as 'problems'.

What are you open to doing that will improve your chances? Would you undertake training or spend time trying out different careers by leveraging your existing skills and knowledge? Maybe education so that you can contribute towards a better future, or building some product or service from what you have mastered in IT?

[nsoldiac]

I can share some real examples I've seen/heard of from trustworthy sources (I'm not there yet myself):

- Open an independent bookstore in a medium-sized midwestern city's downtown

- Get into the jewelry business (not sure if there was family business experience there);

- Open a coffee shop, this person had someone else manage it (must be nice);

- One past tech PM switched careers to become a traveling nurse and was loving it still ~5 years in;

- Wive's friend moved to montana and opened a dog grooming franchise

Note that virtually all require some money to either invest in opening a new business or re-train yourself in some new profession (college/grad school prob just means loans). Doesn't mean it's true for every option, but worth noting how often that's the case.

[tim333]

I have some experience of people doing independent bookstores or coffee shops and it's very hard to make money in those. It might be ok if you are wealthy already but otherwise it's likely to be stressful.