Any ex Software Engineers?

Interested to hear if anyone on here moved away from software engineering towards something less hands on. If so what did you go on to do?

If it’s not obvious from the question, I’m a software engineer now and lately I’ve been wondering if I see myself writing code for the rest of my career.

Yep. Left software to start a bike company. Seems to be working. Mind you I did sort out IT stuff last week so I never quite got away from the software.

I used to write code. Then I became a ‘consultant’ which involved some code, but designing components using the products we sold, training, advising and leading some design and analysis work. Then I moved to a sort of architect oversight role where partly I get people out of crap situations they’ve got themselves into with our products, and partly I just help people who’ve got stuck.

My aim has always been an architect role i.e. designing stuff for people rather than implementing it.

@benpinnick I’m probably thinking of a slightly less drastic change!

I guess something like @molgrips describes is probably where I’m headed. A year or two back if anyone had asked I’d have said I wouldn’t want to do something where I wasn’t pretty hands on most of the time, but lately I’m starting to feel like I’ve had enough of it.

I was a Java developer for a long time, and have a software engineering degree. Gradually moved into architecture over a period of about ten years. Now a Solution/Enterprise Architect for one of the big consultancies, twenty four years into my career.  I’m generally accountable for all the technical aspects of large-scale software transformations, having often lead a team of architects to design them.

Having the development background has proven to be very useful.

Yep, left software engineering back in 1996 to move into consulting, then advertising to public sector to scientist. No logic other than opportunities presented themselves and I took them. Redundancies played a big part – it is harder to give something up, then deal with the fact you need to find work. The latter opens your mind to the opportunities.

I’m a bit sick of the short term nature of the specific job I am in – I’d rather have bensales’s job but moving is always tricky.  I did do my CV but whilst I have really developed my skills and experience I haven’t been responsible for a project. I’ve saved loads, mind.

I was a software engineer for nearly a decade and was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time when the company I worked decided they wanted to introduction an Architecture team. Been doing that for the last 15 years now.

I do sometimes miss the development as I am often off working on the next project when things go live so don’t always see the fruits of labour.

I would say architecture can be very different at different companies. There are frameworks like TOGAF but I’d only suggest reading that if you have trouble sleeping.

There are frameworks like TOGAF but I’d only suggest reading that if you have trouble sleeping.

I found doing TOGAF training really interesting(1) 😀 But you do need a project/programme or a business to architect at real scale to be able to put it properly into practice.

(1) Exams set for June and July…

The TOGAF course I did was interesting but that was more down to the person teaching the course and other people attending and their experiences.

Good luck with the exams I found the second one a bit easier.

I am to get all the certification I can before considering a move.

We run the courses ourselves internally as we’re members of the Open Group and big contributors to the framework. Always great being taught the stuff by someone who actually contributed it in the first place. Pretty privileged way to learn it.

The other route a lot of software engineers take is turning to the dark side and becoming project managers. Wish I’d done it earlier to be honest. As I got older being a Javascript dev, it was getting too hard for my old brain to keep up with whether I was now Angular, or React, or NodeJS and you get to a level where the next job/salary you want demands more and more that you just can’t keep up with (well, I couldn’t anyway). Life catches up too, you don’t have the time or inclination to study for the next trends when you’ve got kits to feed, water and read books to, so found project management was more tranaferable between jobs.

I now manage managers of devs. Not for everyone but I love it. You do have to like people, and figuring out what makes teams tick. I mostly just try and stop folk being too “managery” and instead encourage them to do stuff that keeps things fun and interesting for devs, which (shock!) is great for productivity.

Not quite so keen on having to deal with the non-tech aspects of the job, but hey ho, it’s just another thing to learn and get good at. I love and miss coding but really when I say that I mean I love hacking a web app together for fun, rather than professional full time software development, which IMO is under appreciated as a Hard Job.

I’m a Principal Engineer, which means I tell people what to write, not how to write it (most of the time)

Not sure I prefer it, but it’s definitely better paid.

A slightly different trajectory to others on the thread, but I went from being a Python SWE to DevOps to essentially being a chief Kubernetes architect. My work now is much more technical and covers a much broader range of the stack, rather than going the slightly-less-technical route that most people do to escape.

Dev, to team lead, to dev manager to delivery manager to scrum master/agile coach.

I still ask mildly technical questions and I understand technical discussions (to a point) but now that I work with embedded C Devs I’m a bit beyond my old c# web days.

I like helping people deliver work, small, medium and large scale, working with technical people and trying to make it fun. Lots of people are pretty anti frameworks and scrum/agile, but people seem to like working with me and I’ve been stably employed for a good while now (mostly).

Solution/Enterprise Architect here.

The best thing about it is being exposed to all kinds of different technology (not at a hands on level, but understanding what it does, whose requirements it relates to and pitfalls of it)

It’s also really rewarding to be singularly well placed to envision and convey all aspects of a complex solution at a high level to senior people. Often everyone else flaps about around their own individual bit and can’t see the big picture. So rewarding to bring clarity when that starts to happen.

The most useful part of our role, really, is helping to turn requirements into a set of deliverable designs iterated over a programme of work.

Needs projects of a significant size and complexity for Solution/Enterprise architects to be worthwhile, really.

If you work at a lower level then IME this can end up with a lot of treading on toes with principal engineers / devs.

Was a web developer, so HTML, JavaScript, asp.net, SQL and that jazz. Moved up, got into the technical design of things, where I enjoyed the customer facing parts. Guess it would be classed as a product owner now.

Moved over to being a deployment engineer, which I enjoyed as it was more customer facing and problem solving.

Then to Project Management and now a Programme Manager. So basically managing Project Managers and dealing with escalations.

Can still follow code, very vaguely understand tech speak and hack together a bit of SQL, which comes in handy for spotting tech people talking mince.

Sometimes I miss the single-minded focus of developing, but then I remind myself that writing CRUD app after CRUD app got really boring.

I started as programmer in late 90s, worked in few industries and then slipped into team lead and then to project manager role. I have been working as pm for over 20 years with some consulting jobs between my own projects.

I can’t find my way around modern frameworks to be productive as a programmer anymore but can still ask awkward questions about process logic and error handling from the devs.

I did:

IT support (graduate job)

Software engineer

Requirements/business analysis – working with product teams to spec what they wanted from the software.

Architecture/strategy.

Technical lead – bridge between product teams and technical teams, general troubleshooting. Was a smaller business unit in the .com days so bringing some order to the mild chaos.

Portfolio management – getting into the funding and budget side of things.

Team leading, mixed teams of technical and project/programme managers.

Technology innovation – looking at new ideas and technology, finding business uses for it.

Technology sales/account management.

I was never cut out to be a software engineer or anything deeply technical. It didn’t really motivate me, and I prefer working with people rather than spending time alone coding.

What motivates you? What do you want from a job?

I was for almost 40 years.

I moved to retirement. Highly reccomend it. Much less stressful, the hours are fab. I am lucky that I can do it both home based and whilst away.

Sorry 😬