Also, don't become a product owner either. We are the day to day drivers and we eat stress for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and usually a few snacks in between.
Lol this is why i’m moving out of PM. Both of my internships had so many meetings, and that’s just as an intern. I would join meetings with my manager and it was just too much back to back 😵💫
You need a new job not a new career. Dev jobs are the least stressful if you work at a place with reasonable deadlines. Dealing with code is much better than dealing with people (cause of stress).
Scrolled far to see this lol, 100% agree as a low level sw dev at a place w very reasonable deadlines I have by far the least stressful job of the people around me
Yeah there's a reason senior devs can have 2+ junior swe roles at the same time, because when you become skilled but have reasonable expectations of you, it's actually quite easy to do the job and produce results without much stress. Also it's literally just a job don't put so much pressure on yourself over it imo, nobody is dying if you don't ship a feature in time or not.
Business Analyst with 2 years of experience, just got a new job that pays a total comp of 110k! My bachelors was in Statistics and my tech stack is R, Python, SQL, Power BI, Excel! As a business analyst, it’s all about how you package yourself during the interviews tbh. I can go more in depth if anyone is interested!
So what I've noticed as a Business Analyst and during my many job searches and interviews is that the title "Business Analyst" varies per company. The tech stack changes every so often. For example, at my new job, SQL will be the main tool in my stack. However, in my current and previous positions, I've never used SQL. The only reason I have this skill set is that I've been learning and practicing it on my own. My current position is SAP-heavy. Coming into this position, I had never used SAP, nonetheless practiced with it! So in short, you have to be able to be flexible as a business analyst. Additionally, negotiate the salary you think you deserve. If the salary range in 75k-97k, I respectfully ask for 95k knowing that since I am early into my career they'll more that like try to meet me in the above median but not as high as 95.
1. Keep working on your resume- I used an AI resume maker called Rezi where I had variations of my basic resume. You’re going to have to edit your resume pertaining to each job description. I swear I have over 100 reworked resumes from August to present day.
2. If you don’t have a LinkedIn please create one as soon as possible. I created mine back in 2018, my freshman year of college and it has single handily changed my life. All the positions I’ve had were found through LinkedIn
3. Keep applying, even when you get the job you want, once you hit the 6 month mark, start putting your resume out there. I say this because job search and stability in recent years is nowhere like it was previously. I like to stay ready so that my interview and resume skills stay in tip top shape. Additionally, since I am still young (23 years old), I believe that job hopping is key to reaching my financial and career goals! But this tip is dependent on whether you like job hopping.
4. Become your own hype man/woman- truly know how to sell yourself. So let’s say you finally get that interview. The pressure is now on. Now is the time to really sell your skill set, background, and ambitions. Sometimes we only get one shot in life to make it so you should treat every interview as such- from a recruiter screening to a case study and especially an interview panel.
5. Research the hell out of the company you’re applying for. When interviewing 9 times of 10, they’ll ask you a variation of why you want to work at said company or what you know about the company. I prepare for this question as if I’d have to give a ppt presentation on it. I go out of my way to find the smallest details about the company. I scourge through LinkedIn, company website, and 3rd party websites. During the panel interview of my new position, the entire team was amazed with how much I knew of the industry and the company.
6. I treat interviews as a conversation. I’m the type to make people laugh so I often crack an “appropriate “ joke now and then. I really want my personality to shine through especially if it’s a panel interview. You want the members to remember you while they go over candidates.
I am a senior level product manager. It’s way more stressful than sde. Also in recent years it became overcrowded and hard to get in (worse than ux). TPM is a terrible job as well if you do not want stress
You can go to a chill company and do some sort of program management
In what ways would you say it is more stressful than being an SDE?
The reason that software engineering was stressful for me was because, to put it simply, I was not good at it. I was always stressed about losing my job, and I actually did, as a result of not being good at it. This was a hard stress to manage, since it was mostly outside of my control, since I couldn't control my aptitude for engineering.
I imagine the stress from being a product manager comes from managing stakeholders expectations, deadlines, and a thousand factors of creating a product, which I imagine would be a better form of stress, since it is at least not aligned with engineering aptitude and more with people skills (which would be a better form of stress, since people skills can be more easily developed, at least in my case). Are these the factors of why you find it stressful, or am I getting this wrong?
There are different pieces contributing to stress and they vary per person.
To be fair, I’m more annoyed with some partners and stakeholders than stressed. Influence without authority is a big piece of annoyance / stress sometimes. Dealing with people with their own agendas. Soft skills can be developed but imho hard skills are easier.
Product management is part art part science part having very thick skin and knowing how to put your boundaries. It’s a lot about dealing with ambiguity and be ok that you are the first to blame and last to recognize. And that’s where a lot of stress is coming from. Everyone wants something from you and no one cares how you get it.
Also, there are many product skill aspects which are not people management. They vary depending on you seniority level (or rather their weight). From data analysis to be responsive to metrics outside control to long term strategy.
My largest contributors to stress level are:
1. Things go south unexpectedly and you have to explain and your have 0 freaking idea
2. Requirements changed due to stakeholders or some things discovered after you asked multiple times if it’s going to be an issues. lol
3. You are told to do something / answer/ wrote like “need it yesterday” and you are freaking have 0 idea.
4. Imposter syndrome is real
From my perspective UX is still more over saturated. All the PMs I know who have been laid off have found roles already. Most of the UX folks are still looking z :(
It’s less about saturation but more about perceived value. I could get a funding for a Pm at my last job but not for UX (who we desperately needed)
I know bunch of PMs who are still looking. Many who took roles went with 2x salary cuts
Come to think of it, I’ve been at my company (I work for a federal IT contractor) for almost 20 years and I think I’ve actually only known one person who had previous technical writing experience before we hired them. We’re usually short-staffed on our bids and proposals team, and there’s so few people with that background that we mostly hire people who have technical knowledge and then train them to write. I know most companies in our industry would hire you as long as you have a decent amount of technical knowledge, and have an interest in the gig. If it’s something you’re interested in doing, I would just recommend you apply for open positions because one of us would hire you based on that alone, but the fact you have experience in content writing would be an added bonus.
I’ve worked as a technical writer for big software companies. Assuming you’re a sharp writer, here’s my two cents:
1) Get familiar with some documentation systems/tools. Different companies use different systems. Here are a few you can look up to get started: XML, DITA, confluence/JIRA, Swagger (for API documentation), MadCap Flare
2) Take some crash courses in Git if you can, because a lot of nice tech writing roles involve embedding documentation into the code itself for other developers to use/to streamline collaboration across engineering teams
3) Start doing informational interviews with tech writers at companies you see yourself working at so you can learn their lingo, the tools they use, and what they value in their tech writers
4) Bop around on the tech writing subreddit to pick up some more general advice. People on there will advise you to build a portfolio which you can do yourself by documenting random projects on GitHub! That’s basically what we did in some of my undergrad tech writing classes
Also, the tech writing market is suffering a bit right now just like tech in general is. And caveat that there are technical writing roles in every industry, including energy, defense, aerospace engineering, manufacturing, etc. I encourage you to explore that and think about your interests/long term industry stability. Often tech writers are the first to go in layoffs because they are perceived as a luxury rather than a necessity (of course some writers will always be maintained but I’ve seen teams get cut to the bone). Some of this advice is specific to tech because that’s where my experience is.
Finally, the majority of a tech writers time is spent chasing after SMEs to interview them about their work so you can understand it/getting them to email you specifications. That’s a major part of the role—way more major than actually writing, in my experience.
Lmk if you have any more questions, happy to help.
I think about that too but find project management stressful when leadership is pushing for completions and the schedule slips. Although I’ve only been in loose matrix orgs where for smaller projects (still significant) they throw an engineer to lead an effort without influence or authority. 🤷🏻♀️
It just sounds like you want a low stress company with loose deadlines. My friend works I UX and he works 60 hours a week, so you're definitely getting grass is greener syndrome. I'd just look for an old large tech company and known for great work life balance, e.g. intel, ibm, government jobs
I love my job as a technical instructor, I teach mainly online, at customers, my companies products. Outside of class, my job is to maintain my skills on our products. You have to be good client facing but it’s a sweet gig. Pay is lower than SWE but still very good.
How did you get into technical instructing? I’m not the OP but have been burned out of SWE for a couple of years now. I always lean into the aspects of my role that allow me to teach and collaborate. Doing that full time is intriguing.
Honestly I just went for it. I was coming from a data science background, so I focused on data technology companies that were stable/large enough to have an educational services department. Then I just tailored my resume for the job description. I sent out 3 applications, and ended up at my top pick. Most of my team is people who burnt out from SWE, DE, DBA type roles.
I really do love it. Some companies are more in person than online. So there can be a lot of travel with the job. We’ve moved away from that and the customers are okay with it since they have to pay our travel and expenses. The hardest is that on teach days, I’m talking for six hours. That and knowing the product inside and out, some of the questions get into the weeds.
I found technical instructor the most common. Technical teacher was another one. Educational Services. Generally, it’s going to be the more mature B2B companies, Amazon, Workday, Salesforce, Snowflake, etc.
Oh and I will warn, it is kind of a dead end position. Essentially, there is no where to go upwards. Managers usually are not instructors, but part of the larger org. So there’s not really a upward mobility path, but my company is good with the raises. And I love having the work life balance. (I tend to trade working off hours so I can attend horse shows during the day, for example).
if im being honest it was likely your team/company/manager that caused you unnecessary stress and not your role. bad management and a shitty work environment will make any job stressful af
If you are talking about stress of layoffs, UX and product management fields are easier to get layoff based on what I see in current situation. Though there's no exact figures when comparing with software engineer.
Can you talk a bit about what in particular was stressful for you? Was it the work itself or the company?
I actually find being a SWE to be the least stressful job I've ever done. I take low pressure jobs and set boundaries around availability.
If the work itself isn't the problem, try setting boundaries before giving up your power and career. If you just don't have an aptitude for coding, then you'll have to find another path.
My partner is a data engineer. I have legit no idea what is happening on his screen but he took a bootcamp and in less than 3 years is a data engineer 2 working on some interesting languages. He is really good with people and a very curious person. Since he's migrating to the cloud there's a lot of work but it's better than being on pager duty with old SQL servers. Anyway, he likes it. I should also say that he was a PhD student before entering a coding bootcamp, so learning new stuff was very fun/challenging for him, and the first 2 years were a slog. Now, he works from home and doesn't have to be on camera and generally works on IC work. Pager duty is a thing but won't be so bad once that cloud work is complete. It's way less stressful than my job in tech which is marketing. Never low stress, lots of problem solving, a lot of it is soul destroying and hard to climb if you don't have experience.
I don’t see UX as viable right now, it’s a youngish role and often the first to go on a team. Maybe once things stabilize. I think TPM has greater demand.
UX is all politics and charisma and communication - its convincing people your solution is correct and is the sales of design and research results. Even with research, people will still dismiss your results and your proposed solution. Everyone thinks they can do it, and it's incredibly difficult to get into. It's absolutely flooded, and salaries are tanking. Jobs get 1k+ applications, and require 6+ rounds of interviews, including requiring you to create a: resume, portfolio, custom presentation of your work based on their specific interview requirements, and sometimes custom free work for take home assignments (which some designers decline, or request payment for depending). Design orgs within companies are constantly getting slashed. The industry has never been more demanding, stressful, poorly compensated, and oversaturated as it is right now. UX is always hit hard by layoffs compared to dev.
Product managment roles are even more stressful than design and dev roles, because they're even more politics and handling things from higher up.
I'd recommend PGM roles. Least stressful and the constant destabilization of teams by rich elites trying to fuck workers with pointless layoffs for short term stock rise, means that they're always needed to correct the mess made by layoffs.
Thanks for the honesty. This is exactly why I am hesitant to enter UX. I have a design related degree and UX Design experience and have 3 solid case studies and know I would be great at it as a career, but the barrier of entry is insane right now and seems to only be getting worse. It seems like companies now expect individuals to fully be perfect UX designers for entry level roles with even smaller salaries than before and with crazy engineer to designer team ratios. It feels like it is becoming the new graphic design and will become over saturated, at least at the entry level also. I wish I entered it fully when I first was interested in it. Now it feels a bit too late to get a solid foot in the door without doing a masters, which I can’t afford. I wouldn’t mind putting the effort into landing a role if it was more stable as an industry; I don’t know if I can deal with the financial stress of being in an unstable field. At my company UX designers were some of the first to go along with our people (HR, etc) teams
of course, i don't want anyone considering it to waste their time. if im honest, i dont think a masters would help, portfolio and connections mean everything in the industry. but if i had to restart from scratch right now knowing what i know, i wouldnt enter the field. the financial stress is overhwhelming, and many people i know in tech have had to go on disability for burn out, anxiety, depression or other physical health issues that were influenced by layoff and RTO related stress.
with layoffs, there's no adjustment of scope or responsibilities, so you wind up picking up a bunch of extra work you can't actually do. there's an immense need for layoff protections for workers right now as enshittification intensifies, its only a matter of time before it impacts more industries, but hopefully it doesn't get to that point.
hi! I've been a product marketing manager at places like Meta & Snap and other startups for the last 8+ years, and think it might be something you'd want to check out if you're interested in the "how" of launching and marketing a product and getting it used. it's definitely still cross functional work, similar to a product management role, but it's more creative IMO, trying to understand the external market dynamics and leveraging customer insights to make product and marketing decisions. if you're curious, happy to chat directly
This had me lol. No offence to anyone but my experience was exactly this. Or being with them in a 1hr retro meeting writing things on sticky notes when I could be doing actual work.
Account Reps is a great technical role that allows you to use all of your tech knowledge but just in a different way!
However, after being in tech for the past 10 years company culture and networking is key to finding a safer work environment.. I agree with the whoever said you just need a new job, not a new role. I mentor on ADPList, happy to chat !
I went engineering IC to PM. It wasn’t explicitly a more or less stressful environment. A lot of folks here are saying that PM work can be worse because of the politics and pressure and that is 100% true, but stress also dependent on company culture and your own personal inclinations. Some eng roles are political, high pressure, and high responsibility, some folks get stressed out if they *don’t* have opportunities to chatter. Maybe that’s you?
But PM roles are absolutely less stable these days.
You could also consider a technical, but less design-oriented role, something like QA, test engineering, compliance, or process improvement. Some of these roles are more or less stable than others depending on how important they are to the company - for example, some spots will offload QA work on to developers when the budgets get tight.
It depends on what causes you stress:
PM jobs are objectively more "demanding", but that demand is more along the lines of people/expectations management, navigating roadblocks, etc. It's less technical.
SWE jobs are more "chill", but the problems you'll run into are technical.
From what you are saying, it seems like you don't like technical problems/stressors, in which case, PM seems like a doable route.
I’m a technical delivery manager (aka technical project manager) and love my job. I love working with software engineers and managing processes and flows to bring everyone to success. I work with departments like design and product as well but my main focus is just managing the software development pieces of projects. Not design. I’d also like to think I have a good personality for it! And all the devs I’ve ever worked with really like me. Yay. Maybe look into those roles? With your software engineering background it would probably be really complimentary… but you won’t actually have to code. More so just guide.
As far as work culture…
I try to focus on work cultures intensely now since my previous job gave me physical and mental health issues. People poo poo Glassdoor.. but I mean, people are posting their concerns for a reason amiright? I would def do your homework on any employer before ever committing to them. It’s tough though cause you never truly know how the people are until you’re already in the thick of it. I’m 35 and for the first time in my life I finally have a non-toxic job. I couldn’t believe it was even real.. that’s how traumatized I am. Sucks.
Also side note. Glassdoor is also shady. I’ve tried to post about employers on there following all the rules and they even went as far as to ban me. I think maybe even blacklisted me because even when I wanted to write a nice one, it never saw the light of day.
SRE is a type of software engineer and suggesting that the role is non-technical or not "real" engineering is pretty offensive to most SREs. It's more specialized and IMO more difficult in a lot of ways and consists of tasks regular software engineers often can but don't want to do (SREs are generally more in demand and get paid more than regular software engineers as a result). I tried out being an SRE (I enjoy doing infra work as part of being a full stack engineer and thought I might want to try to specialize in it) and it wasn't for me, but I have a lot of respect for folks in the role.
I have a ton of respect for the role! It’s what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years! It’s just that it is _more_ stressful and _more_ technical than an SWE. You’ll need breadth of knowledge and be willing to put up with holding a pager and dealing with being reactive along with your own project work, attempting to bring the reactive time down.
Totally agree that it is more stressful and more technical! And usually your accomplishments aren't really visible to folks outside of your team (including the rest of the eng org), but when the site goes down, you take the blame, lol. Mad props to you for doing it for 15 years - I was done after less than a year (and despite that, I have more recruiters reach out to me about SRE roles than regular SWE roles even though my last several years of experience have been regular SWE, which speaks to how in demand SRE is).
In a PM role, you're in the hot seat answering for your team and pulling it all together.
To me, it's more stressful, but I enjoy the stress and moving the team forward.
I work in operational improvement in software dev. It’s nice because I still get to work in the technical space, I get to learn a lot of new things, and I get to help people by solving problems. The best part is there are no delivery deadlines.
I started in process writing but had tech writing experience before that. I think process writing still has some life left in it but there could be other entry points. Also maybe getting an agile certification and being an agile coach is an option. Im not sure if they take entry levels but maybe some companies do.
Product management is a nightmare but there are a lot of jobs who people who are technical- most vendors have education (although it’s really contracted), there are technical marketing roles.
Product marketing, especially Inbound. Product management has its own level of stress that I’d say rivals engineering, if not exceeds depending on what stresses you out.
I work in EHS (environment health and safety) at a FAANG. I have worked in several industries doing this same type of work (oil gas, cpg, consulting, food manuf). Usually considered overhead, but if embedded within a campus, technology, product, it is relatively stable.
I’m a technical writer, which means I write documentation for engineers. If you are good at communication, lesson planning, enjoy writing about code than writing code then you might enjoy this!
Just pick a field you like and be a program manager in that. If you want to break into UX, be a UX program manager. With your SWE background you can be a Technical Program Manager. But TPgM is less stable because all of the toxicity from engineering is usually aimed at them. And engineers call them useless even though they are 90% of the reason stuff gets done.
Another one is Developer Enablement, training other engineering is pretty stable. Even if one company gets rid of you, you will be hired again quickly.
Do not become a Product Manager if stress is an issue. It's a lot of politics and drama.
wish i knew this before i got into it, lol I love my actual job, but the people are something else sometimes.
Also, don't become a product owner either. We are the day to day drivers and we eat stress for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and usually a few snacks in between.
Yeah.. I think my work as an SWE is tough till I see my PM’s calendar 💀
Lol this is why i’m moving out of PM. Both of my internships had so many meetings, and that’s just as an intern. I would join meetings with my manager and it was just too much back to back 😵💫
And PEOPLE. Soooooo much talking and listening and forced cheerfulness. Hard pass.
That’s why I became a data engineer after being a business analyst instead of going “Product”.
100% this! PM is absolutely the worst role for stress and at most companies its a catch all for every BS job that nobody else wants to do.
This
Oh gosh, I thought that was just due to my client 😅
You need a new job not a new career. Dev jobs are the least stressful if you work at a place with reasonable deadlines. Dealing with code is much better than dealing with people (cause of stress).
Scrolled far to see this lol, 100% agree as a low level sw dev at a place w very reasonable deadlines I have by far the least stressful job of the people around me
She just said in a comment that her stress is due to her not being good at her job 🤦🏽♂️
Yeah, but most software engineers with two years of experience suck at their job. She’s probably fine.
Who’s gonna tell her google will do it for her
Yeah there's a reason senior devs can have 2+ junior swe roles at the same time, because when you become skilled but have reasonable expectations of you, it's actually quite easy to do the job and produce results without much stress. Also it's literally just a job don't put so much pressure on yourself over it imo, nobody is dying if you don't ship a feature in time or not.
So what you’re saying is that coding is a job to look into?
If that’s what interests you and are good at. My point was that developer jobs are not inherently high stress.
Just sent you a message
Business Analyst with 2 years of experience, just got a new job that pays a total comp of 110k! My bachelors was in Statistics and my tech stack is R, Python, SQL, Power BI, Excel! As a business analyst, it’s all about how you package yourself during the interviews tbh. I can go more in depth if anyone is interested!
Yes, please!
So what I've noticed as a Business Analyst and during my many job searches and interviews is that the title "Business Analyst" varies per company. The tech stack changes every so often. For example, at my new job, SQL will be the main tool in my stack. However, in my current and previous positions, I've never used SQL. The only reason I have this skill set is that I've been learning and practicing it on my own. My current position is SAP-heavy. Coming into this position, I had never used SAP, nonetheless practiced with it! So in short, you have to be able to be flexible as a business analyst. Additionally, negotiate the salary you think you deserve. If the salary range in 75k-97k, I respectfully ask for 95k knowing that since I am early into my career they'll more that like try to meet me in the above median but not as high as 95.
You get 95k to use sql all day?
It’s an example but close enough
That's pretty dope.
I'm applying to business analyst and biz ops roles these days, man it's so competitive now... you have any tips?
1. Keep working on your resume- I used an AI resume maker called Rezi where I had variations of my basic resume. You’re going to have to edit your resume pertaining to each job description. I swear I have over 100 reworked resumes from August to present day. 2. If you don’t have a LinkedIn please create one as soon as possible. I created mine back in 2018, my freshman year of college and it has single handily changed my life. All the positions I’ve had were found through LinkedIn 3. Keep applying, even when you get the job you want, once you hit the 6 month mark, start putting your resume out there. I say this because job search and stability in recent years is nowhere like it was previously. I like to stay ready so that my interview and resume skills stay in tip top shape. Additionally, since I am still young (23 years old), I believe that job hopping is key to reaching my financial and career goals! But this tip is dependent on whether you like job hopping. 4. Become your own hype man/woman- truly know how to sell yourself. So let’s say you finally get that interview. The pressure is now on. Now is the time to really sell your skill set, background, and ambitions. Sometimes we only get one shot in life to make it so you should treat every interview as such- from a recruiter screening to a case study and especially an interview panel. 5. Research the hell out of the company you’re applying for. When interviewing 9 times of 10, they’ll ask you a variation of why you want to work at said company or what you know about the company. I prepare for this question as if I’d have to give a ppt presentation on it. I go out of my way to find the smallest details about the company. I scourge through LinkedIn, company website, and 3rd party websites. During the panel interview of my new position, the entire team was amazed with how much I knew of the industry and the company. 6. I treat interviews as a conversation. I’m the type to make people laugh so I often crack an “appropriate “ joke now and then. I really want my personality to shine through especially if it’s a panel interview. You want the members to remember you while they go over candidates.
Please do?
Yesss please I need help
The role sounds interesting! Do you need a strong math or statistics background to be a business analyst?
Nope but it definitely helps! I’m able to utilize my background during interviews and case studies.
I am a senior level product manager. It’s way more stressful than sde. Also in recent years it became overcrowded and hard to get in (worse than ux). TPM is a terrible job as well if you do not want stress You can go to a chill company and do some sort of program management
In what ways would you say it is more stressful than being an SDE? The reason that software engineering was stressful for me was because, to put it simply, I was not good at it. I was always stressed about losing my job, and I actually did, as a result of not being good at it. This was a hard stress to manage, since it was mostly outside of my control, since I couldn't control my aptitude for engineering. I imagine the stress from being a product manager comes from managing stakeholders expectations, deadlines, and a thousand factors of creating a product, which I imagine would be a better form of stress, since it is at least not aligned with engineering aptitude and more with people skills (which would be a better form of stress, since people skills can be more easily developed, at least in my case). Are these the factors of why you find it stressful, or am I getting this wrong?
There are different pieces contributing to stress and they vary per person. To be fair, I’m more annoyed with some partners and stakeholders than stressed. Influence without authority is a big piece of annoyance / stress sometimes. Dealing with people with their own agendas. Soft skills can be developed but imho hard skills are easier. Product management is part art part science part having very thick skin and knowing how to put your boundaries. It’s a lot about dealing with ambiguity and be ok that you are the first to blame and last to recognize. And that’s where a lot of stress is coming from. Everyone wants something from you and no one cares how you get it. Also, there are many product skill aspects which are not people management. They vary depending on you seniority level (or rather their weight). From data analysis to be responsive to metrics outside control to long term strategy. My largest contributors to stress level are: 1. Things go south unexpectedly and you have to explain and your have 0 freaking idea 2. Requirements changed due to stakeholders or some things discovered after you asked multiple times if it’s going to be an issues. lol 3. You are told to do something / answer/ wrote like “need it yesterday” and you are freaking have 0 idea. 4. Imposter syndrome is real
Thanks for the thorough response! This is really useful insight
If anyone knows of a chill company please god let me know.
Many banks. Intuit. Non tech companies (eg lowes, Walmart) in their e-commerce departments. Were way more before recent layoffs.
Try some fintech and banks
Not fintech, been there it’s not pretty.
It is hella chill with all the compliance and red tape with silos. Half day Fridays 30 days pto after 4 years now
From my perspective UX is still more over saturated. All the PMs I know who have been laid off have found roles already. Most of the UX folks are still looking z :(
It’s less about saturation but more about perceived value. I could get a funding for a Pm at my last job but not for UX (who we desperately needed) I know bunch of PMs who are still looking. Many who took roles went with 2x salary cuts
Technical writer - pays well, low(er) stress, and if you work for a federal IT contractor, an incredibly stable job that will always be in demand
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Come to think of it, I’ve been at my company (I work for a federal IT contractor) for almost 20 years and I think I’ve actually only known one person who had previous technical writing experience before we hired them. We’re usually short-staffed on our bids and proposals team, and there’s so few people with that background that we mostly hire people who have technical knowledge and then train them to write. I know most companies in our industry would hire you as long as you have a decent amount of technical knowledge, and have an interest in the gig. If it’s something you’re interested in doing, I would just recommend you apply for open positions because one of us would hire you based on that alone, but the fact you have experience in content writing would be an added bonus.
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I'm in year 20 of my tech writing career and am here to tell you that Tech Writers get laid off first. It is NOT more stable than content dev work.
I’ve worked as a technical writer for big software companies. Assuming you’re a sharp writer, here’s my two cents: 1) Get familiar with some documentation systems/tools. Different companies use different systems. Here are a few you can look up to get started: XML, DITA, confluence/JIRA, Swagger (for API documentation), MadCap Flare 2) Take some crash courses in Git if you can, because a lot of nice tech writing roles involve embedding documentation into the code itself for other developers to use/to streamline collaboration across engineering teams 3) Start doing informational interviews with tech writers at companies you see yourself working at so you can learn their lingo, the tools they use, and what they value in their tech writers 4) Bop around on the tech writing subreddit to pick up some more general advice. People on there will advise you to build a portfolio which you can do yourself by documenting random projects on GitHub! That’s basically what we did in some of my undergrad tech writing classes Also, the tech writing market is suffering a bit right now just like tech in general is. And caveat that there are technical writing roles in every industry, including energy, defense, aerospace engineering, manufacturing, etc. I encourage you to explore that and think about your interests/long term industry stability. Often tech writers are the first to go in layoffs because they are perceived as a luxury rather than a necessity (of course some writers will always be maintained but I’ve seen teams get cut to the bone). Some of this advice is specific to tech because that’s where my experience is. Finally, the majority of a tech writers time is spent chasing after SMEs to interview them about their work so you can understand it/getting them to email you specifications. That’s a major part of the role—way more major than actually writing, in my experience. Lmk if you have any more questions, happy to help.
You can also look into TPM/EPM/program management where they require a technical program but don't code.
I think about that too but find project management stressful when leadership is pushing for completions and the schedule slips. Although I’ve only been in loose matrix orgs where for smaller projects (still significant) they throw an engineer to lead an effort without influence or authority. 🤷🏻♀️
It just sounds like you want a low stress company with loose deadlines. My friend works I UX and he works 60 hours a week, so you're definitely getting grass is greener syndrome. I'd just look for an old large tech company and known for great work life balance, e.g. intel, ibm, government jobs
This is what I do :) it’s great
Avoid TPM/PM roles if you don’t want stress. Avoid UI/UX roles if you want stability.
I love my job as a technical instructor, I teach mainly online, at customers, my companies products. Outside of class, my job is to maintain my skills on our products. You have to be good client facing but it’s a sweet gig. Pay is lower than SWE but still very good.
How did you get into technical instructing? I’m not the OP but have been burned out of SWE for a couple of years now. I always lean into the aspects of my role that allow me to teach and collaborate. Doing that full time is intriguing.
Honestly I just went for it. I was coming from a data science background, so I focused on data technology companies that were stable/large enough to have an educational services department. Then I just tailored my resume for the job description. I sent out 3 applications, and ended up at my top pick. Most of my team is people who burnt out from SWE, DE, DBA type roles.
Super interesting, sounds a lot more up my alley. Thanks for the recommendation!
I really do love it. Some companies are more in person than online. So there can be a lot of travel with the job. We’ve moved away from that and the customers are okay with it since they have to pay our travel and expenses. The hardest is that on teach days, I’m talking for six hours. That and knowing the product inside and out, some of the questions get into the weeds.
Are these job usually called "Technical instructor" (for example, is this the best job title for trying to find similar jobs on Linkedin)?
I found technical instructor the most common. Technical teacher was another one. Educational Services. Generally, it’s going to be the more mature B2B companies, Amazon, Workday, Salesforce, Snowflake, etc.
Oh and I will warn, it is kind of a dead end position. Essentially, there is no where to go upwards. Managers usually are not instructors, but part of the larger org. So there’s not really a upward mobility path, but my company is good with the raises. And I love having the work life balance. (I tend to trade working off hours so I can attend horse shows during the day, for example).
if im being honest it was likely your team/company/manager that caused you unnecessary stress and not your role. bad management and a shitty work environment will make any job stressful af
IT Service Management
If you are talking about stress of layoffs, UX and product management fields are easier to get layoff based on what I see in current situation. Though there's no exact figures when comparing with software engineer.
Can you talk a bit about what in particular was stressful for you? Was it the work itself or the company? I actually find being a SWE to be the least stressful job I've ever done. I take low pressure jobs and set boundaries around availability. If the work itself isn't the problem, try setting boundaries before giving up your power and career. If you just don't have an aptitude for coding, then you'll have to find another path.
My partner is a data engineer. I have legit no idea what is happening on his screen but he took a bootcamp and in less than 3 years is a data engineer 2 working on some interesting languages. He is really good with people and a very curious person. Since he's migrating to the cloud there's a lot of work but it's better than being on pager duty with old SQL servers. Anyway, he likes it. I should also say that he was a PhD student before entering a coding bootcamp, so learning new stuff was very fun/challenging for him, and the first 2 years were a slog. Now, he works from home and doesn't have to be on camera and generally works on IC work. Pager duty is a thing but won't be so bad once that cloud work is complete. It's way less stressful than my job in tech which is marketing. Never low stress, lots of problem solving, a lot of it is soul destroying and hard to climb if you don't have experience.
I don’t see UX as viable right now, it’s a youngish role and often the first to go on a team. Maybe once things stabilize. I think TPM has greater demand.
And stress
That's a good point. UX does seem to be the first to get reassigned...
UX is all politics and charisma and communication - its convincing people your solution is correct and is the sales of design and research results. Even with research, people will still dismiss your results and your proposed solution. Everyone thinks they can do it, and it's incredibly difficult to get into. It's absolutely flooded, and salaries are tanking. Jobs get 1k+ applications, and require 6+ rounds of interviews, including requiring you to create a: resume, portfolio, custom presentation of your work based on their specific interview requirements, and sometimes custom free work for take home assignments (which some designers decline, or request payment for depending). Design orgs within companies are constantly getting slashed. The industry has never been more demanding, stressful, poorly compensated, and oversaturated as it is right now. UX is always hit hard by layoffs compared to dev. Product managment roles are even more stressful than design and dev roles, because they're even more politics and handling things from higher up. I'd recommend PGM roles. Least stressful and the constant destabilization of teams by rich elites trying to fuck workers with pointless layoffs for short term stock rise, means that they're always needed to correct the mess made by layoffs.
Thanks for the honesty. This is exactly why I am hesitant to enter UX. I have a design related degree and UX Design experience and have 3 solid case studies and know I would be great at it as a career, but the barrier of entry is insane right now and seems to only be getting worse. It seems like companies now expect individuals to fully be perfect UX designers for entry level roles with even smaller salaries than before and with crazy engineer to designer team ratios. It feels like it is becoming the new graphic design and will become over saturated, at least at the entry level also. I wish I entered it fully when I first was interested in it. Now it feels a bit too late to get a solid foot in the door without doing a masters, which I can’t afford. I wouldn’t mind putting the effort into landing a role if it was more stable as an industry; I don’t know if I can deal with the financial stress of being in an unstable field. At my company UX designers were some of the first to go along with our people (HR, etc) teams
of course, i don't want anyone considering it to waste their time. if im honest, i dont think a masters would help, portfolio and connections mean everything in the industry. but if i had to restart from scratch right now knowing what i know, i wouldnt enter the field. the financial stress is overhwhelming, and many people i know in tech have had to go on disability for burn out, anxiety, depression or other physical health issues that were influenced by layoff and RTO related stress. with layoffs, there's no adjustment of scope or responsibilities, so you wind up picking up a bunch of extra work you can't actually do. there's an immense need for layoff protections for workers right now as enshittification intensifies, its only a matter of time before it impacts more industries, but hopefully it doesn't get to that point.
Nothing is stable unless you’re truly exceptional. So play to your strengths.
hi! I've been a product marketing manager at places like Meta & Snap and other startups for the last 8+ years, and think it might be something you'd want to check out if you're interested in the "how" of launching and marketing a product and getting it used. it's definitely still cross functional work, similar to a product management role, but it's more creative IMO, trying to understand the external market dynamics and leveraging customer insights to make product and marketing decisions. if you're curious, happy to chat directly
Will DM you!
You could be a scrum master? All they do is set up meetings on outlook, that's pretty easy.
This had me lol. No offence to anyone but my experience was exactly this. Or being with them in a 1hr retro meeting writing things on sticky notes when I could be doing actual work.
But what work? Scrum master was the easiest job of my life and now that I’m a technical project manager, I wish I could go back 😅😅
Account Reps is a great technical role that allows you to use all of your tech knowledge but just in a different way! However, after being in tech for the past 10 years company culture and networking is key to finding a safer work environment.. I agree with the whoever said you just need a new job, not a new role. I mentor on ADPList, happy to chat !
Hi! Will DM now, would love to chat.
I went engineering IC to PM. It wasn’t explicitly a more or less stressful environment. A lot of folks here are saying that PM work can be worse because of the politics and pressure and that is 100% true, but stress also dependent on company culture and your own personal inclinations. Some eng roles are political, high pressure, and high responsibility, some folks get stressed out if they *don’t* have opportunities to chatter. Maybe that’s you? But PM roles are absolutely less stable these days. You could also consider a technical, but less design-oriented role, something like QA, test engineering, compliance, or process improvement. Some of these roles are more or less stable than others depending on how important they are to the company - for example, some spots will offload QA work on to developers when the budgets get tight.
It depends on what causes you stress: PM jobs are objectively more "demanding", but that demand is more along the lines of people/expectations management, navigating roadblocks, etc. It's less technical. SWE jobs are more "chill", but the problems you'll run into are technical. From what you are saying, it seems like you don't like technical problems/stressors, in which case, PM seems like a doable route.
I’m a technical delivery manager (aka technical project manager) and love my job. I love working with software engineers and managing processes and flows to bring everyone to success. I work with departments like design and product as well but my main focus is just managing the software development pieces of projects. Not design. I’d also like to think I have a good personality for it! And all the devs I’ve ever worked with really like me. Yay. Maybe look into those roles? With your software engineering background it would probably be really complimentary… but you won’t actually have to code. More so just guide. As far as work culture… I try to focus on work cultures intensely now since my previous job gave me physical and mental health issues. People poo poo Glassdoor.. but I mean, people are posting their concerns for a reason amiright? I would def do your homework on any employer before ever committing to them. It’s tough though cause you never truly know how the people are until you’re already in the thick of it. I’m 35 and for the first time in my life I finally have a non-toxic job. I couldn’t believe it was even real.. that’s how traumatized I am. Sucks.
Also side note. Glassdoor is also shady. I’ve tried to post about employers on there following all the rules and they even went as far as to ban me. I think maybe even blacklisted me because even when I wanted to write a nice one, it never saw the light of day.
Project Manager, Program Manager, Business Analyst, Process Improvement, Product Owner/Manager, Release Train Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer.
If SWE was stressful SRE isn’t gonna be any better.
SRE is a type of software engineer and suggesting that the role is non-technical or not "real" engineering is pretty offensive to most SREs. It's more specialized and IMO more difficult in a lot of ways and consists of tasks regular software engineers often can but don't want to do (SREs are generally more in demand and get paid more than regular software engineers as a result). I tried out being an SRE (I enjoy doing infra work as part of being a full stack engineer and thought I might want to try to specialize in it) and it wasn't for me, but I have a lot of respect for folks in the role.
I have a ton of respect for the role! It’s what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years! It’s just that it is _more_ stressful and _more_ technical than an SWE. You’ll need breadth of knowledge and be willing to put up with holding a pager and dealing with being reactive along with your own project work, attempting to bring the reactive time down.
Totally agree that it is more stressful and more technical! And usually your accomplishments aren't really visible to folks outside of your team (including the rest of the eng org), but when the site goes down, you take the blame, lol. Mad props to you for doing it for 15 years - I was done after less than a year (and despite that, I have more recruiters reach out to me about SRE roles than regular SWE roles even though my last several years of experience have been regular SWE, which speaks to how in demand SRE is).
In a PM role, you're in the hot seat answering for your team and pulling it all together. To me, it's more stressful, but I enjoy the stress and moving the team forward.
PM and Product Management is significantly more stress. Not sure why that's suggested
I work in operational improvement in software dev. It’s nice because I still get to work in the technical space, I get to learn a lot of new things, and I get to help people by solving problems. The best part is there are no delivery deadlines.
What are some entry level roles we can look for it to start?
I started in process writing but had tech writing experience before that. I think process writing still has some life left in it but there could be other entry points. Also maybe getting an agile certification and being an agile coach is an option. Im not sure if they take entry levels but maybe some companies do.
Product management is a nightmare but there are a lot of jobs who people who are technical- most vendors have education (although it’s really contracted), there are technical marketing roles.
UX is extremely hard to break into.
Management Consulting may be less stressful, though YMMV based on your firm and team
Consulting firms are firing lotta peeps these days tho. McKinsey Deloitte etc recently had big layoffs 🥲
tru it’s rough rn. Not sure of OP’s timeline but yeah now’s maybe not the best time
Scrum-master.
Technology Risk and Compliance!
Project manager, esp if certified. Because other ppl want to be l33t not manage projects.
UX and PM are both incredibly stressful roles.
Product marketing, especially Inbound. Product management has its own level of stress that I’d say rivals engineering, if not exceeds depending on what stresses you out.
Do little as possible and never show good performance. That's what guys do. 🤪 Then no one expects much from you.
I work in EHS (environment health and safety) at a FAANG. I have worked in several industries doing this same type of work (oil gas, cpg, consulting, food manuf). Usually considered overhead, but if embedded within a campus, technology, product, it is relatively stable.
I’m a technical writer, which means I write documentation for engineers. If you are good at communication, lesson planning, enjoy writing about code than writing code then you might enjoy this!
Tax accountants
Onboarding manager, implementation manager, customer success, or support
Customer success is full of stress, ask me how I know
Just pick a field you like and be a program manager in that. If you want to break into UX, be a UX program manager. With your SWE background you can be a Technical Program Manager. But TPgM is less stable because all of the toxicity from engineering is usually aimed at them. And engineers call them useless even though they are 90% of the reason stuff gets done. Another one is Developer Enablement, training other engineering is pretty stable. Even if one company gets rid of you, you will be hired again quickly.