Context: worked as a developer with 10+ years, team lead for the last 3, mainly scale ups in the 1-10 million users range. Decided to stop coding for reasons (not related to this post) and decided to switch careers

New company is large b2b that sells industrial machines, I am the guy that the customers get in touch with when they need help with integration… in short, after installation I tell the customer development team how the api works, so I need to know all the apis and protocols of all different machines, very, very deep domain knowledge required (still learning every day after months of work) lots of internal docs etc.

(We’re talking big manuals with hundreds of pages for each machine)

I also manage the customer development team when needed (large scale custom integrations)

When support fails I get in touch with the customer and escalate to project manager or in-house developers as needed, that kind of stuff. Sometimes I go on site if I think it’s necessary

I presented myself as a developer to the hardware guys and they are just super happy to have me, mainly because most of my responsibilities were on them before, so I’m really making their workload much lighter. I laugh at their jokes about firmware developers and project managers

I presented myself as an ex developer to the development team and told them I am on their side and here to shield them from management shenanigans. I make sure to laugh at every joke they make about project managers. So far they love me

I presented myself to the project management team as a professional team lead who “hasn’t been coding in a while” and told them I’ll make sure i will do my best to stop inflated estimates and buggy releases. I make sure to laugh every time they make a joke about the development team. So far they love me.

Occasionally I will spot a bug… initially I was thinking of how to fix them and honestly getting anxious… now I can use my skills to do the best bug report you’ve ever seen, forward it to QC and then immediately forget about it

Sometimes the bug is in a third party tool, so I’ll be writing an angry email, but I know these guys and they know me, they know it’s chill

5pm and one minute I am out of the office

Coworkers are actually nice

Nobody tries to sell me functional programming or new frameworks

No code reviews, no bugs, …

Less than 10 minutes of commute

Lost 12kg

Side projects (it’s not my profession anymore, but I still code as a hobby) have never been more rewarding

Work requires a 3-4 travel abroad every 1-2 months, which is a nice break from the routine

All this for a 30% paycut when compared to my previous job, but hey, can’t have it all