Stable & slower paced industries for a tech career?
Posted by Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 96 comments
Most of my career I have been in scale-up hyper growth companies and startups. Honestly I had enough from the chaos, volatility, and false dreams of a massive exit/IPO. I want to switch to something slower paced and stable, that’s more suitable for a family man.
What are industries/markets/domains that one can peruse their career in tech without any drama. Just get good pay for doing sufficiently challenging work and go home, possibly some stock if it’s public. Nice chill people, professional environment, and that’s it.
Bangoga@reddit
Insurance. Alot of data work. Pretty slow moving
zeocrash@reddit
I work in the utilities sector and it's a pretty stable career and a reasonably paced career, I have a nice work life balance.
Recent_Science4709@reddit
“Possibly some stock”, honestly feels like you haven’t let it go.
Look for jobs at smaller companies; lots smaller companies do of ERP/logistics/shipping/trucking. Caveat is if it wasn’t for Amazon’s push most of these companies would still be primarily using EDI (standard introduced in the 1940s) , and many still do.
No_Structure7185@reddit
defence. everything is slow here 😅 projects span over years.
isaacfink@reddit
I am surprised no one mentioned Healthcare, my work specifically isn't easy but there are no 3am phone calls and I am not expected to push out half finished products because the ceo promised investors the moon
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
That half finished products because of big promises is a big pain point for me. Everything is always so rushed. Luckily my on-call is relatively stable and bearable.
circalight@reddit
Academia, healthcare
smichael_44@reddit
Aerospace. We do mostly government work and everything is super chill.
Also, my company hates software companies so we build everything in house. It’s a good and a bad thing. We’re building an in house quality suite right now.
anonymous104180@reddit
what do you mean with your company hate software company? aren’t you a software company after all? or do you think designing isn’t part of Software?
smichael_44@reddit
They hate buying software. It’s insanely expensive. We got quoted for a quality tool and it was $25k/seat and we needed 20. Then $5k/year perpetually. At that cost, it’s cheaper in the long run for 2-4 developers to work on it for 1-2 years and develop something in house. Which 9 times out of 10 is the direction my company goes. But we’re not a software company. It’s all internal tools.
No_Quit_5301@reddit
$25k/seat ??? What tf did it do?
DorphinPack@reddit
Probably walked your dog and washed your car according to sales :)
On a serious note I feel like a lot of b2b software functions like those crappy luxury apartment development deals where the contracts are inked, years of work go in and the people who knew it was never a good idea to begin with are already gone. In the end if you’re holding the bag you HAVE to try to sell at whatever price will recoup the funding structure you set up years ago.
Pitching an investor the same way sales pitches to customers, basically. Follow through is someone else’s problem. I think lots of orgs still have money in on what used to be considered a safe gamble, if that makes sense. And from what I’ve always heard most of the VC money is actually well covered unless there is a big simultaneous crash. It’s the orgs holding the bag and therefore their workers being crunched and their customers being fleeced.
smichael_44@reddit
FMEA documentation tool. Which is hilarious because anything related to quality always looks like crap (basically just a desktop app that looks like excel but worse). We built something much, much better imo. Very modern approach to it.
Angerx76@reddit
Aerospace companis generally aren't software companies.
DoubtPast2815@reddit
Work in this space too and can confirm. Super interesting stuff too
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Yeah that sounds interesting. I have mainly experience in SaaS products and web technologies. Isn’t aerospace mainly around hardware, low level embedded, and algorithmic stuff?
JellyfishNeither942@reddit
Low level c to high level c++ and rust in some edge cases
smichael_44@reddit
Yeah, like I know our embedded team writes a lot of C++.
Almost all web services are written in .NET or Python.
We’re actually designing a new high speed data acquisition system and I’ve really been pushing rust to the team as the foundation of it.
We also still have some fortran floating around for really old government programs.
smichael_44@reddit
Yes and no. I can’t speak for all of aerospace, but my company has two sides. Product & Design.
Product is the ops side and they maintain real time manufacturing systems. It’s all monitored with web apps that were custom built and machines talk over mqtt. Their side is a bit of a mess imo but whatever.
Design contains everything you mentioned and more. Where I work right now, I am a lead software engineer making internal tools to support design. One thing we did a couple months ago is database a bunch of converted to json test files (since they were all originally stored off as binary formatted files and a pain to deal with) in a multi-model nosql database, made a simple backend with node.js/express, and then gave them some nice graphing tools in a react app. It’s “simple” work but it feels great to see your app up on tens of other engineers screens as you walk around the office.
AstronautDizzy6725@reddit
VSaaS. Just my personal experience rn—didn’t seek out this industry but ended up here and it sounds a lot like what you’re looking for
makemefit2021@reddit
Telecom
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
AT&T is good?
makemefit2021@reddit
It’s stable and slow. Businesses will literally collapse if networks go down.
PracticalBumblebee70@reddit
Pharma broooo
diablo1128@reddit
I worked at a medical device company for 15 years creating things like dialysis machines. The work was slow and steady for the most part. Pay was low, but it was easy low stress work once you realize that deadlines mean nothing.
Don't expect to be working with top SWEs though. I found most people to be average at best. They were there to earn a check and go home. They are not looking to design highly efficient software as the bar was it works good enough while meeting requirements.
There are no scaling problems in what I worked on as it's one person on one device at the end of the day. So you always have enough resources on the various boards. You just need to worry about meeting system timing.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
This sounds like the other extreme end from where I am today. I don’t think this type of slow and steady would make me happy, as I won’t feel like I’m growing and learning things.
mastermog@reddit
Another vote for universities. I’ve done a bit of everything, and I’m currently at my second university and it’s super chill.
Startups/scaleups are the worst for what you are wanting, they not only expect your time, they expect complete buy-in to their vision.
I’ve also been at the (almost) FANG end, and that can be equally bad.
Universities and retail (think big box) have been my most chilled rolls. Basically places where tech isn’t the core product, but on the flip side, don’t expect super forward thinking engineering culture
Fire_Lord_Zukko@reddit
Why are you at a 2nd university? I thought the main draw would be the state pension. Did you stay within the same pension program? The regular salary is just shiite, isn’t it?
mastermog@reddit
Is that a US concept? I'm not American so I don't know how it works over there, our (Australian) retirement fund is called "Super" and our employer pays a fixed percentage (base line ~12%) into it every pay cycle.
That super fund is isolated, and not related to the place of employment.
mastermog@reddit
Ok, I just asked my good mate ChatGTP, here is the summary:
So it sounds like our Super is similar to your 401k? And you're referencing Pension, but we don't really have that here.
putocrata@reddit
I worked and have friends in investment banking. It's the chilliest job I ever had, and pays adequate money.
I saw people sleeping on the meetings and booths, I took 2+ hours for lunch, 3 hours in fridays, while doing 9-6 schedule, sometimes I'd leave early. I had colleagues not showing up, or just showing for the afternoon and leaving early, tasks that could get done in an afternoon taking months. Plus all the stories I hear from other friends in the same sector that corroborate my experience (IB, clearing houses, etc).
I'm seriously considering retiring in IB, with all the technical knowledge and experience I have as of now it will be an incredibly easy job.
considerfi@reddit
Can you share some company names to look at? Doesn't have to be yours if you don't want to. I never see banks pop up in my searches so I'd like to go look at some roles and see what the mismatch is.
Dokrzz_@reddit
I think it depends.
I work in IB as a software dev and it was quite chill at first, but after I clocked a year on my team expectations rose up and now I work around 40-ish and occasionally have to push it up to 50 and the very rare a little bit more.
But overall, it's a REALLY good balance of competent co-workers, challenging work and not overbearing hours (if you're decent at your job). I am in Europe though
SomeoneInQld@reddit
Insurance / government / utilities. / Military / university to name a few.
neolace@reddit
Scrap Insurance or any financial industry
Easy_Aioli9376@reddit
Just gonna throw in a counter point. Insurance industry in my experience has been the best.
Great management, our work is respected, stable 9 to 5, and very little stress.
The best part is the systems are quite complex, so it definitely scratches that programming itch you might not get in other companies.
AtDeathsDoor@reddit
Exact same here, we get a lot of autonomy with our tech stacks and our POs appreciate the tech debt even if they don't understand it!
realhenrymccoy@reddit
Same experience here. At a big financial/insurance company and it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Bit of a culture shock coming from small companies and startups where they seem less concerned with pushing velocity and want stability and accuracy.
william_fontaine@reddit
Yeah, I've worked more 60-70 hour weeks in insurance over a decade than I care to remember. Couldn't go through a single year without at least a few months like that.
neolace@reddit
Nailed it, not to mention the fact that the whole company doesn't care about IT at all. They love the sales people, period. While we grind out through weekends and marriages. I still haven't been able to get how someone can get leave?
csanon212@reddit
Not Geico, though. They recently brought in Amazon PIP culture.
mnemonikerific@reddit
Investment Banks are very focused on stability and may go to the extremely of almost always trying to shy away from anything that’s close to the latest tech for fear of losing stability. Also there’s a heavy focus on stack consistency at least within a business unit.
On the good side you are able to reuse skills and avoid the “constant r&d” drama but on the flip side one might stagnate. Also there’s focus is on delivery but maintenance (eg spending time to upgrade to a new framework version) is perceived as avoidable cost. And then again they might expect features which require a newer framework version but may be unwilling to approve the dev and QA cycles for the same. The last IB i worked at, was reluctant to let go of Internet explorer to allow Firefox or chrome. Almost every single package had to go through IT Sec approval. A “library” team was spawned to take available libs and customise them to the IB and it was mandated that only that customised version could be used company-wide. This group quickly became a bottleneck then was disbanded and then a new bunch of framework specific lib-customisation groups were re-spawned.
Atwolf@reddit
I work for a bank as a dev. It’s pretty chill and WFB is good. Would recommend this if it hasn’t been said already.
allllusernamestaken@reddit
Big Tech.
They are not startups. They are not always in hair-on-fire mode because their last funding round has almost run dry. They have 10x the engineers on any given team compared to smaller companies.
They are big, bloated, bureaucratic enterprises. The only difference between Big Tech and Big Banks is that, in tech, you're a profit generator to be maximized. At Big Banks you're a cost center to be minimized.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
I actually heard from some friends that working in big tech like FAANG companies is the ultimate recipe for burnout. It’s all overly competitive, stressful, and if you’re not a 10x yourself you’ll find your way out pretty fast.
robertbieber@reddit
This is 1000% dependent on the org/team you end up on and your ability to steer away from drama/doomed projects and manage your time/expectations/career trajectory. It's very easy to go into big tech and end up working 80 hour weeks forever chasing the next promotion, but you can also get to a terminal level, establish healthy working hours/expectations, and have a very manageable work/life balance. Granted, I haven't really been in that world since the first big round of layoffs post-COVID, and I'm sure things are probably tougher across the board at this point
Izacus@reddit
Are those friends at Amazon? :P
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Meta
bombaytrader@reddit
It’s very team dependent. Lot of friends at meta.
texruska@reddit
Depends massively on the product and the team. Eg amazon is known to burn people out, but Ring was a very pleasant place to work for
g0atdude@reddit
Even at Amazon it depends on the team. I was on 2 teams, both were pretty chill.
nog_ar_nog@reddit
I’m a senior in big tech and I work 10-12 hour weekdays and 8 hours a day on weekends because we have impossible fake deadlines that have to be met. Especially if you want to get promoted. Some L4s in our team are pretty much coasting and don’t really know much so the level matters too.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Sounds horrible man
Empanatacion@reddit
I'm guessing they are at Amazon. The others aren't nearly as bad.
tinmru@reddit
Yeah, I’m at a known private bank in the country I currently live in and can concur we are getting cuts.
ivancea@reddit
Any, really. Just avoid the scale-up hyper-growth startups you don't like
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Would you say specifically public companies? Or even private companies that are stable & profitable?
ivancea@reddit
I've happily worked in either consulting companies, companies with product, startups, and big tech. It's not about the company kind, it's about the culture. Always look for the correct culture in a company!
donatj@reddit
Until very recently edtech had been pretty chill. They built up like crazy during COVID though and with those remote learning dollars drying up layoffs have come.
Adept-Log3535@reddit
Traditional aerospace isn't stable right now. I work in this field and most primes are doing small but non-stop layoffs. There are a lot of new companies backed by Silicon Valley & Wall Street, and they are disrupting the industry in a good way. Government loves fixed price contracts and the primes are not known for their budgeting skill.
HoratioWobble@reddit
My experience is it's less about the industry and far more about the management.
You'll find the people giving you suggestions have either been lucky or just assuming because they're regulated.
The urgency and the pace is almost always artificial and it's because of poor management
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Managers definitely have an impact. My point is mainly around some industries being inherently of slower or faster rate of change. If you take AI & Cyber security for example, both are very fast paced, hype driven, and very competitive. As a result, working in such companies is naturally more volatile & chaotic.
HoratioWobble@reddit
That's my point - they aren't naturally more volatile & chaotic.
It entirely depends on the management. The volatility and chaos you're trying to avoid is almost entirely a function of bad management.
Aggressive and arbitrary deadlines, micro management, poor process, robbing peter to pay paul mentality.
You can work in AI & Cyber Security and it can be completely chill, you can work in banks and it's a tragic, chaotic and stressful mess all of the time.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Interesting take, thanks for sharing your perspective.
Just_Type_2202@reddit
Banks
Unique-Image4518@reddit
In my experience Google and PayPal were both chill. I worked a maximum of 12 hours a week. Usually less. It's team dependent, obviously, but massive companies tend to move slowly and never get anything done. I'm hoping to retire at Google. I've heard from people that Adobe and Cisco are also super chill and great places to retire.
tinmru@reddit
Just to clary - so you worked 2.4 hrs per day?
Unique-Image4518@reddit
Yes. It's team dependent obviously. I'm sure the Gemini team at Google worked far more than I did.
Ujwal_09@reddit
dm me and I will tell you the exact company to join for an exact role
thearn4@reddit
I'm working internal R&D (traditional machine learning) for a large manufacturing company. Slower pace than tech but I still feel like if we're successful the impact is tangible. So in short I would consider looking for software roles at non software companies. The downside is that normal standard practices that you might take for granted may not be followed as cleanly.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
I learned to appreciate concrete impact, rather than purism of engineering practices. Sometimes you have both, though it’s rare. I’ve seen companies with top tier engineering culture while nothing meaningful actually gets shipped.
thearn4@reddit
Agreed, and I think it's a distinction I'm starting to appreciate in this role.
dryiceboy@reddit
Based on my experience, it's going to be Utilities (gas, hydro, etc.), Government, and Universities.
Western_Objective209@reddit
I had a utility job that was unbelievably chill. Basically hired me to do a weekly process that was optimized down to a few hours a week of work, and occasionally had to work nights when there were storms but was getting paid extra. Only left because they were threatening RTO, but 3 years later the team I worked with was still WFH
Neverland__@reddit
Government surely
ZukowskiHardware@reddit
I’m shocked at how slowly stuff moves in the video domain.
putocrata@reddit
I worked and have friends in investment banking. It's the chilliest job I ever had, and pays adequate money. I'm seriously considering retiring in IB
Due_Helicopter6084@reddit
Good pay, challenging, stock and professional.
FANG.
Good people and chill?
Doesn't exist.
devhaugh@reddit
It does exist. I'm there now.
Work is good, culture and people are great. I'm fully work from home. I can do to appointments etc during the work day, no problem. The trade off, yeah I'm leaving money on the table
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
In what industry/domain if I may ask?
devhaugh@reddit
Classifieds
MaiMee-_-@reddit
Doesn't seem to match this part of the requirements
devhaugh@reddit
It does. No stock but it's a private company.
NightestOfTheOwls@reddit
Not true. Latter definitely exist, they just don’t pay well
NightestOfTheOwls@reddit
From my experience, niche B2B services like logistics and personnel management. Pay isn’t super good so eventually you move to the places that sucks massively culture wise but compensate better, if you wanna keep growing.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Yeah I heard exactly about such opportunities recently… the technical challenge still sounds interesting, even though the product itself sounds relatively boring.
ehosca@reddit
edtech
zarlo5899@reddit
Energy
Osr0@reddit
In my experience that is not the case at all. With the way the market moves they either have an abundance of money they're trying to spend as fast as possible or they're laying people off as fast as possible. Everything is treated like a fucking disaster scenario.
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
Got specific companies to recommend?
zarlo5899@reddit
what part of the world do you live in
Zoltan-Kazulu@reddit (OP)
EMEA
dylsreddit@reddit
Check out a well-established big player in e-commerce.
Not sure what country you're in, but furniture retailers, groceries, DIY, etc. usually have a strong and stable e-commerce platform governed by a lot of bureaucracy.
CautiousRice@reddit
banking and finance
justwinning1by1@reddit
banks.. maybe public banks..
piecepaper@reddit
hospital