What are the Software Engineering adjacent fields like?

Posted by Elegant-Avocado-3261@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 16 comments

I feel like I don't find much enjoyment in SWE nowadays so I'm curious about what other software eng adjacent roles are like and whether or not those would be a better fit for me. Stuff like technical writing, field support engineering, etc. Has anybody here transitioned into those types of roles, what are they like?

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m3t4lf0x@reddit

If you’re good with people, former SWE’s can do well in sales engineering.

Fundamentally, it’s still a sales job though, with many of the same issues that the role entails

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scoopydidit@reddit

Funnily enough, I find SWE to have the most anti social people ever. Myself included.

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Unhappy-Ladder-4594@reddit

The reason why sales engineers make so much money is because it is incredibly hard to find good ones. For reasons you pointed out, it is incredibly hard to find a combination of a person that is technical enough to be good at engineering yet enough of a people person to be good at sales. The rare ones that exist can make tons of money due to this scarcity.

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m3t4lf0x@reddit

Ain’t that the truth 😂

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abrandis@reddit

Agree sales is the best paying adjacent SWE , but beware it's not for the feignt of heart. You need to have strong people /social skills. In addition to deep tech knowledge in the area your selling... But yeah the money is there..

Outside of that , I would say some. Physical technician role,. While it's more blue collar , there's a lot of well paid field techs that work in industrial and commerical settings, imagine a robotics tech, that foxes industrial robots.. etc.

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ranger_fixing_dude@reddit

Have you thought about manager's track? EM, Product Manager, stuff like that. You'll still interact with software dev, of course, and these days probably expected to vibe code some helpful tools, but with SWE background that shouldn't be too hard.

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Elegant-Avocado-3261@reddit (OP)

How do people transition into those sorts of roles without going back to school typically?

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ranger_fixing_dude@reddit

Do you have a job currently? I haven't done it, but I've seen multiple people I know did so. As the other comment said, if you have decent people skills, it won't be super hard -- of course, it is luck dependent, but you can both flag your interest to your direct manager and to your project/product manager and see if they have any advice or they can delegate some stuff to you. If you have good relationship, they will most likely help you out.

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joshocar@reddit

I was straight up asked if I wanted to transition to management by my manager because I have decent people skills - average people skills goes a long way in tech. You don't need to go back to school, but an MBA can help if you want to move higher up the rungs.

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