Ask HN: Has any one successfully pivoted away from tech?

System Architect&#x2F;Admin here, great resume.<p>Not yet. Been applying to a wealth of non-tech jobs, salary be (almost) damned.<p>No dice. I&#x27;ve even been herding sheep in my holidays, to learn whether I could do that for the next 15-20 years. Still unsure.<p>Why go this route? Because after 25 years of IT, I have a deep dislike for the whole mess that is the self-serving, disingenuous, marketing-riddled, self-referential cesspool of corporate IT.<p>Alas, while I&#x27;m good at legal stuff, communication, information researching etc. it appears I&#x27;m type cast to be a keyboard warrior. I get a gazillion of admin, consultancy and coding offers, but not anything else ever.<p>Albeit this experience is from Germany, a place that&#x27;s still crazy for it&#x27;s maddening love of requiring many funky pieces of government-sponsored paper to get into any vocation that isn&#x27;t guarding doors.

Yes. I was a CS major. My resume wasn&#x27;t too different from yours. I got tired of being narrowly focused. Went back to b-school for various reasons, among them, to get a &quot;clean slate&quot; in terms of job opportunities-- ie to avoid being pigeon-holed. It worked, and it was expensive, but the jobs on the other side made it worthwhile. So my journey was: tech, business school, wall street.<p>From what I can tell there are many opportunities if you are &quot;tech + X&quot;, where X is <i>real</i> experience in a (non-tech) industry. In my case it was finance, and once I had a few yrs experience with that, I had lots of choices because every firm wanted someone who both understood their business and how to use technology to supercharge it. Funny enough, 15 years later, I decided to do something different again... and went back to tech.

I was in software engineering for 13 years. Took a couple years off. Moved away from the bay area to idaho and bought farmland. Walked up to a jobsite and got a job framing so i could learn to build my own house, started at $12&#x2F;hr. Two years later and now i make $50 an hour and own my own business. And i collect rent on the farmland every year.<p>Ive never been more fit in my life. Which was also a goal of mine. Its like going to the gym all day, or an adult jungle gym. I dont know that i would want to do it for more than 5 years though. So i anticipate starting other businesses at some point in the near future.<p>I have no debt or dependents though. I cant recommend this path to someone who does have either of those.

There are tons of rewarding companies (probably smaller) that would never ask those interview questions.

When I was in engineering I saw a lot of engineers (ME, EE, etc) pivot to sales&#x2F;marketing and do well. Their education and experience allowed them to help match client&#x27;s needs with the companies products without getting into the nuts and bolts.

&quot;5. I&#x27;ve had a hard time connecting and relating to co-workers and team members.&quot;<p>Yeah, me too - I connect only on hobbies, but as I get older, I don&#x27;t really externalize what I do.<p>Take a break, that&#x27;s why you quit - enjoy life, see what you want to do. :)

I&#x27;d think harder before pivoting. Very few people are just naturally good at technical interviews.<p>What have you done to prepare?

I think this is a common pitfall for a dev to fall into. Looking at your CV failing upwards is not a bad thing, it&#x27;s only a bad thing if you don&#x27;t enjoy what you do and can&#x27;t see a future in. Having also been in a situation with negative (or non existent) feedback, the lesson that it taught me was self preservation is crucial. Try not to let you get you down, the work environment is full of bias, oversight and mismanagement. Just because it is a tech, with &quot;prestigious&quot; work, does not mean it is immune to it.<p>The tech interview is also something I struggle with. I&#x27;ve avoided this some what by not going to hyper sexy companies where they feel justified to treat you like a cog. This can actually be a good sign that you don&#x27;t want to work there, remember you are interviewing them too. Again tech interviews, much like work, are easier when you actually are interested in what they are doing.<p>I would advise to try and take a break, go on a holiday, possibly to the point you are bored. The most difficult thing can be to actually figure out what you are interested in and what you enjoy. It&#x27;s not bad if you want to pivot to something or go back to school, it&#x27;s just bad if you are doing it out a sense of panic, can&#x27;t clearly see a future and just want to change.

Do you enjoy working as a SWE?<p>I&#x27;m not a super great SWE-- I&#x27;m just a full stack javascript-oriented developer (With experience in a few other languages). Since I am already familiar with full stack apps, they&#x27;re getting a little boring for me (since they&#x27;re mostly CRUD, with some customized processing thrown in).<p>However my current company is letting me train in DevOps: stuff like kubernetes, helm, terraform. I am really appreciating the opportunity to learn new skills and grow my career. And, it will likely result in a promotion &amp; higher pay.<p>The reason I ask if you enjoy SWE, is because you might be able to transition into DevOps, or Software Sales for example-- or some other SWE adjacent role, which uses your SWE skills.<p>If you don&#x27;t enjoy SWE &amp; the tech industry, then that&#x27;s another story.<p>That said, learning trades is a great idea-- for one thing, you&#x27;d be interdisciplinary: a combination of tech&#x2F;SWE experience &amp; trades experience may be a highly valuable combination-- for example, you might come up with new product&#x2F;service ideas. Or you can consult with trades businesses about their IT &#x2F; Business processes, for example.<p>Looking at your resume-- I think it&#x27;s awesome you have a CS degree. I kinda wish I did-- I don&#x27;t have a technical degree but I am considering getting one just to improve my career a bit.<p>That said-- I failed a Amazon interview (for Solutions Architect-- i really wasn&#x27;t ready for that sort of role without some training) and for a Google interview (for solutions engineer-- but now that I am training in DevOps I felt that the Google Solutions Engineer role isn&#x27;t technical enough for me, and I don&#x27;t think it even pays as much as my current role or a potential future role I could have as an Infrastructure-oriented&#x2F;experienced SWE).<p>If you want to work in Tech, I&#x27;d say two things: 1. keep trying and 2. consider applying to and&#x2F;or training for adjacent roles<p>Other than that... yeah, trades could work out too :shrug:

&gt; I&#x27;m hoping there might be a trade where I could leverage some existing skills, but I find that unlikely.<p>Plumbing. But you still gotta deal with shit all day. ;)<p>It&#x27;s easy to think the grass is greener elsewhere, and I&#x27;m also guilty of it. E.g. I hear of traveling nurses making bank and sometimes wish I went that route.<p>However, don&#x27;t let a toxic work environment ruin your taste of the industry. For me, there&#x27;s great pleasure in building things with a tight feedback loop, and I skeptical that more manual jobs would offer that with comparable pay and benefits.

Why not switch to product management?

If you&#x27;re comfortable with people younger than yourself, and it&#x27;d be rewarding to share your experiences with (those of them who are also motivated), education might be an option. You could try it out somewhere appropriate, your GPA will help. (I suspect that there are many smaller schools looking for well-qualified educators.)<p>It&#x27;d give you time to consider if it&#x27;s for you, and a more relaxed time to consider what other options are best-suited to you.

Tech to an ecommerce business.<p>Your tech skills and systematic approach will correlate very closely with digital marketing.

i got burnt out once so I joined the military<p>8 years later everything is pretty great and i work in tech again<p>if you&#x27;re in half decent shape one option is to become a military officer

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