Podcasts Technology Soft Skills Engineering Episode 386: Stuck with toil and how to get a dev job as a self-taught career-switcher in 2023

Episode 386: Stuck with toil and how to get a dev job as a self-taught career-switcher in 2023

Published: Dec. 11, 2023, noon

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

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    I feel like I\u2019m stuck. I\u2019m in a senior/lead position technically called an SRE, but I find myself doing all kinds of cleanup work that should instead be spread across teams. My suggestions for automating toil and cleaning up tech debt fall on deaf ears until some principal engineer decides a couple of months down the line some problem is worth solving (then it\u2019s urgent!!1).

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    I\u2019ve experienced this at a few companies now and see some patterns, but I\u2019m not sure what the way out is yet. It seems I need to find the most respected person (and fight them! just kidding), gain their trust, and play politics to get basic problems solved and work properly distributed.

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    I am exhausted. If you want me to lead, then give me the power I need to lead. If you want me to be a cog, then make it a decent work environment and pay enough. I feel like I\u2019m stuck in some sort of purgatory. I\u2019m considering going for a management job, but I think I\u2019d hate it.

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    How can I find a 9-5 that isn\u2019t soul sucking and run by a few people who have the ear of the C-level?

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    As two people who lead engineering teams, have conducting tons of interviews for developers and hired many, what are your opinions on the prospects of career changing self-taught developers landing a decent job in 2023 forward? I have a career in Product Marketing, working very closely with Product, Engineering, and Sales teams. I believe I bring a lot of the \u201csoft skills\u201d to the table and am teaching myself the \u201chard skills\u201d. My concerns are that it will be incredibly difficult to actually find a job and, if I do, it\u2019ll be an entry level role that effectively resets my existing 9-year career back to the starting blocks. In your experiences, would you hire folks looking to make a career move in anything other than junior positions, or would you be wary of them in favor of other candidates?

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