Tired of coding, thinking of transitioning into a less technical role

[Javfly33]

To what role could I transition coming from software dev? I want to stay in the tech sector but I´m tired coding. I mean I could keep doing this but first I feel like an impostor I just don't care at all about the coding technologies/programming languages, I absolutely do this for the money and nothing else. I also think I could be better asset in a less technical role, maybe Project Manager/Product owner? The only downside I see is that I don't have a university degree, so not sure how difficult it would be to get my foot on the door on this more business management-types of roles. 

Has anyone done something similar to this ?

[Scholar]

No but I am glad I did not pick this life path. Being in left brain autism mode for 8 hours a day is just hell and I think unironically makes you less human.

[Schizophonia]

“Engineering” is what most current students do who don’t know what to do with their lives.
In fact it's boring and the salary is getting lower and lower.

They are basically the new workers of the contemporary world and it is precisely for these reasons that I quickly left my engineering school.

[aclokay]

I've been coding for sometime now. Had my own "life crisis" moment around 5 years ago when discovering Actualized.org, tripping and questioning my career decisions.

I quit my job on a whim, and when to travel. I travelled for around 3 months, and during that time I had a moment of boredom, which motivated me to read books about code, and it rekindled my passion and interest.

I quit my traveling "career" and went to look for a job, I was wanting a fun place and worked for a startup for a few years. It was in a different realms of coding - DevOps, and I really enjoyed learning a new field and working with someone who I considered a true master.

Eventually quit that job as well, as i wanted to work on projects with more impact on the world. I went to work for a bigger company which I leveraged to transition into an industry I felt more connected with - health apps. Being type 1 diabetic It felt super cool to work for diabetes medicine startups. But that start up failed, which I had to go to a heart-health start up, which I currently work at.

So I've had a bunch of jobs in tech, mostly writing code. And I've been thinking of changing career most of my career. I felt very curious about different fields. At one point I thought of going into software architecture or product management. As I felt these are master level positions and have high impact. 

But right now, I'm really enjoying doing visual work. So I'm learning to draw and I noticed I really enjoy visual creating. So been thinking of transitioning into a design kind of career. Where I would visualize software / and not write the code that runs it.

I feel like the biggest drawback for me with coding is that I didn't find a place where I enjoyed the code. It's often a mess, has a ton of iterations by different people, every body with their own style. Like salads of mess and it's infuriating to me because I appreciate elegance and beauty. And I feel like a lot of places value working products over elegant code.

This is why I would lean towards design and visual - because it's rare that a visually unappealing design would pass, where visually unappealing code is a-okay.

Also been considering of going through solo work - like Solopreneur. Which for me feels like a lot of fun, but a ton of work. You'll get to learn to run 1-man businsess potentially doing almost everything.

I'm also kind of scared of making the transistion, since I feel like my experience as programmer is financially more valuable than as a designer or anything else since I have 0 professional experience. Perhaps in the long term I could use the joy of a fulfilling career more than a well paying one to motivate myself to achieve greater success, but it's risky IMO, and would definitely be costly.

Anyway, I haven't decided yet. But I feel like i'm a similar position as you are, so I shared my line of thinking, hope it might be helpful.

Edited September 23, 2023 by aclokay

[something_else]

18 minutes ago, aclokay said:

I've been coding for sometime now. Had my own "life crisis" moment around 5 years ago when discovering Actualized.org, tripping and questioning my career decisions.

I quit my job on a whim, and when to travel. I travelled for around 3 months, and during that time I had a moment of boredom, which motivated me to read books about code, and it rekindled my passion and interest.

I quit my traveling "career" and went to look for a job, I was wanting a fun place and worked for a startup for a few years. It was in a different realms of coding - DevOps, and I really enjoyed learning a new field and working with someone who I considered a true master.

Eventually quit that job as well, as i wanted to work on projects with more impact on the world. I went to work for a bigger company which I leveraged to transition into an industry I felt more connected with - health apps. Being type 1 diabetic It felt super cool to work for diabetes medicine startups. But that start up failed, which I had to go to a heart-health start up, which I currently work at.

So I've had a bunch of jobs in tech, mostly writing code. And I've been thinking of changing career most of my career. I felt very curious about different fields. At one point I thought of going into software architecture or product management. As I felt these are master level positions and have high impact. 

But right now, I'm really enjoying doing visual work. So I'm learning to draw and I noticed I really enjoy visual creating. So been thinking of transitioning into a design kind of career. Where I would visualize software / and not write the code that runs it.

I feel like the biggest drawback for me with coding is that I didn't find a place where I enjoyed the code. It's often a mess, has a ton of iterations by different people, every body with their own style. Like salads of mess and it's infuriating to me because I appreciate elegance and beauty. And I feel like a lot of places value working products over elegant code.

This is why I would lean towards design and visual - because it's rare that a visually unappealing design would pass, where visually unappealing code is a-okay.

Also been considering of going through solo work - like Solopreneur. Which for me feels like a lot of fun, but a ton of work. You'll get to learn to run 1-man businsess potentially doing almost everything.

I'm also kind of scared of making the transistion, since I feel like my experience as programmer is financially more valuable than as a designer or anything else since I have 0 professional experience. Perhaps in the long term I could use the joy of a fulfilling career more than a well paying one to motivate myself to achieve greater success, but it's risky IMO, and would definitely be costly.

Anyway, I haven't decided yet. But I feel like i'm a similar position as you are, so I shared my line of thinking, hope it might be helpful.

This was very inspiring to read, and somewhat similar to me right now. I'm quitting my cushy programming job to travel for 6+ months at the end of this year.

I also notice that my favourite part of my job is getting to build and design UI because it's far more visual.

[Javfly33]

@aclokay thanks for sharing. Good luck to your future.

In My next project I will be doing devops mainly so I guess is good news is less code 

[enzyme]

I used to do web programming so the transition to a designer type who's responsible for the layout and presentation of web apps was always a decent path to fallback on.

I don't know what industry you're involved in but there's usually a more management side of things as you mentioned.  You could look into how to secure clients or do some networking (assuming you're with a company, you'd maybe need to persuade someone within that company to transition into that kind of role if you were hired as a developer).

There's always HR which - although I hate it personally - doing HR duties in a software company with a coding background would be make it so much easier for applicants putting their resume in.  You'll be able to communicate with them on the same level during interviews unlike with HR who usually don't know what their meant to be looking from a developer's point of view.

[Bobby_2021]

Me too. Pretty amusing to see all of us lined up on the same issue. Coding is too taxing on me. It's stressful but I can do it if I have to. Need something more holistic and broad. 

So I left my software job to focus on less codey type stuff. Cloud engineering is good IMO.