Ask HN: Career paths to consider if I am better at supporting than creating?
I have a BS/MS in computer science and about 9 years of experience, first as a backend developer and then as a product owner. I switched to product because I realized I wasn't good at implementation and system design, but my current PO role is a terrible fit—it demands technical design decisions I'm not equipped to make, causing severe anxiety. I enjoy supporting existing software, troubleshooting, customer support, testing, and being an interface between business and tech. What career paths should I consider that leverage these strengths, even if it means a lower salary?
You might look into roles like Technical Support Engineer, Solutions Engineer, or Customer Success Engineer. These positions heavily involve troubleshooting, customer interaction, and understanding both business and technical needs without requiring you to design new systems.
Have you considered Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) or DevOps? While they do involve some building, a lot of the work is maintaining and supporting existing systems, incident response, and troubleshooting—which you seem to enjoy.
Quality Assurance (QA) or Test Engineering could be a great fit. You mentioned enjoying testing software; QA roles focus on finding issues, automating tests, and ensuring quality, often with less pressure to architect new features.
Technical Program Management (TPM) or Product Operations might align with your strengths in being an interface between business and tech. You'd coordinate across teams, manage processes, and support delivery without owning technical design.
Don't underestimate the value of support roles. Companies like GitLab, Automattic, and others have fully remote support engineering teams that pay well and value exactly the skills you have. It's not necessarily a step down in salary.
- gucci-on-fleek
Perhaps a sales engineer?
> I am just much more comfortable supporting existing software than building new software.
Having technical skills is required, but you'd be doing little to no coding or design work.
> Being an interface between business and tech.
A sales engineer matches this almost by definition.
> Just working with people in general!
The job is essentially entirely about working with people, both with the customers you're trying to sell to, and with the developers who are actually making the product.
- bob1029
> I am just much more comfortable supporting existing software than building new software.
> It honestly gives me a huge sense of accomplishment when I get to see a customer making use of our products, and helping them investigate why something may not be working.
> I've learned that money isn't everything.
Put this at the top of your resume, send it around to a few headhunters and see what comes back.
Many (most?) developers are not very interested in supporting someone else's work. The customer seems to get it even worse. AI has turned the ego trips up to 11. You have an advantage if you genuinely feel this way about these topics and can sell that feeling to others.
- kjellsbells
A few years into my career I realized that I was not cut out to code. Luckily I worked for a good employer and they told me that code was 5% of the business regardless of what the sign over the door said. Over the next 20 years I spent time doing QA, tech support, product management, professional services, and sales engineering.
Rightly or wrongly there is a hierarchy of job roles and QA and tech support are low down on that list. But if you want to stay in the industry that your org serves (eg healthcare, energy, telecom etc) they are good ways to gather real industry experience.
Product is hard but devs do appreciate someone who can clearly tell them what is needed without micromanaging them (and tell the customer what is possible and what is not).
Pro services is great if you have good human skills but it can be a tough sell (some orgs treat it like a body shop, some customers think they dont need it, some sales orgs throw it in for free meaning you are underwater immediately).
Sales Engineering can be lucrative and fun, but only if you are paired up with a good sales team that doesnt treat you like a demo and slideware robot.