I would love to hear you experience if you have tried switching your career to a different field especially Investment Banking or PE. Or even tried something like sales or product management.
If so what have been trade offs and how were you able to adapt
I always felt like I wasn't built for pure tech positions - I'm not the kind of person who can code for eight hours at a time, and that's what many of my previous employers seemed to want from me. I love presenting, I enjoy helping people, and I like a fast pace and a broad variety of work. Sales engineering has been a great fit.
The tricky tradeoffs for me have mainly been around interacting with the sales org.
Some of the sales folks can be... you know how sales folks can be. They can have big personalities. And their incentives can be different to mine - where I am right now they're measured purely on attainment, and I'm measured on broader customer success. So it's been really important for me to understand how they work, how they're incentivised, how I can best help them while still ensuring my customers get the best outcome.
The other tricky thing for me is being part of a group whose sole purpose is to sell. I never thought I'd be doing that - ringing the bell, ABC, coffee's for closers, etc. So it's really important for me to be selling a good product that will actually help customers, and to be able to be honest about its benefits and potential downsides. The minute someone tells me to sell something I don't believe in is the minute I get out of sales.
But I'm the whole it's been a great move. I've learned (and am still learning) a lot.
Presales is the same thing but with a bit more grunt work so could be a good place to start
There are many titles for it
Solutions engineer architect consultant etc
There are old books but they useless
Best I could think is to write a ebook yourself that way you find out firsthand what the job is
Update it annually as you learn more
SE at some companies is just straight sales
At some companies it is just dev nerd shit w a willingness to do braindead demos all day long
Be careful what you wish for
Nice!