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> Get a job at smaller to medium sized non-tech company. Every company, in any industry, has computers. They need you.

I personally had the worst experience at such jobs. Small/medium sized non-tech companies don't value technology and don't understand its importance. If it works, you're invisible and just a cost center, if it doesn't you're to blame.

For work/life balance I've found big tech corps the best (not FAANG). I haven't worked on Saturday/Sunday in the last 10 years. I've seen people negotiate reduced hours/days successfully.

> Small/medium sized non-tech companies don't value technology and don't understand its importance.

I work closely with IT departments within such companies through ERP implementations/localizations and can coroborate this. In my experience 9/10 non-tech companies with their own IT departments(1+ person) don't value and especially don't understand what their IT department does.

On the other side, the people working within such departments are in my experience just terribly bad at sticking up for themselves, and explaining what needs to be explained. They don't draw lines where lines need to be drawn and they see themselves in the same way as the management/leadership does.

Counter-anecdote: I'm working at a non-tech company (we build the in-house technical software that everyone else in the company uses) and the experience has been great. We deliver real and immediate value, our clients are our colleagues and there's a great emphasis on UX, user testing and what not as a result.

Yes, there are loads of other problems, especially on the technical side, because tech isn't the company's strong point (our processes, especially revolving around the DB and deployment, are quite a mess) but the right things are in place that make me enjoy my job.

That might be the counter-anecdote that proves the rule.

In my own humble anecdotal experience, the less focused a company is on tech, the worse. Beyond that, if management is not from a software (or engineering) background, they will likely have no clue what to expect from programmers (because such hard things are simple and such simple things are hard) and the treatment will be . . . strange.

That gives you more freedom

I would love to get a job building internal tools that my company needs and uses but I haven't had any luck actually finding those kinds of jobs, so I always wind up building products.

Any advice on how to find those kinds of positions?

Connect with a recruiter (or five) and tell them that's what you want. They exist to act as a filter, and if you work with several from multiple companies/geographies in addition to doing your own searching, you'll eventually find what you're looking for.

In my experience, recruiters basically keep your name and skillset on record and don't take into account any of your other wants/needs.

You've worked with shitty recruiters, which is to be expected because most of them are.

Some of them are great and they're the ones worth keeping in touch with.

I'm honestly surprised how many don't even seem to take your skillset into consideration.

You don't have to know much about programming languages to know that if none of the words on my resume match the ones in the job listing, it's probably not a good match.

Maybe I need to be more clear that while I'm willing to learn new tech for a job, I probably don't want jobs where I have to learn an entire new stack just to get started.

Agreed -- and, even worse, in my experience they don't even know about more than 20% of the opportunities.

connecting with recruiters is a meme.

they're basically glorified salespeople. they would only reply to you if they thought there was quick money to be made.

I ended up in this current position because I was first interested in their field of work (geospatial work), and secondly skilled in programming. Even if I weren't a programmer I would probably work for them in some other capacity.

I don't feel qualified giving advice but personally I think I would look beyond what is commonly considered "tech". As another poster mentioned, everyone uses tech. When a company's work is sufficiently complex or special, chances are they may not rely on external vendors 100%.

Really out of my depth here but maybe some types of firms where I think there could be some interesting stuff internally:

- engineering - analytics - games - graphics/animations

Vfx industry

Also, if they have an existing solution that they're looking for someone to maintain/port/update- it's more likely to be some cobbled together spaghetti monster without any documentation.

Whether it's a mess or not depends entirely upon the skill of the people that built it and the constraints they were under while building.

There is no shortage of anecdata on HN and elsewhere of people being shocked at the poor quality of the code base at FAANG and other high level prestigious companies.

The world is different now. It's 2022 and the value of technology is far more clear to the average person.

but mostly not so much if the person has an MBA.

Sure, it's a gross generalization, but after 25+ years in this industry, I stand by this bigotry.

I wouldn't worry about no code software. They usually can only get you a quarter of the way. Then the requests start coming in and then the client wants their custom workflow in the app and no code can't do it. It usually doesn't take much for the client to realize they need something more custom. I work in the GIS industry and its a great mix of always learning something new but not only working with tech people.

Every time I hear about no code, I think about the code written by PROFESSIONALS that leads to list like Dan Luu's "Everything is broken": https://danluu.com/everything-is-broken/

If professional at top quality firms with the best tools can't write code that works, how is "no code" written by people that don't understand going to work better?

No-code is more likely to be written by people who are direct experts in the business domain, unlike the telephone game that is the development cycle in most software orgs.

I work with experts in the business domain, often C-Suite as a consultant. I've come to understand the domains almost as well as them for the companies I work with. While this knowledge is invaluable, and critical to getting the solution right in my experience they still would be completely lost when it comes to a no-code solution.

They generally only think happy path and have a really hard time understanding why you need to think about edge cases. They don't understand how to structure data or implement robust processes.

No code is great for very simple things. Fill out a form and send it in an email. But for more important and complex things we'll still need programmers. I'm not yet convinced that no-code is an amplifier for programmers. Beginners maybe, but more experienced developers are in my opinion far more likely to be productive in a text based environment.

"No-code" programs are still programs; each visual node or block or whatever is isomorphic to a construct in some programming language. Being code, it has to be maintained, especially as business needs shift, and "experts in the business domain" have other, better things to do with their time than maintain a bunch of computer programs. Thankfully, there are people in the company who specialize in maintaining computer programs -- software engineers. Which means that ultimately, software engineers will be responsible for all that no-code, and in addition to the usual telephone game they must contend with rat-wrestling some near-undebuggable node graph that lives only in a proprietary tool into doing what they want rather than using the tools they're familiar with and best at (ordinary textual code, version control, debuggers, etc.). And, Syndrome style, the company ends up throwing away the valuable time and effort of real software engineers so some mid-level manager can pretend to be one (and walk away when they get bored of that).

This never happens. It just gets written by different professionals. Best case, they are cheaper.

So basically no-code can be used as a foot in the door strategy? Like, hello I offer you some training for this great no-code tool and help you build exactly what you want, then I stick around to round the unavoidable rough edges?

The problem is if you started with no code, can you round the rough edges? One reason we use code instead of no code is so we can extend the product in any direction that is necessary, not just the few that were anticipated by a tool.

Many are impressed by the no-code claims and start that way only to get bitten after a few minor successes by said rough edge - then what else can you do than try to soften your current investment's thorns. And arguably anything can be addressed, given the right motivation/time/money.

My last few jobs have been replacing no-code setups. It certainly doesn't take teams long to figure out how bad the current offering suck. Sometimes only 3-4 integrations in.

There's a lot of people who have been doing the no code thing to build solutions for at least a decade now not knowing a lick of how to write code yet still building fantastic websites that get hacked almost every time because they don't appreciate how to maintain them. Do I need to name names?

I work at a private school and do a lot of data work that involves a substantial bit of programming. I CANNOT imagine a better work environment in terms of getting to enjoy the bits of tech that I like without all of the negative stuff that I see out there. The one thing I certainly lose out on is strong programming peers and people to learn deeply technical things from, but everything else is a positive: culture is excellent, I get to participate in all sorts of things that aren't programming related, have the freedom to tie technical itches that I want to scratch with work projects, etc. It's truly awesome, but something I would only recommend for someone who is looking at their job more wholistically and is ready to embrace some really major QoL gains with a very appreciable downside of probably developing less "technically" than you would at a traditional shop.

This is not inherently true - there is no hard and fast rule stating smaller companies are better to work at than larger companies by any metric.

I've worked at a broad spectrum of different sized firms with various titles ranging from analyst to engineer and have found no consistency between size of firm and work/life balance.

Ironically I've had a better work/life balance working for larger firms, but ultimately it comes down to your manager and how they manage the department.

One example - worked for a large investment bank building software and systems from scratch. Worked 6-7 days a week for up to 14 hours a day at times, but I honestly loved the work and was under no obligation to work that much. My boss and I had a great friendship outside of work and he would call my personal phone to remind me to stop working and do something else.

Any requested time-off was always approved by him, he would give me three weeks off for the month of December in addition to the PTO I had already taken during the course of the year.

Contrast this to a smaller (albeit one of the largest in their industry) company where we grinded every day 50-60 hours per week, PTO was a hard limit of 3 weeks per year and you were not permitted to take more than a week of PTO at a time and had to check-in every 5 days by e-mail. It was the worst job I've had in engineering. That said, there were brilliant folks working there but most left within a year. I sort of hope the company implodes but they're running away with success atm thanks in large part to the high quality engineers they hire (kudos to their hiring squad).

Exactly this. You have freedom, customers that are happy when you build something that saves them time. I'm not worried about low code that much because the real value is in translating business needs to software anyway. They won't care about how it works.. they just want it to work haha.

> Increasingly, the only engineers that non-tech companies need are people to manage their data, people to glue the SaaS APIs together, and maybe some frontend people to put a custom interface on it.

I presume you didn't see much industry yet. In reality, every existing company that is around for 10+ years have already tons of legacy apps or apps nearing that threshold, a lot of times tightly integrated in the rest of ecosystem. That isn't going away for some shiny new SAAS overnight, nor over year.

I've been hearing similar predictions since at least 2010 and they are just not true for much of the business.

Our bank (and in bank, IT is always just a cost center) has tons of external SAAS systems. Yet our internal systems grow, their integration grows and we are actually hiring more people to handle all this.

I see this too as an independent. As a company brings on more SAAS stuff it gets more complicated to manage, and integration to legacy will always exist, in fact often enough it can entrench the legacy even more as more and more integrations are piled on to each other.

The other thing is that things that were possibly not handled by technology before, are now handled by technology - so while they leverage it, it creates increasing demand for IT.

Sort of a shift from regular staff - purchasers, AP, etc and more IT staff.

I agree with the sentiment about small to medium non-tech companies. Any place where the code supports the product instead of IS the product, IMO, is a much more laid back place. (This is from my very limited experience)

>> The one worry I am having these days is how long this strategy will remain viable.

I just started reading "Ask Your Developer" by Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Twilio. He advocates that ALL companies should be building their own software, but only software that differentiates them from their competitors. They wouldn't build the next Twilio, NetSuite, Oracle, Salesforce, etc but software that enhances their brand, customer engagement, etc.

> Get a job at smaller to medium sized non-tech company.

From my own experience, I can recommend the following approach for someone with a database background: Look for successful small companies. They typically have some homemade information management solutions that do not scale, such as using Excel where a database would be the right thing, etc. Then tell the management how much better such a database system would be: how much time they could save, how much more consistant and reliable their data might become, how many interesting key figures they could extract from it, etc.

When you are hired, you are usually the only person responsible for the new database project. This gives you all kinds of organisational freedom and limits meetings to occasional consultations with the management.

> I didn't think anyone would say yes to a 4-day work week

Do not set a fixed time per day or week, but instead agree on an annual time budget that is slightly less than what you might want to work. Do not agree on fixed project deadlines, but instead create a detailed to-do list with priorities. Work above average at the beginning of the year until March. After that, you should mention from time to time: "I am already x weeks over the planned time budget". You will then usually not be pushed to work more and can take days or weeks off at will to get back in line with the planned time budget. In December, no one will usually complain if you charge the company more when you are still ahead of the planned time budget. And if they do, just take a longer Christmas holiday.

I don't think this is what OP wants.

He hates regular jobs. He wants to work on his inspiring projects, but doesn't know well how to monetize/market them.

Yes but if OP is building stuff on the side, this type of employment may give the time & headspace to do it, along with less stress.

I dissagree: he hates his job, that is what is producing the stress in the first place.

Otherwise he'd be happy keeping a job and having the weekends for his own projects.

But this is obviously not the case.

My impression is that he is comparing himself to others and worrying about other developers working weekends, possibly making him look bad if he does not do the same. The reality is that the “weekend warriors” at the company are doing more of the same type of work while he would be working on other tech of his own interests on weekends if desired, broadening his knowledge of other toolsets and methods, which will prove quite valuable in the long run.

Quit worrying about what other people are doing.

My solution to that problem was to switch fields. Now I have a rather comfortable job and plenty of free time. I get to work on whatever I want and only if I feel like it.

Some days I wonder what it would have been like if I had chosen to program professionally. I try to maintain my skills just in case.

That's easier said than done. I'm a data scientist/ML engineer rather than a software dev, but I don't think I have any skills that would give me remotely similar pay in any other field. At least not without going back to school. I could teach math or CS as an adjunct I guess? Build and sell computers? Enact crypto scams? Maybe I lack imagination ...

Regarding SaaS, I think programming departments within IT at non-tech companies will get smaller but not disappear. My employer uses around 8 different SaaS platforms that do not interoperate, and this requires a translation layer. We also have automated export/backup routines, and one large database that we use as our system of record.

> Get a job at smaller to medium sized non-tech company.

I do the first part: finding smaller to medium company. Smaller companies have better visibility, more work than people can finish so everyone gets to work on big whales. There's in general a better comradeship too. Revenue per employee in good smaller companies are usually larger than that in big companies, so people don't have to fight for resources as much.

I'm not sure about "non-tech" companies, though. IT in non-tech companies are usually cost center, so there's usually insufficient investment in tech workers in those companies. Some line of work can be hard to find in non-tech companies: distributed systems, large-scale database systems, high traffic systems that require deep optimizations on throughput, latency, and etc.

I run a small boutique outsource software development company, 11 developers, 2 managers. We have a 4-day work week, async communications, etc., etc. Pay is not great, but we compensate with sanity a lot.

It is possible, just keep looking! :)

Second this. I currently do some work for real-estate agents, who are a more interesting lot than I would have expected going in.

This is, in my opinion, great advice. I work at a non-profit cultural institution as sole IT admin and I have never been happier with my job. I couldn’t imagine going back to the startup world.