[TrackerFF]

Do you enjoy creating stuff with the tools?

I've been interested in programming since I was a teen, but it was always the applied side - I enjoy building stuff, and the tools are just like any other tools you'd use.

I don't find the tools or methods particularly interesting, not nearly interesting enough to devote a huge part of my time to study them extensively.

And it was with that realization that I understood the following: I will never become a good computer scientist, theoretical or practical.

So my solution was simple: Do not chase, or focus jobs which require a passion or deep interest in computer science, because:

1) There are far more highly intelligent and highly passionate programmers out there, that are genuinely interested in the theory and technicalities. I will never be able to compete with those.

2) I will burn out spending my days on something which does not naturally interest me (enough to do it for min. 8 hours a day)

3) My energy should be directed at being more productive, where I can actually show good results. We have a finite amount of time to do something, so don't waste it.

All these realizations came during college. Some of my classmates would read books on compilers in their spare time, because they simply could not wait for the classes (which we had a year later).

Compilers are fascinating on a high level, but not fascinating enough for me to read whole books on them.

Furthermore - to me, proof of concept (and novelty) is more fascinating than the optimal solution.

There are lots of jobs for both types, you just need to find out what really tickles you, and follow that lead. As others have said, bridging fields ("businessman" and "developer", etc.) can be really rewarding.

Think of something that really interests you; Anything! And then try to find out how you can enhance that with development. Do it because it's fun, not because it's something you feel like forcing yourself to do.

[sambarina]

I found myself in the same boat recently, and looking for jobs/roles which is half business, half tech. I looked into "Solutions Engineer", but a bit afraid I loose my ability to code.

What did you pursue? Any tips?

[TrackerFF]

I pursued data science, It's a good blend of tech and domain knowledge.

The domain is what interests me, and the technical part is what makes it enjoyable. The amount of programming is probably one tenth (if even that) of what a regular software engineer would write, but there's always room for new ideas. Lately I've found myself writing more and more code for automation and other auxiliary stuff.

In the end you want to apply technical and scientific methods to the data, guided by your domain expertise, and deliver results to someone.

For some, it's nothing more than cleaning excel spreadsheets and generating reports, for others it's building and using state of the art machine learning methods on extremely large data sets - so not all data science jobs are alike from a technical standpoint.