I just left cloud software development to be the jack-of-all-trades only computer person at a local shop. I love it. I spend all day helping people instead of fighting jira.
I have a related experience: a few years ago I built a website for a local music store, and I still do the occasional maintenance task for them. Their gratitude and happiness with the product has made it one of the most fulfilling technical projects I've ever done.
Advantages of being "the technical person" for a non-technical project/business/etc:
- You get out of the insular, one-upsmanship-steeped technical culture
- You can implement things exactly the way you want to
- You're probably much less abstracted away from the people you're actually helping
It's the third thing that I think is most important. In most tech jobs you're either gently swindling your customers through A/B tests and "conversion metrics", or you're doing "tech for tech's sake" which can be fun but ultimately feels empty. It feels really good to directly help real people.
Advantages of being "the technical person" for a non-technical project/business/etc:
- You get out of the insular, one-upsmanship-steeped technical culture
- You can implement things exactly the way you want to
- You're probably much less abstracted away from the people you're actually helping
It's the third thing that I think is most important. In most tech jobs you're either gently swindling your customers through A/B tests and "conversion metrics", or you're doing "tech for tech's sake" which can be fun but ultimately feels empty. It feels really good to directly help real people.