Ask HN: I am PM/Generalist,Should I get back to development? [Re-post]

[gobacktodev]

I am a generalist and have worked in early-stage startups thus having done various roles: Developer, Dev Rel, Sales, Marketing, Success, Operations, etc, across different industries, learning being my key skill. While I am grateful to have worked in various roles, there is a certain joy I get while programming. I am not the best programmer anymore but can learn and get stuff done. In the last 5 years I have worked on an iOS app, a Web app & scraped and parsed 100K plus pages for a friend, built a Google sheet addon, partly built and manage a data pipeline & Dashboard, and am dabbling with Unity right now.

I want to transition back to Software development by going into a developer advocate role so that I can leverage all my client-facing experience and code on a daily basis. I am hoping that this will allow me to build a micro SaaS in the next few years to set up a parallel income stream or become a CTO with a strong product & strategy mindset in a few years.

I am probably going to lose the option to be a product executive in the future, but I feel I will get bumped out of the PM role anyway. I am very confident in my Product & Strategy skills, I have correctly predicted changes in many of the industries I have worked with (but my employers did not)

I am guessing I can be more relevant to organization at the intersection of Technical and Business roles, thus I am also inclined to work for an org which has developers as their TG.

Side note

1. This is a throw away account, and I surprisingly don't have imposter syndrome.

2. This is a repost as my first post probably got flagged

[this2shallPass]

If you want to get back into developing software professionally, you should. The tradeoffs seem small. Lower likelihood of product leadership role (that you don't seem that interested in). Higher probability of being a CTO (though I wonder why you want to be a CTO). Your product skills atrophy while you're doing development, but can be redeveloped if you switch back. Compensation is probably around the same (depending on the details of your current roles and prospects, and the developer-oriented role and prospects). More capability of developing the SaaS you want to build yourself.

Joy is worth optimizing for.

Would you lose the joy if you code professionally? Some do, some don't.

> I want to transition back to Software development by going into a developer advocate role so that I can leverage all my client-facing experience and code on a daily basis.

Developer relations makes sense. Another possible stepping stone is Consultant Software Engineer / Solutions Architect (the professional services kind, meaning a client facing engineer that integrates the thing with clients of your company, or builds a full custom solution for them - companies like Thoughtworks or Palantir come to mind).

> I am hoping that this will allow me to build a micro SaaS in the next few years to set up a parallel income stream or become a CTO with a strong product & strategy mindset in a few years.

You seem to have all the skills you need to build a micro SaaS (or regular SaaS - maybe even a macro SaaS). If that's what you want to do, what stops you from doing that right now?

> I am probably going to lose the option to be a product executive in the future

You won't lose the option entirely, especially at smaller companies. Though yes, it will be harder, especially at larger companies, if you change towards development part or full time.

[gobacktodev]

> "though I wonder why you want to be a CTO"

.. I am guessing the question stems from the fact that CTO don't necessarily code daily.

[this2shallPass]

Yes, that is the main part of it.

Being a CTO might make sense for you. I'd still ask why you want to do it, just like I'd ask why you want to be a product leader, developer, developer advocate, or whatever.

The core motivation of switching to being a developer seems to be coding more. The others are building a product and being a CTO.

You can find lots of developer's experiences on HN or elsewhere saying that when you start doing other related roles, such as engineering management or engineering executive work, you might spend 0 time coding. Yes, some CTOs code often. I have even heard of a founder and non-CTO of a reasonably large company in the UK that still contributes some code to the codebase, which is admirable and probably overall a good thing though I don't know too many details and could have problems but could be great for everyone.

For some people, no longer coding much or at all is great. They're not interested in coding anymore (or they never were), they want a new challenge (for example, people management), more pay or prestige which often go along with people management or executive work, more influence. For others, not coding much or at all is a terrible fit. For you right now, being a CTO at anything but a small company where you would code a lot doesn't sound like it would accomplish your goal of coding more or the associated joy.

You might get enough coding joy by coding outside of work. It's worth considering. It's great to code full time if that's good for you. It's great to code outside of your primary work if that's good for you. Whatever works for you short term and long term, day to day and big picture.

About building a product - you can build many products right now with your current skills. You don't need to get a different primary job, or 2 different ones (developer advocate and then software engineer) to do it. You have some stability and mastery of crucial skills, and hopefully some disposable income though in many cases not much is necessary especially at first.

If building a product is one of your main goals, what can you do to take a step in that direction today?

If I were you I'd start with the meaty product work rather than developing anything, even a website.