[jameshush]

I was in the same boat. Tried starting my own agency. Had a bit of success, but I was spending a huge chunk of my time just chasing money down. Then I stumbled upon a way to have my cake and eat it too: Becoming a Solutions/Sales Engineer.

It's all the upsides of running your own consultancy, without the downsides of chasing money and customers. I have generally flexible hours, tonnes of autonomy, and have a nice balance of getting to talk to people and coding. None of the coding I do is rocket science-level hard for me because I'm working with the same set of APIs every day, but is incredibly helpful for customers. My boss hardly ever tells me what to do, every week we have a 1/1, asks if the customers I'm helping are happy, and I tell him what I'm helping them do the following week.

It really is the best gig on the planet. I wish I would have known about this path sooner.

[LVB]

Thanks for sharing your experience. My career has drifted around a bit between IC and management, but I’ve always been highly technical. At the point (20 years in) I’m wondering what’s next, because up (Principal levels, directorships, etc.) hold little to no interest for me. I’d never really considered SE roles, despite having worked with great SEs for a long time, just because… no reason, just never thought about it. But at this point, the idea of helping a wide range of customers apply a known technology seems more appealing than the pure development work I’ve been associated with all these years.

[jameshush]

I have a couple of co-workers who have similar stories as you. 20 years in with some management experience, and they don't care about being the VP of Whatever. Solutions Engineer is a great role for someone who CAN manage but doesn't want to JUST manage, as you spend a lot of time "managing sideways".

[ativzzz]

How did you get into that role? Was it an internal transfer or did you just apply for a position?

[jameshush]

I went from running the engineering team at an online virtual events company, to trying to start my own agency to cold-applying to a WebRTC vendor with online virtual events companies as customers.

The key was having experience in the business vertical for me. They wanted my former company as a customer, so that helped. My former company ended up becoming a customer too, so not burning bridges REALLY paid off :-)

I'd recommend an internal transfer if you can. It does make things a lot easier. My previous companies didn't have a role like this available so I had to go the cold application route.