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Ask HN: Moving back into tech industry from consulting

14 pointshestefisk6 comments

Dear fellow hacker community. I am at the crossroads of my career. I started my Comp Sci grad career in software development for a Unix / networking consultancy until where I learnt networking and software development ‘in the trenches’ with Perl and C. Later I moved into enterprise systems doing Java EE (J2EE) and .Net. After completing my MBA I started a generalist business consulting career where I have spent the last six years with a large global consulting firm. I have done a ton of work in financial services where my software background has enabled me to run miles around other consultants because of my ability to juggle numbers at scale. I am now about three-four years to partner in the firm and they have just reconfirmed their unequivocal backing to get me there. $ is good but work hours are long and often involves a lot of travel. I miss working in tech and was wondering if anyone else has done the same jump back into the tech industry from a generalist consulting role? I miss having fellow geeks as my peers, I miss tinkering with technical problems and the pace of change. However I also know I am too ‘senior’ for going back into a developer role. Becoming some sort of architect would be ok, but the 9-5pm cooperate environment hours gives me the shivers. I still want to be able to feel the ‘rush’ of business development. So perhaps a start up tech role might be more appropriate. Seniority or not, I can still be hands on and love cutting code and debugging tech problems. Any ideas or suggestions on possible career moves? FYI - I am Sydney based and also looking for international opportunities into Singapore, Hong Kong and other major cities.

Coming back from consulting into Tech is generally not a super tough transition as long your skills are still reasonably sharp. For me I spent years consulting and as a founder (U.S. based). Good consultants learn business and people skills which are critical to succeed that generally a senior developer won't have.

So my guess is your key skill that so many very good engineers lack is the ability for you to work with the business, understand the business needs and translate that into technical product vision and priorities. This set of skills are very underrated in most small companies and startups overall, yet it is the one thing that can really have a solid and positive impact on all companies. In my opinion if you want to move back into a tech based company and out of financial services you should focus on those skills as your sales point. Your tech skills could be less than others, but if you can turn business needs into tech vision and priorities that is more valuable.

Not sure what the Sydney or other markets you mentioned are like, so your mileage may vary.

Absolutely agreed. I think you can easily bet on CTO or Head of Development positions with such a great set of skills. I think these positions are very good to move to tech companies: amount of $ is still very good, you are not only developing and you can apply your business skills to the tech problems.

Thank you for this; very elaborate. I would be interested in hearing more about your experience making the shift. I have considered CTO roles but generally here in .au look for people with previous CTO experience, so it becomes very hard to demonstrate experience. I have worked with numerous CIOs in my time as a consultant on business cases and commercial performance so definitely have some proof. But again being a consultant is very different to an operational role of a CTO. Unless tech start ups are different?

You'd have to look at small businesses or startups if you wanted to go straight to a CTO type role IMO -- having not held something equivalent prior. But assuming you interview well and have the right skill set you could probably pretty easily do that. Startups need people that are more versatile and willing to take on a lot of challenges. Generally the one negative with early startups is the pay will not be what you are used to, so you have to weigh that based on your personal situation.

You could also look at product roles, e.g. where you are a product manager or something similar. Again since you want to be hands on technical you'd have to do this in a smaller company or startup where you could do so.

As for my experience, it wasn't that difficult to do. I just sought out positions which seemed to gel well with my experience and desires. Honestly, when I joined the current startup I am at, I joined as a Senior Firmware Engineer. I am doing more now that uses more of my total experience, but that was how I joined and I loved it cause I initially really wanted to spend some time just in code.

I totally get the "too senior" thing, but it's not as bad as I feared. Here's my own experience of making the kind of move you're talking about.

Last year I switched from ops manager/factotum in a small agency to a pure dev role in a corp. I get to think about technical stuff most of the time now and it feels okay, despite my fears about the 9-5. Thing is, it took me two years to get to that point. I knew I wanted to move for similar reasons to those you list. And Imagined that I had to head for a job that would value my agency experience which was varied and had a management and client-facing bias. So I felt like I was trapped doing the same sort of stuff. I was good at it, but it wasn't making me happy any more.

I have a technical background (programming language theory) but it felt so long ago as to be irrelevant. And perhaps it was. I managed to get second interviews for engineering roles -- which is what I wanted and I turned a couple down because they weren't quite right.

Then this happened. Back 2 years ago, when I started to look for a change, I also got excited about some new-ish tech (Elm, in this case). I started running a local meetup and going to relevant conferences just to scratch my itch. I got a three month contract using it and took unpaid leave from the agency to give myself the chance to do it. But as soon as I added it to my CV I got a call from a recruiter from a local company who wanted exactly that tech. Now I work there and they sponsor the meetup that I still run.

I admit I hit it lucky in this case with a genuine excitement for an emerging tech, and a local employer who were early adopters. But I think the important thing is that I was doing this alongside job hunting and hadn't even connected the two. I was finding a way to do what excited me, and being committed and passionate about that. Then when the chance came up, making the move was easy and pleasant.

How about a Product Manager role at a large tech company? They have many teams that work on very complex problems, where the Product Manager can have a huge impact if they know how the code works (at some level) and a strong quantitative/commercial understanding.

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