Ask HN: How to transition as a Senior Engineer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to transition as a Senior Engineer?

3 pointsthrowaway616655 comments

I've spent most of my career (7+ years) working within a single 'stack', call it 'backend web services written in Python' as an example. I'm very comfortable in that sphere but feel like I'm stagnating; there isn't scope in my current workplace to use anything else and it's all pretty standard stuff.

I want to move to a different stack. This is for both professional growth—to learn new ways of doing things which might lead me to working more effectively—as well as for personal growth. I've found some other technologies and areas that excite me and which I really want to be a part of.

Senior positions using other stacks understandably require several years of experience; those I've applied for have resulted in rejections at the application stage. Some substantial demo projects in my portfolio would be great but I struggle to find time outside of work these days.

Junior positions don't have sufficient compensation given my family needs and have fewer or none of the other responsibilities I enjoy such as team management and project ownership.

I'm hoping my exact transition isn't relevant for receiving advice, to make it useful for others in similar situations, but some examples of transitions might be:

- Backend web services written in Python to those written in languages with substantially different paradigms, e.g. Elixir. - Consumer-oriented web APIs to real-time services, e.g. fintech. - Backend web services to a hyper-focused subset of that, e.g. database engineering or operations.

What advice do you have on transitioning from one stack to another? If you're part of a hiring team, how can applicants win you over if their technologies don't align with your own?

One approach is to talk to consulting/contracting companies. They usually have clients using different technologies. This might give you an opportunity to lead on the tech you're most familiar with (immediate value to the company) and still be able to learn new skills. People with the capacity and desire to pick up new technologies can be valuable in consulting/contracting roles. Also, if you explain what you're looking for in your cover letter, it might help screen for companies that match - avoid wasting time on interviews that won't go further.

I was not aware of that possibility., it sounds really promising. Thank you for the advice!

I've only ever applied to 'regular' companies rather than consulting/contracting ones. Is the search process much different? Or just search for something like '<stack> engineer' andsee which companies are consultancies?

Doing the search and looking at the company is time consuming, but works. You have to do the research. Some of the larger companies are like Accenture, Neudisic, and ThoughtWorks. Some of the better-known recruiting companies also do project work and hire full-time (as well as contract). An interesting surprise is that some companies like Amazon and Microsoft also have consulting arms. What's might be easier though is to find a local or regional company that does consulting/project work and they might take more effort to find - more research. Sometimes, if you find a consulting company, they may take your resume and keep in touch in case they have something for you later. So, it's good to reach out even if they don't have an exact match at the current time.

If you're senior, you should be able to leverage your experience with one stack to learn the basics of another stack. My advice would be to pick a couple of small projects that you've done in the stack you're experienced in and reimplement them in the targeted stack(s). If I were interviewing I’d expect you to be able to articulate the differences between the stacks and demonstrate that you can apply your existing experience to "our" stack, whatever it may be.

> If you're senior, you should be able to leverage your experience with one stack to learn the basics of another stack.

Yeah exactly! I've been comfortable doing that.

> If I were interviewing I’d expect you to be able to articulate the differences between the stacks and demonstrate that you can apply your existing experience to "our" stack, whatever it may be.

That makes sense, thank you. ATM my diffculty is getting to the stage of talking to someone to be able to persuade them; a succinct cover letter eludes my writing chops as of yet. Will keep at it.

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