Ask HN: Advice for a Software Generalist / Wannabe Solo Founder
I've been in the field for 10 years now, and I've worked at many different companies. One FAANG, a few startups, one small mom-and-pop based in Idaho, and some local companies where I'm at now. Every time I work for a new company, I get to the point where things end up being the same as previous jobs. I love software, and I love building software, but I've never felt like I had a direction or purpose in this field. It's all felt like just bouncing around from one job to the next.
I've had research interests, but I don't ever get to follow them due to work pressures. I think that I'd enjoy a PHD program, but I don't feel like I can sacrifice 4-5 years of industry income with small children.
I've always felt a pull toward entrepreneurship, and I've built a few products over the years, but none have panned out. I would love to build something to support my young family but I don't know what to build, nor how to validate the ideas. I can ideate, but I usually get stuck in the minutiae of how to get customers, build landing pages, or do other business-related things. I'm an engineer by training, so all the business stuff overwhelms me.
Finally, as I said earlier, I love software engineering. I love development and building things. The thrill of finally implementing a difficult feature, or figuring out a nasty bug is indescribable. But, it's getting harder to find opportunities at this point in my career that are challenging. I think it's because I'm a generalist, and the challenging things come with deep expertise in one singular stack. I know I'd be good in these challenging roles, but I'm barred from them because I'm not deep with that particular tech stack.
So, any advice? What route should I take? I think I'm leaning towards either doubling down on my career and trying to build up to challenging roles, or entrepreneurship. With entrepreneurship, I feel like I could create my own challening role, which is very alluring, but I've never gotten that far.