1. Customer success / support is fine in combination with other skill sets that are higher value such as SWE. But I would still say that the employer history is

1. Customer success / support is fine in combination with other skill sets that are higher value such as SWE. But I would still say that the employer history is more important. For example, I'd rather be a customer support engineer at Google than an architect at a terrible, no-name software company or one of ill repute. 2. It can widen your perspective into how to better write more maintainable / usable software but it won't help you a lick for getting through first or second round interviews with reputable software companies that drill you on algorithms and code fluency. 3. I've only ever seen customer support engineers promote up to managers in my experience. In my case, I was hired on as a team lead for a combination of support and operations and after burning out I'm starting my own gig with some lessons and insight I may not have learned otherwise. I wasn't held back so much by technical ability as much as runway saved up and finding a set of ideas I could imagine committing up to a decade of my life on. However, the loss of fluency in coding over time ironically makes it take longer for me to get out an MVP than if I had just pumped out code for years. Be extremely careful with not very well defined positions regardless of title - they can quickly become "do everything other people don't like to do" jobs that burn you out with few real skills of actual business or technical value. It is truly a sacrifice for anyone with potential to do speak up and just go do some of that work, and most companies have zero capability of recognizing when that's happening both large and small. Would you feel bad giving John Carmack a job telling customers how to fix their IPC/SPX networks to play Doom or resetting keys for people that misplaced them? Because that's what these jobs can devolve into if you don't have the right support behind you and a management team that knows when someone is actually overqualified versus being slightly underpaid / good value (overqualified is a terrible value long term because they will quit fast and the churn costs you valuable time / resources). There are very few people IMO that match the balance of empathy, technical skill level, and tolerance for terrible things. Despite great reviews and high customer satisfaction, I consider myself terrible at it.