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It seems counter intuitive but direct customer facing roles that actually involve solving customer problems- not programming problems- can be very beneficial fo
by jonahbenton 3y ago
It seems counter intuitive but direct customer facing roles that actually involve solving customer problems- not programming problems- can be very beneficial for personal learning and growth and for a technical person's development in a business. When the business is in a growth space and can bring new customers on board, where it is possible within the context of the business to actually solve customer problems that one is directly interfacing with- sometimes with programming/feature engineering, sometimes with other approaches- and where the environment and culture are at least not negative, and are supportive of creative problem solving and customer-oriented solutions- this can be an opportunity. All successful startups always have technical people interfacing with customers at some stage in their growth- though of course failed startups do as well. The need for specialists comes later.
You'll have to make your own mind up about whether the environment is conducive to learning and growth even if it wasn't what you were expecting but the simple fact that you are customer facing is not in itself a problem.
- throwaway45450 3y agoI would agree with what you said but there's no way of explaining how things are done or having better training on how to handle certain issues
- jonahbenton 3y agoSure- unpacking that- there are always problems in startups until there are solutions. Successful startups are just this enormous stack of awkward solutions, many of which work until they don't and then quickly become tech/organizational debt/problems awaiting the next solution. Some people really like that environment and find it engaging and energizing, and some people don't, and various things in between. Should you decide it isn't for you, you should nevertheless be clear and honest with yourself about what this environment is demanding that you are not bringing, and what questions you might have asked to discern. That will help in your conversations with the next opportunity.
- throwaway45450 3y agoI would agree, The opportunity was posed as software development but in reality its pretty much its a support role. But the problem is that you don’t get the right training you are just a firefighter pretty much putting down fires And let me tell you you are changing things in production and it’s very risky I feel like the environment seems toxic but it didn’t seemed when I joined the company
- m463 3y agoI would agree, pointing out this is an opportunity to go broad instead of deep. Most dev jobs go the other direction until you're sort of siloed.