Does anyone truly *enjoy* their job in tech?

Hey Grapeviners, I need some serious help. Bit about myself - just graduated this month and working as an APM at a seed stage startup. I have 1.5 years of product experience and 3 years of overall experience. Lately, not sure why but I am loving what engineers do. Closely working with them, and I guess it's nostalgic for myself. Because I did coding for 6 months and moved on for some reason. So, I understand how tech actually works. Have got good feedback regarding this. At the same time, I am not really finding the true value of what I am doing everyday. Feels a void inside. Also, I am not able to discuss all these things in person with someone, because I fear that they will judge me after doing internships for 3 years, I still haven't figured out my career. Such a loser I am. I have been thinking about starting coding again and maybe switching to a coding job in the next 6 months maybe. But again it would be tough for me as I only got weekends for me to learn all this stuff. What do you all experienced folks suggest? What should I do? Please comment if you can help🙏

Hey Grapeviners, I need some serious help. Bit about myself - just graduated this month and working as an APM at a seed stage startup. I have 1.5 years of product experience and 3 years of overall experience as an intern. Lately, not sure why but I am loving what engineers do. Closely working with them, and I guess it's nostalgic for myself. Because I did coding for 6 months and moved on for some reason. So, I understand how tech actually works. Have got good feedback regarding this. At the same time, I am not really finding the true value of what I am doing everyday. Feels a void inside. Also, I am not able to discuss all these things in person with someone, because I fear that they will judge me after doing internships for 3 years, I still haven't figured out my career. Such a loser I am. I have been thinking about starting coding again and maybe switching to a coding job in the next 6 months maybe. But again it would be tough for me as I only got weekends for me to learn all this stuff. What do you all experienced folks suggest? What should I do? Please comment if you can help 🙏

Worked for a not particularly prestigious company as a developer for a few years before doing an MBA and moving into product management. Tier 1 institutes all the way through. I've been a product manager for 3 years now, in some pretty reputed companies. At this point, I feel like the product management role is just not for me - I do not get job satisfaction out of it. The work is not particularly interesting or challenging, and talking to people all day feels like a chore. Its no fun to be creating random reports for leadership based on wherever the winds of the day blow. Plus tbh, I could be making far more money if I had remained a developer. Just cannot see myself doing this kind of work 10 years down the line. Thinking of applying for some dev roles - it'll take some practice, but I could probably crack senior developer interviews. What does the community think? Is there stigma for people who ditch product roles for development roles? Are there people who even do this? Am I being realistic about this?

do you like coding? do you enjoying keeping up with new things? do you like the idea of continuous learning (especially in the field)? aren’t you overwhelmed? if tech didn’t pay well, would you still be working in tech? - fellow brethren

I am a fresher 2023 graduate and have been doing this (applying for jobs) for almost a year, everyone said you have to do internships as it is necessary so did 2 internships one for a year and another for 6 months but apparently no one counts internships as experience even jobs that had 1-3 yoe as requirement and now everyone's hiring 2024 grads as freshers (I tried to look for another internship but there were none during the time of placements). I am now tired of this field, many full stack devs don't know shit outside Javascript world and many of them can't even use tools like git properly and are so cocky of themselves. Saw an SDE on twitter who apparently has 6 years of experience, doesn't even know how to configure multiple SSH and says managing multiple ssh is a downside. A women dev (cause in India you have engineers and female engineers apparently) doesn't know about sidebar cache and calls it a bug and she's in google. and If I try to roast these people with my real name there's a whole cabal of Banglorians who will grab their macbooks inside third wave coffee and start tweeting against me after aggressively drinking their Chocolate mocha frappe. Just go into any random tech twitter space no one seems to be talking about tech it's always about DSA, interviews, LIFE IN BANGLORE, which cafe they visited. I let myself believe tech was my passion and worked hard for but Indian techies and companies are worst, this generation thinks they are better than their predecessor but follow the same politics everywhere even when it comes to Tech communities (who tf does politics in a community that produces open source code wtf). They talk about networking and creating a community all the time but can't even respond to linkedin cold dm and blame the sender by nitpicking about the format 👏👏 and then they'll go on post the screenshot and rant how it's the sender fault to even try to network with them with a message that isn't written from their own blood.

Is it okay for a tech enthusiast to not be interested in hands on coding full fledged or maybe not be an expert at it. I feel that if I give more time and effort in learning new stuffs and tech, I can excel at my job as a software engineer and even upskil myself but after 4-5 years, I still love to learn things and be updated about latest tech and do projects of my own but at a lesuirely pace without the anxiety about job or any interview.. But since I was in school I had too much interest towards business, ideas, startups and now that I am 28, i feel i really want to take that leap of faith with my entrepreneurial journey. I have couple of ideas I am quite passionate in the FMCG domain and couple ideas for tech based as well. From my heart, i always am into tech whether with job or jobless. But I don't like hardcore coding and stuff now.. Kind of done with it.. So my question is, has anyone else felt the same? Has anyone from tech sector plunged into FMCG sector with zero knowldge about that sector? Has anyone with average knowledge in tech industry tried to build a hardcore startup around tech by hiring someone else? Please share your experiences and advice and not from success stories of Rags to Riches that even I can find on Google😂

I’ve been noticing a trend lately and wanted to see if anyone else feels the same. After about 10 years in the tech industry, it seems like a lot of us are shifting towards people or product management roles instead of continuing deep technical work. I get that management roles often come with perks, but it feels like we’re losing out on technical growth. With how fast the tech space is changing and AI taking over a lot of things, it feels even more crucial to stay updated technically. Is anyone else struggling with this? Is it any different in startups versus big tech companies? How are you dealing with it? Are there ways to stay technically sharp while still advancing your career? Any decision making framework/parameter to evaluate career growth?

Ask me anything except my company name, or things that can reveal my identity. I may respectfully choose not to respond to your question based on my own judgement. Here’s a brief intro about me: I’ve worked as both software engineering manager & software technical architect over the last 18+ years on various tech stacks managing backend, frontend and a little bit of cloud. I have seen ups and downs in the software industry. Currently I’m working as a senior architect in one of the product based companies in India.

Hello folks! I come with 4 years of work experience out of which I worked in very small but great agencies for 2 years. In the past 2 years, I’ve been on the growth generalist side but I’ve taken up some great amount of responsibilities. - I’ve driven user adoption for a feature from 0 to 1 million - I’ve worked with giants like Disney on their product strategy - I’ve handled budgets of $1 million for a year long campaign and successfully reached the target metrics - I’ve also closely worked with the leadership on several new initiatives, acting as a program manager I come from a non-tech undergrad background but honestly, I’ve worked on entire product cycle ranging from finding the right solution for different features, identifying third party providers to creating user flows and wireframes. I’m on the lookout for a new opportunity, already quit my job. Work has gotten rather crazy with so much time out but considerable change in leadership affecting me negatively, having to build credibility every time. I’ve had my manager change 4 times in a year. If you know any startups that would be happy to have me, I’d love an intro. Thank you!

Context: I am a software engineer with 4 years of experience. Everytime I work with a bunch of engineers (Especially Indian Startups). Most of them are workaholics. They are just working for some company full-time. They are interested in learning more about technology, making jokes about technology, following technology news, etc. That is it. No social life. (Especially after Covid). No skills in any other part of life. Their comfort zone is so small that they have developed a lifestyle of working, sleeping & watching something on laptops and that's it. They make an excellent salary but don't do anything else. Every time I meet a 35-40-year-old software engineer, it is just a physically unfit guy with an arranged marriage who is boring as a brick.