Beyond SWE: Optimize for Personality, Not Title 🧑💻
A breakdown of high-leverage roles that keep the industry running (that aren't SWE).
Hello, and welcome back! 👋 I was recently chatting with a new grad who sounded absolutely defeated. She had just accepted an offer as a DevOps Engineer at a growing SaaS company.
I congratulated her. She looked at me like I was crazy.
“Yeah, but I failed,” she said. “I have a CS degree. I’m supposed to be a Software Engineer. This is just… operations work.”
This breaks my heart because it is a lie that university culture tells us. We are taught that there is only one valid outcome: Software Engineer (SWE). Anything else - QA, SRE, Data, Product, DevOps, IT - is not fully understood, under-explored and not as hyped up as SWE.
That mindset is not only arrogant; it is financially dangerous.
While everyone is fighting for the same diminishing pool of Junior SWE roles, there are massive, high-paying, and stable ecosystems right next door that are desperate for technical talent.
Let’s explore alternative roles in tech that are actually hidden goldmines 👇
1️⃣ The “Social” Developer: Solutions Engineering & Sales Engineering
😶🌫️ The Stigma: “You just arrange demos for sales people.”
😌 The Reality: You are the technical closer.
If you have good coding skills but also have high emotional intelligence (you can hold a conversation), this is arguably the best-kept secret in tech. Sales Engineers (SEs) can in many cases make more than pure Software Engineers because they get a commission on top of a high base salary.
There are many variations of this role, including but not limited to Forward Deployed Engineer, Customer Success Engineer, Implementation Engineer, and more depending on what part of the sales cycle you’re contributing to. I’ll dive deeper into this in a future post. Stay tuned!
You aren’t building the product; you are proving to the customer how the product solves their technical problem. It is high leverage, high visibility, and puts you directly in touch with revenue.
🤷 Why choose this: You like tech, but you hate staring at an IDE for 8 hours a day in silence.
2️⃣ The “Business” Developer: Data Analytics & Analytics Engineering
😶🌫️ The Stigma: “You’re just making charts in Excel.”
😌 The Reality: You are the compass for the company.
Modern Data Analysis isn’t just VLOOKUPs. It’s Python, SQL, and cloud warehousing (Snowflake/BigQuery).
While Software Engineers worry about how to build a button, Data Analysts answer why we should build it. This role gets you closer to the “C-Suite” faster than almost any other. You are the one who tells the executives what is actually happening.
🤷 Why choose this: You love finding patterns and “truth” more than you love building features.
3️⃣ The “Infrastructure” Developer: IT, Cloud Ops, & DevOps
😶🌫️ The Stigma: “You just fix connectivity issues and reset passwords.”
😌 The Reality: You control the foundation the entire product stands on.
Entry-level IT support can feel unglamorous. But if you really think about it, “IT” is the gateway to DevOps and Cloud Engineering (AWS/Azure/GCP).
Cloud and DevOps professionals are paid super well in the industry because when the site goes down or product releases fail, they are the first point of contact and often heavily relied upon.
The path can look like this: IT Support -> SysAdmin -> Cloud Engineer/DevOps Engineer
🤷 Why choose this: You love tinkering, Linux, networking, and understanding how the internet/product actually works and get deployed.
💡 The Career Jungle Gym
Sheryl Sandberg famously said “Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder” Ladders are limiting - people can move up or down, on or off. Jungle gyms offer more creative exploration. There’s only one way to get to the top of a ladder, but there are many ways to get to the top of a jungle gym.
I know plenty of CTOs who started in QA. I know VP of Products who started in Customer Support. I know Founders who started in Sales Engineering. Read more about my story moving from SWE to Customer Success here.
Don’t let the title on your diploma or your first job limit the title on your future business card.
Stay open 👀,
Stay ahead 🚀,
And don’t be afraid to venture into something new ✨.
That’s it for today! Are you curious about one of these specific paths?
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I wish you a great week!
Until next time,
Sonika