Programming Jobs that are not "Puzzle Solving?"

[Gilberto de Piento]

If okay with solving smelly human puzzles (management, sales) the pay can be substantially higher despite the lack of technical skills.

I could probably be a decent middle manager or project manager in the right environment. The org I'm at now is all meetings and politics and has no leadership or direction. Plus, a management position only pays about $10k USD more per year. I would not be a good fit for me. I don't think I could get another org to give me a management position. Sales is totally out of the question!

[Gilberto de Piento]

I think some of that is inherent to any programming task...

Apparently the main language I use is a functional language. I had to look it up functional vs. object oriented and I still don't understand the difference. I also didn't understand half of the other stuff you posted, sorry. That should tell you something about my background!

[Gilberto de Piento]

In my (admittedly 8 yrs outdated) experience you have 2 big options apparent to me: either move toward UI work...

In the latter, in large organizations with their own IT department, there is high demand for the IT guy who can do the hand-holding...

Both of those roles would probably be a much better fit for me than what I'm doing now. I have dashboarding experience which I assume would be similar to a UI job. In the latter I think I might struggle because I don't know enough do be much more than a conduit between the "customer" and the people doing the IT work.

[Gilberto de Piento]

The opposite direction would be to turn your non-CS background into a project that tries to understand the googled solutions more deeply and move up a level or two in software engineering making your current problems more similar to changing the rotors: https://teachyourselfcs.com/

The site you linked to seems like a good resource though I don't know if I am smart enough to understand it (not being humble, I may be at my mental limit already). I also have very little time and energy these days. If I can find the time I will try to make sense of it. I do like to read at least.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Technical writing.. documenting...

I'm doing a lot of tech writing, documenting, and refactoring existing code already. It's not prestigious but it is a good fit for me.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Have you tried statically typed languages with robust package (software dependencies) management - such as Java? These two features make programs you work with less of a black box.
A good anti-examples to avoid would be: Javascript, Python, any devops work.

No, I don't know what those are. I have not tried Java. I don't know much about programming languages. I did some googling and found this article helpful, but I don't understand much of what is written and I can't evaluate if the author knows what they are talking about: https://betterprogramming.pub/modern-la ... 21cbc8a57c

I have not tried Javascript but I put a few hours into Python one time. I had difficulty getting it going. I didn't get much further than that because I had no use for it. I just wanted to see what it was like.

[zbigi]

No, I don't know what those are. I have not tried Java. I don't know much about programming languages. I did some googling and found this article helpful, but I don't understand much of what is written and I can't evaluate if the author knows what they are talking about: https://betterprogramming.pub/modern-la ... 21cbc8a57c

I have not tried Javascript but I put a few hours into Python one time. I had difficulty getting it going. I didn't get much further than that because I had no use for it. I just wanted to see what it was like.

Seems that you're not in a typical software engineering role (i.e. being a part of a team of engineers who typically develop new code for a large and complicated existing code base and don't do that much else, except maybe babysitting deployments of the code they wrote), but are rather a jack of all trades who does programming among other things. In such case, my advice is less relevant.

[flying_pan]

It seems that you are indeed not a typical software developer, so I think that feeling of "puzzle solving" comes precisely from that lack of understanding how it all works underneath. I don't mean it as a bad thing, nothing wrong with it, just a bit different role. In that case, more business-oriented role might be more suitable, where you communicate with stakeholders and align goals with developers; maybe some direct manager position, where your coding experience might be beneficial. But as expressed no desire to go deeper into the programming languages, I think it should be clear that to reduce the puzzle part, you need to spend even less time on programming problems, or maybe have some people who will figure it out for you.

----

As for the discussion about UI work, I can comment as I am basically a UI engineer, almost exlcusively. I have to say that in the past it was true that it was looked down, but today I don't feel it is true anymore. Jokes about JavaScript are still around, but many serious projects are written with TypeScript (or some other strong-typed language) and "thanks" to the build step with something like Webpack and lack of global scoping, other random people can't really do anything anymore on their own, and the field is treated with respect now. The downside is that in the past it was easier to become a frontend web developer, today it is pretty challenging, too many technologies playing together.

[chicago81]

I've been employed to work/develop on C++ projects since 2004, at a handful of different companies.
(Yes, I'm still working, and have far surpassed "FI", but yet to have pulled the trigger on "RE", so I guess you could consider me an "ERE Failure".)

With regard to "Puzzle Solving" -- Many many times throughout my career, I've encountered problems that were difficult to solve -- and I've frequently questioned my own abilities (imposter syndrome?). Often I thought of quitting jobs or changing careers based on being frustrated that I could not solve these "puzzles" as fast as project managers would want me to.

Over time (and possibly, due to reaching "FI"), I've learned to "chill out" about it. I've realized that there are a few different kinds of "puzzles".

Sometimes these "puzzles" are because you need to learn something new -- some new technology, some new API, or learn that I'm doing something wrong. These are the "good" kind of puzzles.

The more insidious type of "puzzles" are the ones that are created by co-workers. Sometimes the software is just poorly designed. Sometimes changes are made to the software by other developers who don't have a full understanding of the ramification of their changes. They might fix their most immediate-issue at hand, but end up causing a lot more other problems that they haven't even considered. The fall-out from this may not be realized until much later, and someone else usually has to clean up the mess. This can be exponentially magnified if project management isn't understanding of these facts, and try to crack-the-whip to get you to complete projects faster.

In recent time, I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to find an environment where I work on a software project with other highly-experienced developers. We are able to rapidly churn out high-quality changes to our app. We have amazing management that is understanding to when the devs need to take a "step back" to clean something up (within reason.) It helps that the project we work on (a mobile game with in-app-purchases) has been incredibly successful and profitable to the company. Had I not found a job like this recently, I'd like to think I would have almost certainly pulled the proverbial rip-cord on my FIRE parachute.

My advice to the OP is to try to identify what category of "puzzles" that s/he is struggling with. If the "puzzles" are of the "need to learn" variety -- and you don't like it -- then perhaps consider a career change. If the "puzzles" are of the latter variety, then try to find a different team to work on, or different company