Ask HN: What have I become? (Career trajectory advice)
2 comments
Please feel free to ask any clarifying questions, had to cut out about half of what I wrote to keep within the 2k char limit.
I'd say you're a devops engineer
But
Is that it? You just want to know how to answer that question at dinner parties?
But
Is that it? You just want to know how to answer that question at dinner parties?
A bit of background, I was not fortunate to come from the right environment to have a formal CS type education.
I started my "real" career in tech as an entry level implementation specialist at a medical software company.
I ended up working for a bit as a "Systems Engineer" at a MSP, but found that that life was just not for me.
I ended up re-joining the medical software company in my old position, moving to the Eng. team as a "DevOps Engineer". I did a ton of automation around Windows/Azure there.
About two years ago I was approached by a local recruiter with an opportunity to connect with another local startup, my current employer.
I was hired on again as "DevOps". The SW team manager actually had a really good definition of what that meant, but the org as a whole had really latched on to the term "DevOps" to mean basically "Ops, but an engineer does it".
Over the past few years I've worked on everything from our AWS infra, K8s, Cellular LTE connectivity, Device/IoT fleet management, internal and external service management, and I'm sure 100 other things that aren't coming to mind.
In short, I've found myself with an incredibly wide breadth of experience.
At the same time, I feel like I'm siloed into a specific type of company, namely IoT or IoT tangential companies big enough to be able to hire a generalist, but small enough to not hire for a rigid set of duties.
So, my question is: What have I become? What sort of engineer am I? If in the future I need to find employment elsewhere, how do I market myself when the best description I can come up with is "other duties as assigned, but that's my whole job"?
Thanks for (possibly) taking the time to read this, I am looking forward to any thoughts, commiserations, or advice you might have.