Ask HN: Career paths to consider if I am better at supporting than creating?

At my previous employer, the head QA engineer was the one pushing back at the PM when they were too ambitious. They basically owned the current "Is the next release still a buggy mess?" state.

> I am just much more comfortable supporting existing software than building new software.

Having technical skills is required, but you'd be doing little to no coding or design work.

> Being an interface between business and tech.

A sales engineer matches this almost by definition.

> Just working with people in general!

The job is essentially entirely about working with people, both with the customers you're trying to sell to, and with the developers who are actually making the product.

> I get a huge sense of accomplishment seeing customers user our product’

> Interface between business and tech

You might like trying your hand in Professional Services either at a System Integrator like Deloitte or first-party in a product company (now often re-labelled as ‘forward deployed engineers’).

Their main problem space is getting customers to successfully use the product through marrying your understanding of the tech’s limitations and sweet spots with the customer’s organizational goals and culture, so daily work revolves less around deep technical design and more about org alignment and strategy (which is why SIs sometimes get a bad rap on a tech forum like HNews).

It probably pays less, and it can be more stressful when you’re billing for (and justifying) every hour, but in my experience the way it tends to be more dynamic (new projects+teams+customers often) and how you get to see very direct impact is quite rewarding.

Software sales engineering could be another, which probably also pays more. But, alas, more competitive.

Many products require technical product managers.

Being people oriented and a "mediocre" technical engineer is not really a hinderance and can make your focus better aligned customer needs in a high level, not getting nerd-sniped on things that don't matter.

I suspect that engineers would prefer working under someone like you who doesn't have a god-like ego, and is likely to resolve conflicts between people.

2026 has made him way more useful to us engineers. Before he used to send us tickets. Sometimes we delivered what the customer really wanted because of those tickets, and sometimes we needed a few iterations.

Now he uses AI to deliver pull requests that include full repro environments. These are slop, of course. Sometimes we can approve them almost unchanged. But more often they need to be completely rewritten. But even the latter is super valuable as a much more concrete representation of the bug or customer request than a ticket was.

This is generally true across all roles, but first impact will be working that is more trivial for an agent or n8n flow.

So consider this and pick roles wisely, where you can see this existing for a bit. All the best.

> It honestly gives me a huge sense of accomplishment when I get to see a customer making use of our products, and helping them investigate why something may not be working.

> I've learned that money isn't everything.

Put this at the top of your resume, send it around to a few headhunters and see what comes back.

Many (most?) developers are not very interested in supporting someone else's work. The customer seems to get it even worse. AI has turned the ego trips up to 11. You have an advantage if you genuinely feel this way about these topics and can sell that feeling to others.

Rightly or wrongly there is a hierarchy of job roles and QA and tech support are low down on that list. But if you want to stay in the industry that your org serves (eg healthcare, energy, telecom etc) they are good ways to gather real industry experience.

Product is hard but devs do appreciate someone who can clearly tell them what is needed without micromanaging them (and tell the customer what is possible and what is not).

Pro services is great if you have good human skills but it can be a tough sell (some orgs treat it like a body shop, some customers think they dont need it, some sales orgs throw it in for free meaning you are underwater immediately).

Sales Engineering can be lucrative and fun, but only if you are paired up with a good sales team that doesnt treat you like a demo and slideware robot.

Or find a tiny niche where you can leverage technology to make a customer life easier. Then do that for more customers.

Or experiment in a consultant capacity outside of the day job.

Stepping back to big picture, your comments about versatility and helping the customer scream small business opportunity rather than big corporate.

And when I say small I think that’s a great thing (autonomy, financial independence) in contrast to Silicon Valley venture capital culture.

* Test Automation Engineer

If you want to remain technical I strongly advocate for the second option. It can be super technical and if you end up in an organization where the primary developers suck at what they do (or their management keeps them locked up as infants) you can end up doing more engineering than the developers you are supporting.

Some other people suggested QA, if you enjoy interfacing with customers I would also suggest you look into the PM role.