Ask HN: Good non tech companies to work at
Does anyone have any good experiences working for non tech companies as a SWE?
I have felt really unfulfilled working for tech companies in SV for the last 6 years and keep thinking it will get better but it doesn’t. There is a disconnect between how much I actually care about what the company does vs how much I have to pretend to care about it that has become pretty unbearable for me.
Gotta be honest, every non-tech company I've worked for was better than "tech" companies. Non-tech companies have a defined business and it is clear whether or not the tech is helping further their goals. Unlike tech companies, where the tech is the goal, so it can get really fuzzy as to whether or not your work is helping or is just noise.
So I can give you a generalized "yes" answer to whether or not we have good experiences in non-tech. We do. Yeah, go for it.
Bad timing, but universities are engaging places to work. I did sysadmin for one, and it was a great experience, meeting scientists and some Nobel Prize winners. Some of the labs hire SWE's full time for projects that exceed the grad student workforce. Some universities run national labs, whose status right now is uncertain, but postings will say yes or no.
Look at companies in the AEC sector. Pay is lower than straight tech, but a lot of exciting real world and applied problems to dig in to. All the fun stuff these days is computation and advanced fabrication based. Even something closer in application to the jobsite like building information modeling still has room to grow in terms of tech implementation.
Your skill set would be lucrative to a big construction or engineering firm and they pay well. Architecture firms solve the funnest problems, which is what you get in return for the lower pay.
Agreed. Im in Aec and the amount of stuff i see ripe for swe to dig into is plenty. Youll need to convince directors youre worth it.
Any recommendations for companies?
Ha good luck with that! I found that there is even more politics at non tech companies. Different clowns, same circus as they say :)
ilm, lucasfilm, wall disney animation studios, pixar..
can be a bad time due to industry shanigans
Good luck finding anywhere that's hiring. It's an absolute shitshow right now. Also, based on your comment about how much you have to pretend you care, you probably want to steer clear of the larger companies. They tend to be very disconnected from the end customer's wellbeing in my experience.
Most of the 2.8 million developers in the US work for non tech companies - biting old enterprise companies, government etc.
Are you okay with enterprise dev salaries in second tier cities?
Unless you are working for a non profit, why would you care about what the company does? Now there are companies I wouldn’t work for because I’m opposed to what it does. But that’s different
Any (mega-big) bank, insurance, logistics, food, is good to work in my book/imho.
They know what they want. They don't jump from tech-fad to tech-fad every year. What works, works, and we/they keep it until it stops working.
These places tend to have a big disconnect in the care vs pretend to care dimension the OP was concerned about, in my experience.
And make about the same as “senior” engineer or less than a new grad getting an offer from BigTech.