I joined a product engineering team after 15 years of technical consulting for a software vendor, working directly customers and handling both project level work and product-inflicted escalations; and skills I learned during that team still benefits my daily work in many aspects. I am usually pulled into direct escalation calls with customers, as I am comfortable to handle such cases, starting with the empathy for their situation and understanding what they need (and that's most often not necessarily a technical solution, but rather the assurance, that we truly understood their problem.), followed by proper communication and status updates, and so on.
In my neighbor-teams I have a lot of ex-consultants, and I see many of them growing faster than "pure-breed" engineers; and that's not because they write better code or drive bigger projects. But because they see the struggles customers have and they influence and prioritize both directly and indirectly features and bugfixes which have a real impact to customers.
Love to read that Jörg, thanks for sharing! And yes, can fully relate. Freelance work has had the same effect on me. I was always comfortable with managing expectations, speaking with customers and planning projects. That got me to grow from engineer all the way to CTO.
It's very important for people to understand that and focus on building the right set of skills. Skills that trully make an impact.
Transitioning between job families is not a “one-way” door. In fact, having experience in multiple functions makes you stronger in each of the functions. Especially for Solution Architects whose job is, by definition, to bridge different domains, businesses, and technologies. This build communication skills that are applicable across the board.
Glad you liked it Gilad! And yes, the breadth of knowledge helps a lot and also as Jörg mentioned, consulting roles (or any customer facing roles) help a lot with this. The communication skills you learn come in very handy!
Love this article!
I joined a product engineering team after 15 years of technical consulting for a software vendor, working directly customers and handling both project level work and product-inflicted escalations; and skills I learned during that team still benefits my daily work in many aspects. I am usually pulled into direct escalation calls with customers, as I am comfortable to handle such cases, starting with the empathy for their situation and understanding what they need (and that's most often not necessarily a technical solution, but rather the assurance, that we truly understood their problem.), followed by proper communication and status updates, and so on.
In my neighbor-teams I have a lot of ex-consultants, and I see many of them growing faster than "pure-breed" engineers; and that's not because they write better code or drive bigger projects. But because they see the struggles customers have and they influence and prioritize both directly and indirectly features and bugfixes which have a real impact to customers.
Love to read that Jörg, thanks for sharing! And yes, can fully relate. Freelance work has had the same effect on me. I was always comfortable with managing expectations, speaking with customers and planning projects. That got me to grow from engineer all the way to CTO.
It's very important for people to understand that and focus on building the right set of skills. Skills that trully make an impact.
Really great article!
Transitioning between job families is not a “one-way” door. In fact, having experience in multiple functions makes you stronger in each of the functions. Especially for Solution Architects whose job is, by definition, to bridge different domains, businesses, and technologies. This build communication skills that are applicable across the board.
Glad you liked it Gilad! And yes, the breadth of knowledge helps a lot and also as Jörg mentioned, consulting roles (or any customer facing roles) help a lot with this. The communication skills you learn come in very handy!