Maybe you are trying to enter the tech field with the thought of "Hey, I want to work in tech, I want to be a Developer".
Tech is all the hype these days and the first career option that pops up when you google it is Software Developer.
But do you really want to be a developer?
There is more than one way to work in tech and the role of Software Developer is just one of them.
I will present to you some of the most common possibilities for a career in tech.
Of course, I won’t cover them all and all of the possible variations, but this should give you an idea of how broad a career in tech can be and that you have options.
Backend, Frontend or FullStack
The Software Developer role itself has different subdivisions with specific tasks and responsibilities.
Frontend Developers worry about the presentation layer of the application.
They think about visual components and work with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as their core techs.
For more complex apps, frameworks or libs like Angular, React or Vue are common.
Backend Developers on the other hand have to deal with the business layer of the application and worry about things like scaling the app for multiple users, databases, and work with a range of different programming languages from implementations and integrations.
FullStack Developers are a mix of Frontend and Backend Developers who usually specialize in a particular stack.
Database Administrator (DBA)
Even though Backend Developers deal with databases, their job is more related to working with databases as users or consumers of the database.
While Database Administrators work on more specific tasks like backup routines, optimization of the database system itself, help developers in the optimation of queries, and the most important task is to keep the data safe and sound.
DBAs usually work with more than one kind of database, like PostgreSQL and Oracle, but they tend to specialize in one of them.
That means that is not hard to see DBAs with specific titles lik "SQL Server DBA" or "Oracle DBA".
SysAdmin
For simple infrastructure settings, the developer alone can go long way before having problems.
But as soon as things start to get really complex, a good SysAdmin is required.
Someone who manages the servers, the deploys, helps the development team with CI/CD pipelines.
SysAdmins these days work in very diverse environments, from traditional VM-based infrastructures, passing by self-managed Kubernetes clusters for the deployment of Docker images, until full cloud-based solutions.
The combination of Kubernetes and Docker as a specialization is interesting in the sense of freedom from platform-specific knowledge at the cost of doing a lot of configurations and management by hand.
When dealing with the cloud, even if they do have experience with different providers, they will at some point specialize in AWS, Azure, GCP, or any other popular cloud provider, due to the increasing complexity of cloud systems and solutions.
Data and Machine Learning Roles
You might also want to work with Artificial Intelligence and its many different paths.
You can work as a Data Scientist, understanding the data, creating models for predictions, and diving into statistics and math.
A Machine Learning Engineer works on the deployment of the models, how to serve them better in production, and other infrastructure issues.
You can also work with Business Intelligence solutions such as PowerBI and Tableau as a Data Analyst.
Having a deep knowledge of a specific field is a huge plus for a Data Analyst.
User Experience (UX) Designer
If you are a people person, working as a UX designer is a job you can excel at.
UX designers focus on the interaction that users have with products, like websites, apps, and physical objects.
They make those everyday interactions useful, enjoyable, and accessible.
Project Manager or Product Manager
Last but not least, if you are not or do not want to be in a very technical role, you can go the management route.
A project Manager or Product Manager can be a perfect fit for you and they have very distinct lines of work, despite the names being similar.
Project Managers deal with things such as risk and issue management, planning and resource scheduling, and scope management.
Product Managers on the other hand work by creating roadmaps for a given product, defining and prioritizing features, and talking to users to understand their problems and gather requirements.
In this article, I talked about How I became a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) by PMI in 2 months.
Check the alternatives
There are tons of alternatives to work in the tech space.
I have presented you with some very good options that might fit you, but this list is far from exhaustive.
If working directly with code doesn’t make much sense to you, don’t get stuck, maybe you should just try something else and the alternatives are so many that you will find your perfect fit.
Of course, to excel at any of those jobs you will have to work and study a lot, just as much as you would to become a professional Software Developer, so if things don’t click at the beginning, keep going and don’t just give it up.