Congratulations on being a software engineer at a top investment bank! That sounds like a great graduate job.
Staying there for another year or two sounds good. I’d guess you wouldn’t want to stay for less than ~1.5 years, so that it’s clear the job went fine.
From the sounds of things, I’d guess it would be particularly useful for you to focus on learning more about what kind of role you might be suited to long term, since it sounds as if you’re considering some very different options. I’d start by reading about what the day to day of the various roles are like to get a sense of how well they’d suit you, and then reach out to people doing them to actually have conversations about them. If you haven’t come across it, you might find our section on making a ladder of cheap tests useful. When you’ve gotten a better sense of which you seem best suited for, doing one of the projects you suggested alongside your job sounds good to me. It seems like an entrepreneurial side project would teach you more about how you feel about startups, while charitable projects aimed at underserved communities in South Asia would teach you more about how you’d feel about moving there and about how interacting with government officials there feels.
One option you didn’t mention was being a software engineer for an organisation whose mission you believe in. That seems like a natural transition between your current role and one which you think has more impact. I don’t feel I have a good sense of the extent to which you enjoy software engineering, but it sounds like you might be more on board with it if you agreed with the big picture of what the organisation you were working for was doing.
Thank you immensely for taking the time to respond to my post! The advice on staying at my current job for the next couple years while exploring other options makes sense. The links you have shared have been particularly useful and I am now starting to read up on some of the associated articles/opportunities as well. I had no idea Princeton offered full financial support for their MPA students!
Although I would say I am an okay Software Engineer and I was lucky to be matched with a pretty great/supportive team, I think shicky44 - another member who also made a post on this thread—pretty much nailed how I feel about my job. I was considering Product Management/Entrepreneurship as possibilities because I believe there are opportunities to do pretty impactful stuff using tech, but I am not sure if my strengths are perfectly aligned with those tracks either. I suppose I have quite a bit of exploration to do, while also making sure to try building skills useful in the aforementioned areas to see if my strengths do end up aligning with those tracks after all.
Do you happen to have any advice on how to reach out to potential mentors in other industries/roles for conversations (perhaps even getting a chance to shadow them or doing mini projects for them as well to get a better feel for the roles)? In light of the additional information I included above, are there any particular types of career capital that I should focus on building?
Congratulations on being a software engineer at a top investment bank! That sounds like a great graduate job.
Staying there for another year or two sounds good. I’d guess you wouldn’t want to stay for less than ~1.5 years, so that it’s clear the job went fine.
From the sounds of things, I’d guess it would be particularly useful for you to focus on learning more about what kind of role you might be suited to long term, since it sounds as if you’re considering some very different options. I’d start by reading about what the day to day of the various roles are like to get a sense of how well they’d suit you, and then reach out to people doing them to actually have conversations about them. If you haven’t come across it, you might find our section on making a ladder of cheap tests useful. When you’ve gotten a better sense of which you seem best suited for, doing one of the projects you suggested alongside your job sounds good to me. It seems like an entrepreneurial side project would teach you more about how you feel about startups, while charitable projects aimed at underserved communities in South Asia would teach you more about how you’d feel about moving there and about how interacting with government officials there feels.
One option you didn’t mention was being a software engineer for an organisation whose mission you believe in. That seems like a natural transition between your current role and one which you think has more impact. I don’t feel I have a good sense of the extent to which you enjoy software engineering, but it sounds like you might be more on board with it if you agreed with the big picture of what the organisation you were working for was doing.
Hi Michelle, Sindirella, HStencil, tamgent,
Thank you immensely for taking the time to respond to my post! The advice on staying at my current job for the next couple years while exploring other options makes sense. The links you have shared have been particularly useful and I am now starting to read up on some of the associated articles/opportunities as well. I had no idea Princeton offered full financial support for their MPA students!
Although I would say I am an okay Software Engineer and I was lucky to be matched with a pretty great/supportive team, I think shicky44 - another member who also made a post on this thread—pretty much nailed how I feel about my job. I was considering Product Management/Entrepreneurship as possibilities because I believe there are opportunities to do pretty impactful stuff using tech, but I am not sure if my strengths are perfectly aligned with those tracks either. I suppose I have quite a bit of exploration to do, while also making sure to try building skills useful in the aforementioned areas to see if my strengths do end up aligning with those tracks after all.
Do you happen to have any advice on how to reach out to potential mentors in other industries/roles for conversations (perhaps even getting a chance to shadow them or doing mini projects for them as well to get a better feel for the roles)? In light of the additional information I included above, are there any particular types of career capital that I should focus on building?