I think I can use some perspectives, especially from HR and hiring-managers here - or anyone else who might have perspective on this.
I'm a middle-aged software engineer in an IC role. I make a good salary, that affords me a decent lifestyle.
I've been into programming since I was 14 years old, before I thought of it as a profession. I used to sneak away to the browsing center to write some code (
VBscript and early JavaScript back then!), and long story short did one thing after another and naturally came to writing code for a living.
20-something years after all that, I am emotionally ready to try other things - for various reasons. First, I have the entrepreneurial itch. I want to do this at least once in my lifetime, to satisfy myself that I can produce a value and sell it, not just work for an employer. It will be sort of making a point to myself. I don't particularly want to become "rich", would be happy to make enough to sustain my family, and hopefully in a space that has a positive impact on the community. I have a somewhat well-formed idea of what I can do and how to go about it, leveraging my tech experience.
Negative motivators are a factor too. Corporate life is pretty terrible, and programming in a large setup is hardly the artsy process I fell in love with. Practically it involves more arguing with introverts than actual programming. Besides, I don't really vibe with a new tech-fad every couple of years, that is just a form of politics (replace the tech stack to get somebody promoted - that's really all it is). I am more passionate about building the product itself, which seems to be less and less relevant. Employers want you to constantly work overtime and try to climb the ladder, which really is not my thing. I look at higher-ups and find myself saying "
gosh, I hope I never become this". On top of that, ageism is a big thing too, mostly because younger people can be exploited more easily to work overtime for half the money. I think some people-managers get uncomfortable with employees who aren't trying to climb a ladder, since they don't understand such motivations.
So anyway, I am thinking about taking a jump into entrepreneurship to try and build my thing. Nothing big and fancy, something that involves more of my personal effort and I plan to keep it a one-man effort if I can help it. Not a genius-new-idea thing either, just a simple service that I will vet with my own market research and validation.
But all that aside, this is what I struggle with: If I fail after say a year, what options are there next? Here's what my head says, really opposite signals:
- Failing and getting back in the workforce is difficult, as hiring managers & HR would see this as a career break (which it totally isn't).
- Failing and getting back in the workforce could actually be better than staying in it, because it would mean I can explore fresh areas with fresh skillsets and exposure: like product management, design, advertising etc which I would employ in my own efforts. At the very least, it will make me a more well-rounded engineer who has first-hand cross-vertical exposure.
.. which of these is closer to reality? I am having a hard time understanding how potential hiring managers and HRs see such a candidate. Would I fall more in the "
Well-rounded employee with broad exposure and solid deep-skills" category, or more something like "
Jack of all arts who is likely to quit and go chasing something else again"?
Note, I am not asking which one describes me better. I am asking more about perceptions and mis-perceptions, general mindset. For some reason I don't have a high expectation from middle-managers. May be just my experience, from what I have seen generally they tend to stay comfortable thinking inside a box or following a script. From what I can tell, their hiring decisions don't seem to be their own decisions either, since they need to convince a whole stack of heavily opinionated (read: indoctrinated, lacking originality) higher-ups who tend to shy away from risks or wear their personal biases like badges. So... trying to be mindful of this perception aspect, this will be a key point for me gauging the risk of leaving a "working" career and diving into the unknown.
So... When a candidate profile comes up like this, with the last one year as "Founder" or their own venture and trying to get back into the workforce, how it it generally perceived? Do these guys generally get interviews, or more likely a hard pass?