I’m a software dev/sysadmin mix, ~8 years’ experience, looking for work again after some time off. (Based in a capital city in Australia if that’s relevant)

I have no idea how to characterise the projects that I’ve enjoyed the most or would like to do in the future.

The projects that I’ve found the most enjoyable are not the ones that you see advertised by recruiters and companies; Kubernetes, cutting-edge, greenfield projects, massive cloud accounts… meh.

Some fun stuff I’ve done or would like to do:

  • Upgrading that weird service everyone is accidentally relying on but afraid to touch
  • While money pours into LLMs in healthcare, fax machines were still used every day
  • Working out the “low-level” part of the system colleagues put off for 2 years because nobody wanted to read through the boring 400-page ISO spec
  • Maintaining that abandoned 500K line Java system with most errors being RuntimeException with a null description
  • Working in small teams, max 8-10 people

Any tips to characterise this kind of work to focus my job search? I know it’s different from working at a software company pumping out features.

Tight deadlines and shoestring resources don’t bother me (as long as I get my salary!). Having people who don’t take it all super seriously along the way is super important.

How do I look for this? Trial & error? I feel like there must be… consultancies? … working on these kinds of projcets. Perhaps there’s some name or buzzwords that I need to use? Or would I need to talk with one of those mega big consultancies like Accenture?

Of course very open to the possibility that I’m being totally unrealistic and way too picky in a down market.

My bread and butter is working in Go, Python, backend and OS stuff. Networking, Linux, BSDs, that kinda thing.

Thanks all!

  • Ephera
    4•8 months ago

    I would just send out unsolicited applications to companies, maybe under the title “DevOps Specialist”, and then simply explain what you’ve explained here.

    Like, pretty much any dev team will have a need for someone who enjoys that kind of thing. Usually, it’s done out of necessity and everyone would rather work on feature development.

    • Oliver LoweOP
      2•8 months ago

      I would just send out unsolicited applications to companies, maybe under the title “DevOps Specialist”, and then simply explain what you’ve explained here.

      Cool yeah I’ll give that a shot. I’ve actually never really been able to write it down like I did here, so will be interesting to see what happens. Thanks for replying :)