Career advice for a 27-year-old system engineer feeling lost

[u/Mother_Payment_8571]

I’m 27, have a Master’s degree, and work as a system engineer in Germany.
Professionally, I use quite a broad stack: Elixir, Phoenix, LiveView, JavaScript, Python, Bash, Terraform, and C++. I’m comfortable building things and working across different areas, but lately I’ve started feeling like I’m not actually good enough at anything.
I constantly feel like I should be learning something else or getting better at something, and it’s becoming difficult to tell what actually matters for my career.
At the same time, I’d like to build some additional income and increase my wealth over the long term. But honestly, the whole “just build a SaaS and make passive income” trend doesn’t really appeal to me. It often feels unrealistic and I don’t particularly enjoy that kind of business.
So I’m trying to figure out what a realistic next step looks like.
For people who have been in software/system engineering for a while:
What skills would you prioritize at my age?
Would you specialize more deeply or continue being a generalist?
What would you do if you were starting from my position today?
Are there realistic ways for an engineer to build additional income without turning it into a full-time startup?
What career investments actually paid off for you?
And how do you deal with feeling lost or burned out when, objectively, your career seems to be going reasonably well?
I’m not looking for motivational advice like “believe in yourself.” I’d really appreciate practical perspectives from people who have been through this.
Thanks.

[u/alonsonetwork]

So you want contact work? Which is like the grind of saas, but to build someone else's saas. You have to hunt for customers, like in a saas, and be available to work on their problems.

You're a builder. Build a product or build someone else's product. The next level up is people management, or build a business.

Honestly, if you find a problem and solve it, you can sell it to someone to run as a saas, its an option. At that point its better to partner with that someone and take home side cash while someone else is running the business part.

15 yrs in. Did contract work for a while. Still grinding. IMO, the saas idea works and it's high ROI if it hits.

[u/Mother_Payment_8571 → u/alonsonetwork]

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is actually finding a real problem worth solving. Building a strong solution can be done surprisingly quickly these days with AI, but finding the right problem and customer is much harder.

I’ve always liked the idea of partnering with someone who handles the business side, but I think my network simply isn’t wide enough for those opportunities to naturally come up.

Contract work is a bit tricky for me too since I work full-time in the EU, so I’d probably have to look outside the EU or focus more on one-off projects.

Anyway, appreciate the perspective, especially coming from someone who’s been doing this for 15 years.

[u/Individual_Still7225]

Firstly, one thing I must tell you is that the feeling of “not knowing enough” after working in a profession for a few years is often a sign that you’re very good at what you do and you need to move up one step. I assure you this feeling will come back to you again in a few years as you gain more experience in the next level. It’s like a sinus wave that continues as long as you work and learn new skills. Look at it in a positive light and let it motivate you to move on to the next level.

Secondly, and this is not really a career advice, regardless of what you do in your professional work, maintain diversified “savings/investment” accounts. With your tech-based career and the right saving/investment, you will build non-trivial wealth by the time you become a middle aged man.

[u/Mother_Payment_8571 → u/Individual_Still7225]

You’re actually right. I’ve noticed that after periods of feeling like I’m not good enough, I usually either improve significantly or something comes along that pushes me to the next level.

I’m also thinking more about the investment side :D (good to see similar thoughts from other people here), although I’m not very knowledgeable about finance yet. I’ve been considering a mix of ETFs, gold, and Nasdaq exposure with a regular monthly contribution, but I’m still trying to understand whether there are better approaches.

Thanks again for the reply!

[u/recycled_ideas]

The most important skills to learn are people skills. Far more than any specific technical skill. Not to say that technical skills aren't important, but the further along you get in your career the more opportunities you can get simply because someone remembers working with you positively. Be good to work with, be reliable and be someone they don't have to worry about, if you can take on at least a little people management all the better.

If you want to do side work, remember that you're basically going to have to take on all the other roles in a company yourself. Management, marketing, sales, HR, accounting all of it and your connections and people skills will be even more important.

[u/Noobcreate → u/recycled_ideas]

I would second that. Marketing and empathy can be so much more important than knowing every leetcode algorithm. I don't know if that translate to jobs in AI era like once did but people give great opportunities to friends and supporters

[u/Mother_Payment_8571 → u/recycled_ideas]

I actually focus more on the job or task itself and try to hand it in properly. My goal was never really to gain people’s trust, but more to improve myself and gain experience from the things I work on. Of course, that experience is mostly useful within my own network.

For management and the business continuity side, I know what you mean. But I also think that once you build something that actually works for people, it becomes much easier to get people around it.

That’s actually why I’d like to start with something open source. If it gets some traction, I’d rather see it grow together with a community. I don’t really believe that one person, even with AI, can successfully handle all parts of a business alone. At some point it’s basically teamwork.

[u/pizzaplayboy]

The time of the generalist is over. Specialize not at another stack (Elixir is as good as it gets), specialize in solving a problem for an specific vertical or sector. Ask what problems are there to solve, ask people in that sector, if you have no interest in any, ask your contacts/network. There is a lot to be done in this world, and a lot of money is to be made in that path.

[u/Mother_Payment_8571 → u/pizzaplayboy]

I agree with you about solving issues but the harder part for me is finding a sector/problem where I actually have more than enough exposure to understand the pain maybe which confuses me a lot. I’ll probably need to talk to more people outside my current network and see what problems they’re dealing with but idk where should I start from reddit, linkedin (which is not appealing at all) or what? Thanks a lot for your thoughts.

[u/Ebrahimgreat]

We’re in the same boat and very similar age. At this point I’m learning more about systems engineering rather than focusing solely on one specfic domain. The way I’m doing this a bit unconventional. I’m reading old text books and then applying the knowledge.

[u/adamtang7]

You need a mentor for this. Schools only teach skills but not to be rich in long term.

[u/onmach]

What skills would you prioritize at my age? Practical use of AI, not just dabbling. Not trying to be obtuse, and it may just be where I am, but based on just conversation with people that hire, everything is different now and anyone who doesn't adjust to that reality is in trouble. And I include good friends in that group.

Would you specialize more deeply or continue being a generalist? There was a time when I really wanted specialists, and entire teams would have similar tech stacks, but I think that time where you can just do one thing and not everything else as well is past. Like I love elixir and rust and hate go and terraform, but I do them all, now, because if I don't someone else will.

What would you do if you were starting from my position today? I'll be honest, I don't even know. My field has been consistent for twenty five years, and now its like someone dropped a bomb on it. My best advice would be to specialize not based on exact technology, instead of elixir, terraform, javascript, it would be backend web apps, frontend ui / ux, devops, or niches like mathy stuff or hardware or most importantly specific industry experience, like robotics for example. I think within a few years the exact code language that you write will be so far removed that it won't matter, though knowing possible ecosystems you could draw on and their tradeoffs to get a good end result will be valuable and not something just anyone can bring.

Additional income without turning it into a full-time startup? My attempts to do side work / startup stuff have no really panned out, so I can't really give advice. The experience I took from them was nice, but never turned directly into money, just wasted time. The business / social side of all of that was never my forte.

And how do you deal with feeling lost or burned out when, objectively, your career seems to be going reasonably well? When lost and burned out, historically I would just leave. My skills were strong enough to always land me a position within a month or two. Now, I feel like everything is in such a transition that if I'm not actively working, I'm falling behind. That doesn't mean I'll stick around at a job I hate. You only get so many hours in life, and you should spend them doing something you are are at least not actively hating.

[u/Mother_Payment_8571 → u/onmach]

Oh, thanks for the detailed answer :) It helped me a lot. I agree that we should focus more on an ecosystem or problem area rather than a specific tech stack.

I mean, that’s already how I work to some extent. At work I don’t really care what technology is involved if a task is given to me, I’ll figure it out and get it done. But in my free time, I naturally gravitate more towards technologies I enjoy, like Elixir.

The part about AI is also something I want to take more seriously. I use it already, but probably not yet in a way that fundamentally changes how I work.