man off-the-stack
About & methodology
The honest version: why this exists, how the roles get picked, and exactly how much to trust the numbers.
cat ./thesis.md
Off The Stack started as a string of LinkedIn posts. The same reply kept showing up: "I had no idea that was even a job." That reaction is the whole project.
Tech career advice funnels almost everyone toward one title — full-stack developer — and treats every other outcome as a consolation prize. But the industry is enormous, and the roles around writing application code are technical, well paid, and far less crowded. Most people never hear their names. This is the field guide I wish someone had handed me.
cat ./how_roles_are_chosen.md
- Underrated, not unknown. Real, hireable roles that CS students and developers consistently overlook — not obscure trivia jobs with three openings worldwide.
- Software-adjacent. You use technical skill, even if you're not shipping product code all day. If a strong developer could move into it, it qualifies.
- Actually pays. The role has to support a genuinely good living, with a ceiling worth aiming for — otherwise it's a hobby, not a career.
- A real way in. There's a concrete, learnable path to enter — not 'know someone' or 'have ten years of luck'.
cat ./about_the_numbers.md
Read this before quoting a number
Every salary band is a US-market ballparkfor orientation — entry, mid, and senior base pay, rounded. They're synthesized from public ranges (levels data, job postings, community surveys) and deliberately kept approximate. They are not offers, guarantees, or precise statistics.
Real pay swings hard on location, company, industry, and luck. Roles with variable comp (sales-adjacent, customer-facing) note it, because base alone understates them. Outside the US, scale to your market. Treat the bands as "is this in the right universe?" not financial advice.
whoami
Written by someone who's watched too many sharp people decide they'd "failed" because they didn't land a generic SWE role — when the thing that actually fit them was sitting right there, unnamed. The series continues on LinkedIn; this site is where the entries live for good.