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What's it like working in development - part time work available?

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    #32
    gargargar
    Registered Users Posts: 249 ✭✭gargargar


    You don't have a hope OP.

    To get decent paid part time work is not really an option when you start out. You need to put in long hours and learn from others. Part time is possible once you are properly experience, and can work on your own (no mentoring).

    To earn good money you need to really apply yourself at the start of your career, regardless of the field. It sounds like you are looking for an easy option right from the get go. Unlikely to work unless you have an unusual level of natural talent.


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    #33
    imitation
    Registered Users Posts: 1,815 ✭✭✭imitation


    bpmurray wrote: »
    And the comments about passion are true: I've been playing the software development game for over 35 years and am still passionate about it, learning new stuff all the time, playing with new languages / frameworks / technologies / etc.

    This is another thing, to be a good dev you have to research new technologies for every project. You are constantly upskilling. It just wouldnt fit into the part time lifestyle.


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    #34
    ScottStorm
    Registered Users Posts: 364 ✭✭ScottStorm


    OP a month ago you didn't know the difference between java and javascript, now you think you can walk into a p/t development role?

    You mentioned a springboard course, they are good but not that good.


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    #35
    Berserker
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,046 ✭✭✭Berserker


    awec wrote: »
    I've never met an actual part time software dev in my life.

    I am moving into a part time role myself. I have ten years experience in full time development.
    bpmurray wrote: »
    Software development is not a 9-5 job - I've worked many 48-hour days, and have spent weeks without a weekend off and only very, very few companies give time off in lieu. The industry is becoming even less forgiving, with many DevOps roles now assuming people are available 24x7, so don't think it's an easy job.

    Very few people realise this. It is not uncommon for a developer to work fifty hours or more a week. I have a massive problem with this myself, to be honest, as I believe that a developer needs to be well rested to perform. I spend a fair chunk of my time performing code reviews and you see a higher volume of issues in the reviews that are submitted after core hours. Tired developers make mistakes, which in turn is going to lead to time wasted fixing those bugs, when they surface in test or worse again in production. I have discussed this with management in the company that I work in but they fail to see the problem with it and they still can't fathom why they turnover rate of staff is so high in our company, of course.


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    #36
    Under_Graduate
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 621 ✭✭✭Under_Graduate


    Okay just checking in to say I appreciate this good insight.

    To be honest, even when I did my degree, after doing my placement I realized, I had no real intention of working as a engineer.
    I just did it as a demonstration of competence, so I'd have something to say for myself basically, as oppose to having, "I worked summers at the local dairy" on my CV.

    But that was 6 years ago.
    Even in terms of doing a springboard course, I figured it'd be basically "updating" that approach, an investment in my future, if you will.
    I figured with a level 8 degree, I could be offered lesser roles with ease.


    One poster mentioned other professions that may offer more in terms of potential part time roles.
    Pharmacy being one?

    I mean, I know this is the development forum, so I don't wanna deviate too much, but perhaps you guys might be more up to speed on what options, post graduate or conversion courses would be available, relative to the purpose of this thread - part time'ish work...?

    I gotta be honest, a pharmacists job looks cushy as hell, and I always liked chemistry at school.

    But to sum up - basically the consensus feedback I'm getting here is that, development is a tough profession to get into, that requires the utmost commitment and dedication, as well as somewhat of an affinity for the work; the former I would highly question in myself, and the latter - well, I found thenewboston online tutorials to be doable but not a cakewalk...
    I certainly recoil a tad at the thought of reproducing that kind of work myself off the top of my head...


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    #37
    Stheno
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 51,687 Mod ✭✭✭✭Stheno


    Under_Graduate wrote: »



    Pharmacy being one?



    I gotta be honest, a pharmacists job looks cushy as hell, and I always liked chemistry at school.


    I certainly recoil a tad at the thought of reproducing that kind of work myself off the top of my head...

    Pharmacy is an extremely demanding role, I hold pharmacists in the utmost respect being someone who has been on drugs for which I have had very liberal prescriptions to the point that my doctor has written a justification for the prescription on it. The pharmacist still had a duty of care to double check it.

    As a pharmacist, if you make a mistake you could kill someone, or if you abide by the rules, you may end up in the coroners court to explain why you killed someone.

    http://utv.ie/News/2015/03/27/Coroner-records-death-by-misadventure-in-nut-allergy-case-34386

    Development or indeed any role in IT imo is not for you, I've known people in various roles in IT think it all looked rosy from the outside, yet then have health crises due to the effort involved.

    I think you need to see a professional career coach to evaluate what you want, what skills and strengths you have, and then figure out what you want to do.

    I work in IT, not in dev, but it's continuous education, staring at a new challenge and realising you have to meet it, and meeting it.

    That can be tough at times.


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    #38
    maki
    Registered Users Posts: 772 ✭✭✭maki


    Under_Graduate wrote: »
    Pharmacy being one?

    I gotta be honest, a pharmacists job looks cushy as hell, and I always liked chemistry at school.

    Pharmacy is a full-time 5 year course, and there are no conversion courses. Even with graduate entry you start at year 1.


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    #39
    The Corinthian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    Under_Graduate wrote: »
    I gotta be honest, a pharmacists job looks cushy as hell, and I always liked chemistry at school.

    But to sum up - basically the consensus feedback I'm getting here is that, development is a tough profession to get into, that requires the utmost commitment and dedication, as well as somewhat of an affinity for the work; the former I would highly question in myself, and the latter - well, I found thenewboston online tutorials to be doable but not a cakewalk...
    I certainly recoil a tad at the thought of reproducing that kind of work myself off the top of my head...
    I think you've missed the point in your summation, given your continued search for a 'cushy' number.

    Many jobs and professions can become 'cushy' in time. Probably the 'cushiest' is academia, where you will effectively work a part time week and earn a pretty good salary. In time.

    But as with all careers like that, you pay your dues at the start so that you can benefit from the 'cushy' position later on - years of post grads and research, kissing professorial ass and being treated as effective slave labour by them, and surviving on tutorials with no job security until you get, if fortunate, tenure.

    In short, at best either it's tough at the start and eventually you get your well-paid, cushy number, or it's less tough to begin with, but you never get the well paid, 'cushy' number in the end - but that's your choice. There's no free lunch.

    Welcome to life.


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    #40
    KAGY
    Registered Users Posts: 1,090 ✭✭✭KAGY


    OP, you need a good hard think about what you want. A guidance councillor will help, every adult learning centre will have one.
    A job in anything you're not interested in in the slightest will always be a soul destroying chore. You'll never stick it long enough to gain the experience needed to comfortably earn what you want.

    Setting up your own business might be an option, so you don't have anyone relying on you. could you create an app for your "external interests"? (If you don't think you could make a start at that now with help from Google and an online course from say codademy do that now why do you think you would be more employable than the other hundreds of graduates each year?)
    Can you think of a way to monetise those interests Or pick a part of civil engineering you did like and improve that?

    BTW I'm not a developer, or even employed in IT, but I have an big interest in computing and can write short bits of code / databases / automated spreadsheets for little jobs I have and I wouldn't consider doing what you are proposing. It'll be a waste of another few years for you.

    edit: just thinking long term, if you ever get married and kids (or even pets!) come along, you won't have the time for anything else anyway and you may just want a job you can get lost in :-)


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    #41
    um7y1h83ge06nx
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,029 ✭✭✭um7y1h83ge06nx


    The Corinthian wrote: »
    I think you've missed the point in your summation, given your continued search for a 'cushy' number.....

    Excellent post The Corinthian, nail on the head. I'd take heed OP, I really think you are looking for something that doesn't exist in the short to medium term.


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    #42
    beauf
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22,651 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    Under_Graduate wrote: »
    ...My main objective is to simply get work that will cover my expenses and not consume too much of my life cause, I have a far greater focus on outside interests....

    Are there part time positions available in software development, generally speaking?....

    The answer to both of these is no, not at the bottom half of the ladder. When you very experienced. It may be possible. But you'll never get to this point without making a greater commitment you are willing to.


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    #43
    imitation
    Registered Users Posts: 1,815 ✭✭✭imitation


    The Corinthian wrote: »
    I think you've missed the point in your summation, given your continued search for a 'cushy' number.

    Many jobs and professions can become 'cushy' in time. Probably the 'cushiest' is academia, where you will effectively work a part time week and earn a pretty good salary. In time.

    But as with all careers like that, you pay your dues at the start so that you can benefit from the 'cushy' position later on - years of post grads and research, kissing professorial ass and being treated as effective slave labour by them, and surviving on tutorials with no job security until you get, if fortunate, tenure.

    In short, at best either it's tough at the start and eventually you get your well-paid, cushy number, or it's less tough to begin with, but you never get the well paid, 'cushy' number in the end - but that's your choice. There's no free lunch.

    Welcome to life.

    Agreed, theres queues of people with a degree and no experience for almost every job out there, most are willing to put into hard work and 50 hour weeks. This is mainly because they are young and commitment free and want to build a lifetime career. Why would an employer create a graduate role that is part time in that climate.


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    #44
    experiMental
    Registered Users Posts: 1,137 ✭✭✭experiMental


    @OP I have an alternative solution. Learn economics, to find out the real value of your interests, and how they are connected to economy.

    Then, make your interests work for the economy. My 2 cents.


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    #45
    14ned
    Registered Users Posts: 768 ✭✭✭14ned


    The Corinthian wrote: »
    Many jobs and professions can become 'cushy' in time.

    I +100 this point. There are very few jobs in this world which pay well, provide work hours flexibility and which have low barriers to entry. If there were, everyone would convert into those jobs.

    Same goes for software development. After investing a decade or so in the profession, you can gain the choice to take a severe pay cut in exchange for a part time week like I did last year to help out with the birth of our first child. I got to see my baby's first steps, first words, first lots of stuff, but it came at the cost of running down our family cash reserves to (as I type this) just €1,672. So even then, no free lunch. I'm back onto real paying work from this month, but that comes with it normal work hours.
    The Corinthian wrote: »
    Probably the 'cushiest' is academia, where you will effectively work a part time week and earn a pretty good salary. In time. But as with all careers like that, you pay your dues at the start so that you can benefit from the 'cushy' position later on - years of post grads and research, kissing professorial ass and being treated as effective slave labour by them, and surviving on tutorials with no job security until you get, if fortunate, tenure.

    In short, at best either it's tough at the start and eventually you get your well-paid, cushy number, or it's less tough to begin with, but you never get the well paid, 'cushy' number in the end - but that's your choice. There's no free lunch.

    I don't think academia is what it was even ten years ago. You either work like a dog and see a chance of promotion, or you never see promotion and get the salary you have for the remainder of your years teaching twelve hours per week (this may not seem much to a secondary school teacher, and I suppose it isn't compared. However it's much harder to get into academia, with many more years of risky two year contracts moving between (relatively few) universities until you find a permanent contract, so the barriers to entry are much higher with a corresponding pay off after you're in).

    No I think the only real advantage of academia is the relatively excellent pension. But then working in parts of the civil service comes with the same pension with much lower barriers to entry. So, for my book, probably the most cushy easiest to get into job in Ireland today is probably the civil service, as soul destroying as working in some parts of it is (I'm thinking the Social Welfare Office in particular, the section where your job is to visit families to decide if to take away their children).

    As everyone has mentioned by now, there is no free lunch unless you are exceptionally lucky e.g. have a hit record, earn a few million, and then you get all the problems most of us think we would love to have (but are still surprisingly unpleasant, my cousin had a hit record, was a millionaire, and life was surprisingly hard for him. His last job was moving bricks on a construction yard. Even being very financially lucky doesn't mean you are lucky in life).

    Niall


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    #46
    robbiezero
    Registered Users Posts: 4,354 ✭✭✭robbiezero


    I don't know if you need to be passionate about software development to get on well in your career in it. Certainly you need to take pride in doing your work well, but that applies to any job. I'm working in it years and have done well, but I have never been passionate about it and would have no qualms about never doing any development again, if I was ever in a position to give it up. I hardly ever do any of it in my spare time.
    To get to a position where software development is a cushy number, you need to have lots of experience and to have built up a bank of trust in the company you are in so that you can estimate your time correctly to perform tasks. You may also have the option of spending some time working from home, which saves travel time and is a nice change from being a commuter office drone.
    When I read about people with 10 years plus experience regularly doing 60 hour weeks and working weekends, I really wonder what they are at. Fair enough if they are getting paid for their time or love it that much, I did it in my twenties, but there is not a hope I would do that regularly now and I can't see how I would ever need to.
    I often wonder, would I take more pleasure in working and maybe perform better if I was passionate about it, but then as the uber-nerd across the desk from me raises his arms above his head and utters yet another exclamation of triumph at getting a unit test to pass, I think to myself, that I'd rather it the way I am.


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    #47
    14ned
    Registered Users Posts: 768 ✭✭✭14ned


    robbiezero wrote: »
    I often wonder, would I take more pleasure in working and maybe perform better if I was passionate about it, but then as the uber-nerd across the desk from me raises his arms above his head and utters yet another exclamation of triumph at getting a unit test to pass, I think to myself, that I'd rather it the way I am.

    One of my personal big realisations is being passionate about software development has a negative effect on being employed to do so. Employers rarely let you carry a piece of software to completion, so if you feel passion you'll always be left hanging.

    The most pleasant job I've ever had was one which I didn't particularly get worked up about. I did care, just not enough that when I went home it bothered me at all. Absolute heaven.

    In my opinion for stuff you're passionate about, it's best kept to hobby time and your retirement. Ideally speaking of course, in the end of all the things I am competent at, software development pays the best for the least work, so that's why I do what I do.

    Niall


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