umsure about career

LegacyUser

Bit of background.
When I was teenager (13-17) I designed website in my spare time from scratch and started doing small bits of php programming. I always was messing around with computers so much so I was the 24/7 support guy for all my family and friends. When it came picking courses for my CAO application there was 3 things I would of liked to have done medicine, engineering and computers but I knew I wouldnt get enough points with the 1st two so I picked computers.

When I started Computer Science, I was going to drop out in the first few weeks but I didnt know what else to do so I just stuck it out. I really struggled with the programming aspect of the course and it showed in my results. I somehow made it to final year, worked hard at exam time and managed to get a 2.1.


It took me 6 months of looking but I landed a job in a graduate role for an big company (over 200,000 employees) where I got a few weeks training in programming.

I have been here a year now and to date I have done very little development and when I did I couldnt do it.

Anyway this week I had a meeting with my manger to set out my goals for the forthcoming year. My manager asked what do I want out of my career and TBH I have no idea what I want. I said to do more development tasks and his response was I needed to put in a lot of work at home if I wanted to achieve that as a goal. As in I need to go home and read books about it but the thing is by the time I get home I dont want to anything like that.

He went on to say that he knew I was unhappy and said if I wanted could try and move into a different work such as QA, Support or any area within the company (he even joked about going into HR) as I have a good degree. Thing is I have done bits of QA and didnt like it and I do support once every 4th week and I despise it. He only said Business Analysis and one of the guys in the team was a former BA. He said have a look at all the areas up the internal job site and see is there anything I might like to do.

So I am completely unsure where I want to go with my career, like I am not sure I want to be a developer as sitting in a room just coding away all day just doesnt appeal to me (I didnt mind it in college as it wasnt that often) but I know I dont want to get into QA or Support as I dislike them and I know they are hard to get out of once you are in them.

He was saying there is a role going which would result me in sitting at the same desk doing the same stuff but not doing any development tasks. I would be just be doing Unix, SQL and on boarding clients to use our system. But I am unsure about moving into that area as I feel I would be unable to move to another job as its only as everything I would have learned wouldnt be transferable.

I worked in an library one summer and I loved dealing with people and being out and about.

After a month I thought I might quit and look into doing a nursing degree but I never got around to doing anything about that.

Anyone have any advice for me?

gerryk

You don't mention your age, so I'm going to assume you are still quite young. You are in no real hurry in defining your career at this point. You should be focussing on upskilling and doing a bit of 'suck it and see'.
Your manager is, for obvious reasons, more keen on you becoming a productive staff member, but, short of moving you around and criticising your abilities, doesn't seem to be offering much in the way of constructive advice, or pathways to improving your skillset.
Sure, we all need to maintain out skill levels, or even increase them, on out own time, but a good 'partnership' oriented company will have educational programs you can get involved in. I work for an equally big company, and they offer a lot in terms of self-improvement, so maybe this just hasn't been made obvious to you, and you might benefit from examining those options.
I can see your quandary though... I have 20 years behind me as a developer, but much of it was very much in an 'interactive' role, where I was architect, analyst, programmer, tester and often the customer support guy, all rolled into one. I enjoyed this much more than the cube-farm code-monkey style of dev you see more and more these days (no offense meant to any devs out there). Writing code day in day out can be tedious, whereas a bit of variety can make your productivity jump.
I don't know what area your company is in, but I'd be willing to bet that there are tracks open that will allow you to do some coding, along with other stuff to keep things interesting.

kjl

Iif you have any experience in development surely you have come across SQL before, and UNIX is pretty easy to pick up.

I worked as a developer for about 5 years, but I found it was more about doing tedious development work, never projects that I was interested in. I moved into consulting because I, like you, am very good with people. Now I fly around the world working on different projects and I love it. I still do development but only on my own personal projects which keeps me interested.

I think the last job would suit you, SQL is very easy to pick up and would be useful for you to know, plus interacting with clients would appeal to your sociably nature.

Now don't take this personally, but maybe development isn't for you, there were many people in my course who didn't pick it up, but still went on to get great jobs in the IT sector. TBH, it's either something you pick up, or you don't. You have probably heard a professor talking about it "clicking", well if it hasn't clicked for you by now, maybe it's time to pack it in. SQL takes a completely different mind set, and it may well be the right mindset for you.

Either way, you should be happy with the fact that you are working, and that your boss seems like a nice guy who is looking out for you.

LegacyUser

gerryk wrote: »

You don't mention your age, so I'm going to assume you are still quite young.

This if my first professional job and nearing my mid twenties.

gerryk wrote: »

'interactive' role, where I was architect, analyst, programmer, tester and often the customer support guy, all rolled into one. I enjoyed this much more than the cube-farm code-monkey style of dev you see more and more these days (no offense meant to any devs out there).

I was actually thinking something along them lines as in jack of all trades and master of none.

kjl wrote: »

If you have any experience in development surely you have come across SQL before, and UNIX is pretty easy to pick up.

I do a lot of SQL (I was the DBA for my project I had to do when I first started and I know my database and Java code has been reused by graduates in New York and London) and Unix already so I am pretty confident using them already.

kjl wrote: »

Now I fly around the world working on different projects and I love it.

In that meeting with my manger he did tell me that there was options for me to travel with the job which does sound appealing.

kjl wrote: »

maybe development isn't for you

This has been playing on the back of my mind for quite a while now. I was able to do my assignments in college by going to class mates and being able to google at lot of the stuff I was doing as in ribbing code from something else to work for my problem. But when it comes to coding stuff in work I am completely lost due to the high complexity to it.

I dont want to shoot myself in the foot now in such a early part of my career by not trying to do development.

I feel like a right dumbass in my team due to being there a year now and still I dont know what I am doing thus I need to ask questions right left and centre.

I also make loads of cocks up (some of them being small enough like missing ' or last week I missed / at the end of a command which caused 3 hours testing to be redone) and I can see my manger getting more and more annoyed at me as the days go by. Which doesn't make me feel all that great about myself.

kjl wrote: »

Either way, you should be happy with the fact that you are working, and that your boss seems like a nice guy who is looking out for you.

Yes, I do count myself lucky in that sense. As some of the lads from my intake are doing nothing all day while my manager is always pushing me to do stuff (never have nothing to do) which is really good for me but its really annoying at the same time as its always new stuff and I never understand what I am doing.


I would really like to have a job I actually enjoy doing but I cannot see that happening in my current role.

I actually work in NI but I have never settled here and would love nothing more to move back to Dublin (where I went to college) but I dont feel I have enough experience to get another job even if I knew what I wanted to do.