I want to get out of development

terrorman

I have been in software for a couple of years now. I like it but haven't made any progress in it (unable to get a better paid job).
I would like to know what options are open to me to get into a different area. This is probably the wrong place to ask (developer forum; you are all developers ) but maybe there is someone here who has done the same or knows someone who has.
I don't know what I should do;maybe training. The thing is I am working so I would have to do a part-time course.

jester77

terrorman wrote: »

I have been in software for a couple of years now. I like it but haven't made any progress in it (unable to get a better paid job).
I would like to know what options are open to me to get into a different area. This is probably the wrong place to ask (developer forum; you are all developers ) but maybe there is someone here who has done the same or knows someone who has.
I don't know what I should do;maybe training. The thing is I am working so I would have to do a part-time course.

How far away do you want to get? You could become an agile coach or go into project management.

terrorman

jester77 wrote: »

How far away do you want to get? You could become an agile coach or go into project management.

There's a recession on remember; I don't want to set my sights too high. Location is also a consideration (I want to stay down south). Something not too stressful would suit me I think.

jester77

terrorman wrote: »

There's a recession on remember; I don't want to set my sights too high. Location is also a consideration (I want to stay down south). Something not too stressful would suit me I think.

Not sure what a recession has to do with anything?

What skills do you currently have? It might be easier to use your current skillset/knowledge to move based on what areas you worked in, e.g. developing financial software, medical software, etc

terrorman

jester77 wrote: »

Not sure what a recession has to do with anything?

What skills do you currently have? It might be easier to use your current skillset/knowledge to move based on what areas you worked in, e.g. developing financial software, medical software, etc

I'd like to get out of dev completley.

jester77

terrorman wrote: »

I'd like to get out of dev completley.

Yes, but if you've developed financial software then you have financial business know how which is an asset and this could help you in changing roles.

terrorman

jester77 wrote: »

Yes, but if you've developed financial software then you have financial business know how which is an asset and this could help you in changing roles.

I have developed (well, debugged) medical software and developed energy-saving software.

srsly78

Development is one of the better paid and most in demand professions at the moment. You may find the grass is not actually greener in other fields.

If you want to earn good money then be prepared to travel - at least up to Dublin/London and maybe even further. Limiting yourself to one area is a great way to hold yourself back.

oeb

srsly78 wrote: »

Development is one of the better paid and most in demand professions at the moment. You may find the grass is not actually greener in other fields.

If you want to earn good money then be prepared to travel - at least up to Dublin/London and maybe even further. Limiting yourself to one area is a great way to hold yourself back.

This.

There is a 20k difference between the going rate for my job in Kerry and the same job in Dublin.

stevenmu

The most standard way out of development is to get promoted out. The normal path is to first get bumped up to a team lead type role, where you're still developing but also managing other developers, then to get bumped up again to where you're just doing pure management. That can take a varying number of steps depending on the structures of the organisations you work at.

There's other branches to go along too, like Business/Systems Analyst, or Solution Architect etc. Or you could go into something like technical sales or possibly even technical writing.

ChRoMe

Look at project manager, Sales/Pre-Sales engineer, however they would all still be software industry jobs.

off.the.walls

As an unemployed freelance developer who is trying to get started in this industry this kinda pisses me off, you're complaining about having a job when many people are out of work and desperate for jobs or work or even setting up a kissing booth in order to put money on the table.

If you don't want your job then quit and give it to someone who will appreciate it and not complain about having a job!.

srsly78

He's complaining about wages/career progression, not about having a job. He even said he likes development!

I also will be an unemployed freelance developer next week, but am getting loads of phonecalls No shortage of work out there.

Sparks

It's an ironically odd one this - I spend most of my time working on not getting out of dev (after you've been doing this for a while, people expect you to start moving into management roles, and the career path that keeps you doing technical work is a bit harder to stay on).

But I would ask; if you actually like it, is the problem just the money? (And that, by the way, is a perfectly legitimate problem - screw this "we're in a recession, you're lucky to have a job" nonsense, our portable and rather valuable skillset is why we spend so long training to do this job, and we deserve to be paid fairly for it).

terrorman

I like development, I like my job but the pay is really bad. I don't think I'm much good at it as I've been unable to progress to a higher level of pay.
So therefore I think I should move to a more suitable area. I've always been good at English so maybe technical writing would suit.

Sparks

terrorman wrote: »

I like development, I like my job but the pay is really bad. I don't think I'm much good at it as I've been unable to progress to a higher level of pay.

Okay, so first thing is that how good you are at development is completely divorced from how much you get paid. Our industry is really broken this way - your salary generally (there are allegedly exceptions - I've not encountered them personally yet though) has nothing to do with your ability to do the job and everything to do with how big a **"!"("$* you can be when in the interview (or "how good you are at negotiation" if you put it more politely and IMHO less accurately).

The other broken thing is that our industry has settled on a standard mechanism for getting a raise, and that mechanism is quitting and going somewhere else. I've only personally encountered two places that give raises as a matter of course to their in-house people, and neither of those gave raises that made it more profitable for you to stay than to go. (Why such a bone-headed and wasteful thing is true, I don't know. The amount of money it costs a company to lose an engineer who knows their products and to hire a new one and get them up to speed is scary, but apparently the far smaller amount it would cost to retain their current engineers is even scarier. I live in hope that I've just had spectacularly bad luck in my career, but honestly, I don't think that's the case).

Now, I don't know if you've tried going from place to place, or if you've just been in the one place for a while, and I don't know if you're hitting the top end of the salary scale in Ireland already (though if you were, I suspect you'd be on six figures and working for one of the larger names out there and possibly a bit happier ). So I would suggest that you go read some salary surveys, read glassdoor.com, see what everyone else at your general experience level is getting. If it's higher than what you're getting, pick somewhere new and start sending out CVs; if it's much lower than what you're getting... well, time to re-evaluate what you want from life

Do you feel comfortable enough telling us how long you've been coding and (roughly) what you're currently earning? (You don't have to, you know, some people just don't want to broadcast that data and that's fine).

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

Okay, so first thing is that how good you are at development is completely divorced from how much you get paid. Our industry is really broken this way - your salary generally (there are allegedly exceptions - I've not encountered them personally yet though) .

All solid advice, however that above needs some caveats.

Skill and salary are not completely divorced. Some industries (i.e finance) can skew other contracting rates and salaries from different sectors.

Being a "**"!"("$* " isint the case here either. A medicore developer with excellent people communication skills is far more valuable than an excellent developer with poor communication skills.

terrorman

Sparks wrote: »

Do you feel comfortable enough telling us how long you've been coding and (roughly)

Two years and a bit

Sparks wrote: »

what you're currently earning?

Don't want to say; I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death as a result of their sides splitting.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

Being a "**"!"("$* " isint the case here either. A medicore developer with excellent people communication skills is far more valuable than an excellent developer with poor communication skills.

True, but it's not your communication skills that are tested in the negotiation phase of the interview. What I'm referring to specifically is the ability to go into negotiation knowing how much you're worth to the company and how much you will cost the company and asking for a salary that's far higher than you think is fair (because for some reason, most engineers and developers think that if they can do the job, anyone could do the job and therefore the job can't be worth much) and then not backing off that salary level, or at least not too much.

Truth is, we're usually quite heavily underpaid, and the few amongst us who know how the game is played have a massive advantage in salary. (Makes me wish I knew the game, actually )

Sparks

terrorman wrote: »

Two years and a bit

Rough guess, you should be somewhere between 35k and 45k. And that's a very rough guess - I was in that range, but I knew a few who were just below it and a good few who were above it, and that was in different times.

Don't want to say; I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death as a result of their sides splitting.

I suspect nobody would laugh, so much as remember their first jobs and how little they were earning. In my first job, despite having quite a lot of responsibility by the time I left (as in, wrote the product, ran the live servers, trained new guys and was the overseer for any and all changes made to the product), I was on less than minimum wage because of a combination of low wages and long hours. (Looking back, I wonder what head trauma I had suffered to say I hadn't quit the place faster, but what the heck. Call it a learning experience...)

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

True, but it's not your communication skills that are tested in the negotiation phase of the interview. What I'm referring to specifically is the ability to go into negotiation knowing how much you're worth to the company and how much you will cost the company and asking for a salary that's far higher than you think is fair (because for some reason, most engineers and developers think that if they can do the job, anyone could do the job and therefore the job can't be worth much) and then not backing off that salary level, or at least not too much.

Truth is, we're usually quite heavily underpaid, and the few amongst us who know how the game is played have a massive advantage in salary. (Makes me wish I knew the game, actually )

Well I was using communication skills as an umbrella term for understanding the business drivers behind why you are writing the code. I've progressed further than many of my peers, despite being technically a weaker developer. The difference is I can communicate to a PM what exactly the issues are in a context they understand, same for developers and anyone else involved in a project.

This sort of thing where developers scoff and roll eyes (wither privately or publicly) about people involved in the process who are not technical is their downfall. This lack of vision is the reason they get frustrated when people like me make more even though they would destroy me on a technical level.

At the end of the day we write software to be used by humans, that's the most important interface.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

Well I was using communication skills as an umbrella term for understanding the business drivers behind why you are writing the code.

And I agree with you completely, I think that's a completely correct point about development - I'm just saying that for the ten minutes in the interview where you discuss salaries, it's not about communication skills, it's more about poker.

To use yet another grossly over-generalised pithy comment that'll get me in trouble: engineers and developers do a job; managers play a game. And those few minutes where you discuss salary with your prospective employer is your brief foray from the realm of doing a job (where the outcome is defined by how well the job is done and if it's done well, everyone benefits) to the realm of playing a game (where the outcome is who won a zero-sum game where the two sides involved are not communicating to achieve a common goal, but competing to achieve mutually exclusive goals. You want to be paid lots, they want you to be paid little, and every euro that goes to you is a euro they see as being taken from them).

Like I said, a gross over-generalisation, but there's some truth in the broad strokes if not in the fine details.

SalteeDog

Given you actually like doing development work it would be a shame to leave it - the world (and the IT world) is full of people who don't really like what they are doing but stick with it anyways.

Furthermore - while the economy is in a slump, its fair to say that IT is booming.

My advice is to recognize the experience you have gained, be confident in the skills you have acquired but also identify the technologies and business skills you should develop to make you a more valued prospect. Make your CV as good as it can be and practice your interview techniques. Above all things, have a positive attitude to work - you need to prove your worth - with the quality of your code, your record of meeting your commitments and your ability to work with others - developers within your team, managers, clients and users. If your current employer is not paying you the market rate then find another job but do not contemplate a career change unless you really hate coding.

billyduk

terrorman wrote: »

I like development, I like my job but the pay is really bad. I don't think I'm much good at it as I've been unable to progress to a higher level of pay.
So therefore I think I should move to a more suitable area. I've always been good at English so maybe technical writing would suit.

I think the issue here is not whether you are a good developer or not, but your confidence in yourself. You seem to have convinced yourself that you are not a good developer because of you salary. Thats ridiculous and should never be taken as a marker for skill.

I mean no offense here and i'm not having a go at you, but your issue is, on the surface at least, a self confidence issue. Many people suffer from a dip in confidence from time to time and some people suffer greatly from it. Confidence, more-so than skill, has a direct correlation to your pay. If you don't have the confidence to tell your bosses that you think your worth more than they are paying you, to speak up for and sell yourself in performance reviews and to carry yourself around the workplace like you are confident than your employers are not going to pay you what you're worth. Why would they if they can get you for less?

Example: You walk into a market and see an old lady selling a book for €5. You realise the book is a first edition and know that its worth up to €300 to the right buyer, but its a steal at €5 and the old lady hasn't a clue. Do you pay the old lady what its worth or the €5 she's asking for? You pay her what she's asking for of course. In this analogy, you are the old lady, your boss is the buyer and your skills are the book that you have undervalued. Unless you value them more than you will never get more.

There is no easy way to build confidence, but it begins with you believing your skills are worth more.

GreeBo

Sparks wrote: »

Rough guess, you should be somewhere between 35k and 45k. And that's a very rough guess - I was in that range, but I knew a few who were just below it and a good few who were above it, and that was in different times.

I suspect nobody would laugh, so much as remember their first jobs and how little they were earning. In my first job, despite having quite a lot of responsibility by the time I left (as in, wrote the product, ran the live servers, trained new guys and was the overseer for any and all changes made to the product), I was on less than minimum wage because of a combination of low wages and long hours. (Looking back, I wonder what head trauma I had suffered to say I hadn't quit the place faster, but what the heck. Call it a learning experience...)

I think 35-45 would be pretty good for 2.5 years dev to be honest.
Its been a while but I reckon a grad starts at what, 30k?

I started on 17.5k all those years ago, typically (in my experience) if you stay in the same company as a grad you will get crappy 5% raises, whereas moving will get you 10%+.

OP have you considered QA or BA roles?
Probably QA wont be suitable if you are just after money, but BA can have good progression if you are good at it.

The other option would be contracting...

terrorman

billyduk wrote: »

I think the issue here is not whether you are a good developer or not, but your confidence in yourself. You seem to have convinced yourself that you are not a good developer because of you salary. Thats ridiculous and should never be taken as a marker for skill.

I don't know about that; the cream always rises to the top (salary-wise anyway). It's not just that though; I've been for loads of interviews and haven't go the jobs. location has played a part. I am not in Dublin and can't move there. There is a huge discrepancy in the pay scale between
Dublin and the rest of the country for developers.

billyduk wrote: »

I mean no offense here and i'm not having a go at you, but your issue is, on the surface at least, a self confidence issue. Many people suffer from a dip in confidence from time to time and some people suffer greatly from it. Confidence, more-so than skill, has a direct correlation to your pay. If you don't have the confidence to tell your bosses that you think your worth more than they are paying you, to speak up for and sell yourself in performance reviews and to carry yourself around the workplace like you are confident than your employers are not going to pay you what you're worth. Why would they if they can get you for less?

Example: You walk into a market and see an old lady selling a book for €5. You realise the book is a first edition and know that its worth up to €300 to the right buyer, but its a steal at €5 and the old lady hasn't a clue. Do you pay the old lady what its worth or the €5 she's asking for? You pay her what she's asking for of course. In this analogy, you are the old lady, your boss is the buyer and your skills are the book that you have undervalued. Unless you value them more than you will never get more.

There is no easy way to build confidence, but it begins with you believing your skills are worth more.

No offence taken about my lack of confidence; in fact you are correct. I do lack confidence but that's probably as a result of having flunked so many interviews.

Sparks

terrorman wrote: »

I don't know about that; the cream always rises to the top (salary-wise anyway).

Looking back on the last fourteen years since graduation, I think the phrase "My Arse!" just about covers my evaluation of that accuracy of that statement

I've been for loads of interviews and haven't go the jobs.

Have you considered getting some formal help with learning to interview? Not kidding, it's a seperate skill to doing the job and it's pretty neglected in Ireland.

There is a huge discrepancy in the pay scale between
Dublin and the rest of the country for developers.

True

No offence taken about my lack of confidence; in fact you are correct. I do lack confidence but that's probably as a result of having flunked so many interviews.

It's like shooting duck. You might miss with 9 out of every 10 of the pellets in the shogun blast, but that last 1 out of the 10 means you're having duck a a'orange for tea...

billyduk

terrorman wrote: »

No offence taken about my lack of confidence; in fact you are correct. I do lack confidence but that's probably as a result of having flunked so many interviews.

What prep do you do for an interview if you don't mind me asking?

I sucked at interviews for years and learned a thing or two here. Sit down and try remember every question you have been asked in an interview. Now, whether you were comfortable with the answer you gave at the time or not, think about each of the questions again and what the best possible answer to that question is. Study the questions deeply. This will give you the added confidence in the interview that you know what you are talking about.

When you are in the interview, smile and make eye contact with the person talking and nod a little every now and again.

When giving your answer, don't just talk to the person who asked the question, but the entire panel.

Practice subtle hand gestures while illustrating your answer.

Bring a bottle/glass of water with you to the interview. When the interviewer is wrapping up their question, begin to take a drink. This buys you a couple of seconds to think about your answer.

Study, study, study the company you are interviewing for. Try to tie them into answers for common interview questions.

terrorman

I know myself why I have not been successful at interviews; some of it is down to my lack of technical knowledge;I get asked questions I can't answer. This happens even though I study beforehand but preparing for these kind of questions is pot-luck, it's highly unlikely they will ask something you have studied already.
Another factor is that I have no experience of design methodolgies or software development techniques (I can describe waht they are but have never worked in a company where they were actually used).
Location is alos a factor; I can't move to Dublin.
I am going to get the finger out and get some interview training done though.

Tar.Aldarion

Sparks wrote: »

Rough guess, you should be somewhere between 35k and 45k. And that's a very rough guess - I was in that range, but I knew a few who were just below it and a good few who were above it, and that was in different times.

I dunno, that depends. I started on 25k in October and after 2.5 years in the same company you may have gotten a rise 2 or 3 times. But these wouldn't amount to 10k-20k? I don't know how it works at the start or when you expect to be given increases. I got a rise of a few percent after 3 months and taken off probation but it seems in places that it's a yearly kind of thing. So that was January, now I/others may wait until next January and so on. Another factor is for your first job you don't want to be moving on too fast and how do you get pay rises in IT, you move job.

terrorman wrote: »

I know myself why I have not been successful at interviews; some of it is down to my lack of technical knowledge;I get asked questions I can't answer. This happens even though I study beforehand but preparing for these kind of questions is pot-luck, it's highly unlikely they will ask something you have studied already.
Another factor is that I have no experience of design methodolgies or software development techniques (I can describe waht they are but have never worked in a company where they were actually used).
Location is alos a factor; I can't move to Dublin.
I am going to get the finger out and get some interview training done though.

Not getting past interviews cant really get you down but you just have to do more of them, the things they ask in some of them are ridiculous. Just keep at it until you get one that goes well. Nothing lost from not getting though, you just gain experience and can learn from the questions.

terrorman wrote: »

I don't know about that; the cream always rises to the top (salary-wise anyway). It's not just that though; I've been for loads of interviews and haven't go the jobs. location has played a part. I am not in Dublin and can't move there. There is a huge discrepancy in the pay scale between
Dublin and the rest of the country for developers.

No offence taken about my lack of confidence; in fact you are correct. I do lack confidence but that's probably as a result of having flunked so many interviews.

No it doesn't just rise to the top, you get what you ask for and people new in the business like you and me don't really know how to do that imo. They will try and pay you with what they can get away with. That interview advice may help out all right.

Sparks

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I dunno, that depends. I started on 25k in October and after 2.5 years in the same company you may have gotten a rise 2 or 3 times. But these wouldn't amount to 10k-20k?

No, if you stuck with the same company you'd be well below that, but devs staying with the one company for 2.5 years from their first job, unless it's someplace that's treating them well or has great name appeal on the CV, I would have thought that rare from what I've seen. I'd normally expect to see a few 6 month to 1 year stints in various places by the 2.5 year mark.

I don't know how it works at the start or when you expect to be given increases.

In our industry? You get your increases when you quit and go elsewhere
Seriously fecking broken model, but there it is.

Another factor is for your first job you don't want to be moving on too fast

Yeah, but "too fast" isn't measured in years for us, especially at the start. Granted, if you've been at this for a decade and you've nothing longer than six months on your CV, that might indicate a problem (unless you're contracting all that time), but at the 2-4 year stage, six months to a year wouldn't be raising too many eyebrows.

No it doesn't just rise to the top, you get what you ask for

This. This in big red hairy letters jumping up and down and bellowing like a tazmanian devil in heat.
That's the financial progression in this industry in a very accurate nutshell. The number of people I've seen on near-six-figure salaries whose code I would have failed from any university course I've ever taught or even audited doesn't bear thinking about

srsly78

Something that also helps a lot: being old. Sad but true, noone will take you seriously as a 21-23 year old. This is certainly what I experienced early in my career.

Things may be different nowadays in hipster web-development shops however.

Sparks

srsly78 wrote: »

Things may be different nowadays in hipster web-development shops however.

Yup, in some shops it's the other way round and us old farts couldn't possibly know anything or be up to speed on the latest fads and fashions in "methodologies"*.






* hint: unless you've got actual studies showing your methods reduce post-release defect rates, you don't have a methodology, you've got a superstition. And yes, that includes Agile for the moment.

KonFusion

Sparks wrote: »

Yup, in some shops it's the other way round and us old farts couldn't possibly know anything or be up to speed on the latest fads and fashions in "methodologies".

It's true. You old guys know nothing. With your emacs, Amstrads, and woolly jumpers. We employ a bunch of kids from the local coder dojo just to stay fresh.

And every month we all go shopping together for brown shoes and skinny jeans :rolleyes:

In seriousness, I don't know any web shops (in Ireland anyway) that would segregate you because you were older. I'd be really shocked if that was the case. Is it? Or are you guys just playing on what appears to be a current paradigm?

Sparks

KonFusion wrote: »

It's true. You old guys know nothing. With your emacs, Amstrads, and woolly jumpers.

Vim. Not emacs.
*ahem*

In seriousness, I don't know any web shops (in Ireland anyway) that would segregate you because you were older. I'd be really shocked if that was the case. Is it? Or are you guys just playing on what appears to be a current paradigm?

No, I've seen it cropping up once or twice. It's never really explicit (mainly because it's highly illegal), but you start noticing that all the new hires are young, don't have much experience (or none at all), and wind up earning an absolute pittance.

I mean, why pay 50-60k for someone with a decade of experience when you can hire a new grad whose BA ink hasn't dried yet for 20k? :rolleyes:


In less highly illegal ways though, I've come across it in day-to-day activity every now and then, but I usually just chalk it up to personal rudeness on behalf of the gob****e responsible and get on with the job anyway

KonFusion

Sparks wrote: »

No, I've seen it cropping up once or twice. It's never really explicit (mainly because it's highly illegal), but you start noticing that all the new hires are young, don't have much experience (or none at all), and wind up earning an absolute pittance.

I mean, why pay 50-60k for someone with a decade of experience when you can hire a new grad whose BA ink hasn't dried yet for 20k? :rolleyes:

Ah ok. Yeah I've seen that a lot. I was thinking more along the lines of hiring someone purely because they were younger, regardless of the fact they could pay them less etc.

srsly78

Sparks wrote: »

I mean, why pay 50-60k for someone with a decade of experience when you can hire a contractor with the same experience for double that amount? :P

fixd

DublinWriter

KonFusion wrote: »

In seriousness, I don't know any web shops (in Ireland anyway) that would segregate you because you were older. I'd be really shocked if that was the case. Is it? Or are you guys just playing on what appears to be a current paradigm?

As someone who's been in IT 20+ years, I can only restate what Tom Peters said about the IT sector...it's all about fashion, not technology.

I've seen them all come and go - 4GL, Client/Server, RAD, n Tier, SAP/R3, Java, Extreme Programming and of late, MVC and Agile.

...and now it's all come full circle with the inter-web-net. Anyone who cut their teeth coding form-based IBM COBAL/MVS in the 60's/70's would feel more at home nowadays than someone who learnt their trade in the more 'interactive' fat-client days of the late 80's/early 90's.

The one thing all my 'older' colleagues bemoan about the younger generation of coders is their complete lack of communication skills. Was it ever thus in IT?

IT as a sector was always in dire-need of maturation, however the process seems to have gone a little to far with people becoming more specialised, or as Kenneth Williams put it about the medical profession "better and better at less and less!".

srsly78

Wait, what? Is Agile gone now?

**** yeah! /opens champagne

c_man

srsly78 wrote: »

Wait, what? Is Agile gone now?

**** yeah! /opens champagne

Wait, let's have a retrospective on our use of Agile first.. :pac:

Sparks

If Agile is gone from mainstream use, it means it's just about to hit the larger, more moribund process-oriented organisations...

c_man

That should be about two years for our place so! I can see the headlines already, "Agile Evangelists lose Faith"

The Corinthian

Sparks wrote: »

If Agile is gone from mainstream use, it means it's just about to hit the larger, more moribund process-oriented organisations...

Agile to be incorporated into Prince2?

*Shudder*

DublinWriter

The Corinthian wrote: »

Agile to be incorporated into Prince2?

...and thus a new methodology is born....FUtile V1.0

Seriously, Agile is good. However, most large organisations are so process bound that they can't implement it without miring it with a layer of procedure that's counteractive to the very essence of Agile itself.

I sometimes wonder about the sanity of some of my fellow IT'ers when I see posts like the guy who posted on here who used the question about multiple class inheritance being allowed in C# as a 'catch-out' question when interviewing developers.