Development... eventually

TeamJesus

Hi,

I'm a recent graduate of Computer Science and for the last year I've been working at a large multinational with a good reputation for having hard-working employees (i.e. long hours).

I'm currently on an application maintenance team maintaining an enterprise java application. I'm quite happy in the role because I'm learning a lot, I have to understand the infrastructure at a high-level, debug issues in production (usually infrastructure related unless a recent change has gone through), oversee releases and sometimes fix bugs in the application.

I'm hoping in future to get into development. There's not much chance of that in my current role because the development is done offshore. My question is:

Am I reducing my chances of getting into an entry-level development position in future?

On one hand I think I'm getting my foot in the door to a promising career and shouldn't complain that I'm not yet in my dream job.

But there is a nagging voice in my head saying that I'll forget everything I've learned in college and will never get into development.

Should I get my 2-3 years experience here or am I distancing myself too much for development?

Stark

Tbh, I think you're distancing yourself too much. A lot of companies restrict their graduate programs to recent graduates. If you can find an entry level development position elsewhere, I'd go for it without hesitation.

Aswerty

If you're not doing what you want in your job then move jobs. Your current company isn't going to open doors to you while your fulfilling a role they need filled. So as Stark says, if you want to do development go find a development job.

An anecdote of mine that I think is relevant. When I was seventeen, and a few months out of secondary school, I was getting my hair cut in the local barber by the man who owned it. I was talking about what I was doing at the time, which was working in a petrol station, and just mentioned "I kinda fell into the job". The barber started laughing and shaking his head at me and told me that's how most people end up doing what they do to make ends meet. It's something that stuck with me because I always defined this guy, in my head, as a barber. I realised that you can spend your whole life doing the things you fall into or you can take the time to make decisions that lead you to doing what you want to do.

TeamJesus

I think my current job could be seen as an advantage when looking for an entry level developer job. I'm getting an understanding of how an enterprise application works and because we handle production issues after code changes I'm getting an idea of where the development process can go wrong.

By next year I'll have been doing this job for two years. I'm planning to get java certificates in the meantime.

I'm getting a good wage and some security and I'm able to start paying off my college loan.

Do other people working as a developer think I'm really making a mistake by waiting a year?

I acknowledge the advice above but it's also can look bad to have one year at a company down on your cv instead of 2-3.

L.Jenkins

Aswerty wrote: »

...An anecdote of mine that I think is relevant. When I was seventeen, and a few months out of secondary school, I was getting my hair cut in the local barber by the man who owned it. I was talking about what I was doing at the time, which was working in a petrol station, and just mentioned "I kinda fell into the job". The barber started laughing and shaking his head at me and told me that's how most people end up doing what they do to make ends meet. It's something that stuck with me because I always defined this guy, in my head, as a barber. I realised that you can spend your whole life doing the things you fall into or you can take the time to make decisions that lead you to doing what you want to do.

I don't think you could get any better advice really. You can stay with your current Company filling their requirements or you can move and find the job you want.

Aswerty

TeamJesus wrote: »

I think my current job could be seen as an advantage when looking for an entry level developer job. I'm getting an understanding of how an enterprise application works and because we handle production issues after code changes I'm getting an idea of where the development process can go wrong.

By next year I'll have been doing this job for two years. I'm planning to get java certificates in the meantime.

I'm getting a good wage and some security and I'm able to start paying off my college loan.

Do other people working as a developer think I'm really making a mistake by waiting a year?

I acknowledge the advice above but it's also can look bad to have one year at a company down on your cv instead of 2-3.

Your plan is perfectly viable but I think what you see as advantages aren't actually advantages. Your skill set in 2-3 years will put you in a better position than you are now, at least skill wise, in finding a development job. The thing is that comparison is a bit of a strawman. You have to compare where you'll be in 2-3 years vs. where you'd be if you make the move now. Using this rationale it will always make sense to make the move earlier than later. This is a perfect example of opportunity cost.

Also if you understand the phenomenon that is inertia, and you should because it is one of those concepts that is so transferable, you'll note that as your career picks up speed (e.g. raises, promotions, increased responsibility) the move will start looking riskier and financially it will be far less attractive. Though I think this is just a continuation of my "don't just fall into your job" argument.

TeamJesus

Itzy wrote: »

I don't think you could get any better advice really. You can stay with your current Company filling their requirements or you can move and find the job you want.

I'm not planning to stay in this job. You don't always get what you want straight out of college. There are plenty other professions where you have to work up to the perfect job.

I've got rent and loans and if I leave my current job after one year I'm worried that I'm making myself less attractive to potential employers... if I get 2-3 years solid experience at least I have that to fall back on if the worst happens.

I don't really have the option of going back to the parents if I get myself into a sticky situation.

L.Jenkins

Well don't leave it too long. It's not pleasant getting stuck in an area of IT you don't want to be in. I've spent too long fixing PCs and now I'm in my ideal area, but I've got caught in the contractor trap.

Stark

You say your job has a long hours culture as well. Sounds like another good reason to make the move. Life is short, no point in wasting it working excessive hours.

TeamJesus wrote:

I'm not planning to stay in this job. You don't always get what you want straight out of college. There are plenty other professions where you have to work up to the perfect job.

I've got rent and loans and if I leave my current job after one year I'm worried that I'm making myself less attractive to potential employers... if I get 2-3 years solid experience at least I have that to fall back on if the worst happens.

I don't really have the option of going back to the parents if I get myself into a sticky situation.

Look for another job while you're currently working at your current job. That way you're not running the risk of finding yourself with nothing.

TeamJesus

Thanks for the advice everyone I know it's very genuine and I appreciate that. I guess what I'm asking is if you compare me in one year to a recent graduate.. who would be better positioned to start a development role?

The graduate has the education fresh in their minds, but I have the experience I described above...

If you were an employer would you see my extra years out of college as something that would make me more difficult to train up?

L.Jenkins

What I would like to see, if I were on an interview panel, is someone who is actively pursuing a career in development. Someone with a few personal projects under their belt, even if they haven't obtained a role in development. I would actually like to see a graduate demonstrate some skill set in development.

Personally, I try to maintain a github account and blog documenting my work, but I don't always have the time. Both appear on my linkedin profile for all to see and I also 'try' to contribute to open source projects.

Raging_Ninja

I was in the same boat as you. Do what I did and get out after less than a year - any longer and you risk HR in other companies seeing you as only a Support type and it could end up making it harder to get a dev role.

Stark

TeamJesus wrote: »

Thanks for the advice everyone I know it's very genuine and I appreciate that. I guess what I'm asking is if you compare me in one year to a recent graduate.. who would be better positioned to start a development role?

The graduate has the education fresh in their minds, but I have the experience I described above...

If you were an employer would you see my extra years out of college as something that would make me more difficult to train up?

Objectively yes, if choosing between you and a graduate with no experience, then you would be the better candidate. You would both be starting on the very bottom of the payscale though whereas with a year or two of specific dev experience, you'd be starting on a significantly higher figure.

Also that's me thinking as a rational reasonable person. A HR tard may see you as typecast in the support role or see too much of a gap between when you graduated college and when you came to apply. There are HR people who refuse to hire unemployed developers as they see not being currently employed as a stigma for instance...

bpmurray

Actually, if I was interviewing you and a recent graduate, I would see someone who had spent the past year distancing himself from code and who was consequently less useful than the graduate. The reality is that if you have a year of experience with no improvement in your programming ability, that's an enormous negative. Alternatively, make sure that you're contributing to some important visible Open Source product or similar, to emphasise that you can actually program.

In other words, run as fast as you can to a dev job before you cut yourself off from ever being able to do so.

ChRoMe

bpmurray wrote: »

some important visible Open Source product or similar, to emphasise that you can actually program.

For the sanity of open source project maintainers everywhere, please don't attempt to do this.

This advice is trotted out all of the time, and its terrible.

TeamJesus

I'm not in a support role since I never actually talk to customers.

Part of my job is to fix bugs in the application. It's quite a complicated application with a mainframe backend so considering that would you still say it's distancing myself?

For example today I fixed a bug which was triggering the mainframe to send correspondence when it shouldn't. So I do actually "code" but I don't "develop" if you know what I mean.

My other tasks are release management, diagnosing production issues by checking server logs (we are the last port of call if 1st and 2nd level support can't fix it).

If I was to make my job sound sexy id say it was "devops".

I think people are confused about my current role if you need any more information than the above let me know.

P.s. If you google maintenance programming one of the 1st articles is the one below which gives me some consolation (although maintenance programming is only 1/3 of my job).


http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-noble-art-of-maintenance-programming/

TeamJesus

ChRoMe wrote: »

For the sanity of open source project maintainers everywhere, please don't attempt to do this.

This advice is trotted out all of the time, and its terrible.

No need to be a put down merchant everyone has to start off somewhere.

Aswerty

TeamJesus wrote: »

No need to be a put down merchant everyone has to start off somewhere.

I think what he means is more along the lines of – don't just start contributing as a means to an end because new contributors tie up existing contributors time with regards pull requests, code reviews, etc. If you're going to contribute to an open source project then do it for intrinsic reasons.

At least that was my take on it.

ChRoMe

TeamJesus wrote: »

No need to be a put down merchant everyone has to start off somewhere.

Yes, but not by polluting open source projects!

TeamJesus

TeamJesus wrote: »

I'm not in a support role since I never actually talk to customers.

Part of my job is to fix bugs in the application. It's quite a complicated application with a mainframe backend so considering that would you still say it's distancing myself?

For example today I fixed a bug which was triggering the mainframe to send correspondence when it shouldn't. So I do actually "code" but I don't "develop" if you know what I mean.

My other tasks are release management, diagnosing production issues by checking server logs (we are the last port of call if 1st and 2nd level support can't fix it).

If I was to make my job sound sexy id say it was "devops".

I think people are confused about my current role if you need any more information than the above let me know.

P.s. If you google maintenance programming one of the 1st articles is the one below which gives me some consolation (although maintenance programming is only 1/3 of my job).


http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-noble-art-of-maintenance-programming/

Ok now we have the obligatory "you're so noob and I'm not" comments out of the way if anyone thinks the experience I described above is good/bad for getting into development in a years time let me know your thoughts.

Raging_Ninja

If you want to be in a Dev role, go find a Dev role. Don't faff about sitting in a support job, otherwise that will hold you back, both in pay and in the ability to get a Dev role.

I've seen friends do what you doing, and years later they are still no closer to getting out of support.

And make no bones about, what you are doing IS support.

seamus

Don't sell your current experience short. The role you're doing is called "Production Support", and it's actually in high demand because it requires knowledge across a wide range of disciplines - from programming to sys admin to troubleshooting to incident management.

These are actually important skills in being a good developer because it gives you an understand of the entire SDLC. Many developers see their role as just being involved between their machine and the pre-prod environment. After that, it's someone else's problem. So long as the code can pass the unit tests and get into production, my job is done.
Being that "someone else" who has to troubleshoot and clean up after barely-working code goes into production will give you an appreciation for how your code affects the entire application.

In a larger organisation, your lack of dev experience might hurt you - they're more interested in developers who can code, and just code. But a smaller company, especially in the start-up world, will really appreciate the fact that you know your way around the different elements of the stack. A developer who is barely capable of logging into a server to check logs becomes an actual drain on resources in a small company of 10-15 people because they're utterly useless at helping fix live problems.

Also worth noting that Prod Support & Dev Ops are well paid roles if you're good at them. Finding people who haven't pigeonholed themselves into one specific area is surprisingly difficult. But by all means, if you want to be a dev, then be a dev. Find a small company with an opening for a junior Java developer and then sell the sh1t out of yourself.

FastFullBack

OP, I was in a very similar position to you a few years back. I got my way into a dev role by first spending time in an application support role. I spent about 6 months in the app support role before a dev role came in the same company.

Your current role sounds like it is definitely good experience but like others have said if you want a dev role you should be active looking.

Could you talk to someone in your current company to see if they'd consider any dev roles in your location. It seems odd that the dev is offshore and support is onshore. Most big companies have that the other way round.

ronivek

One thing to consider is that graduate positions usually specify a time limit in terms of being considered. In other words if you decide in 2 years time you want to go for a Software Development Graduate position you might not be considered; so you'll be fighting for positions with more mature and potentially experienced developers.

I think your experience is certainly valuable; but there is also a difference between the design process and the bug bashing process... and it will be difficult for you to compete with people who have plenty of design experience unless the position also contains a significant amount of support work.

My advice would be to apply to all the Graduate Software Development positions you can right now and go through the various interview processes and see what comes up. Just because you get an offer doesn't mean you have to take it; but if you don't put yourself out there you're going to be stuck doing something you don't really want to do.

Decos

Interested to know how you're getting on with this decision OP, any further thoughts?

TeamJesus

Hi Decos,

Well I'll have my 1 year anniversary at the job next month, I've told my boss I like the maintenance programming part of my job the most. She said that maybe I could get moved to a development project sometime this year...

If that doesn't materialise I'll leave but I'll wait until I have 2 years because it's a good company to have on the cv.

Going to do my Java Certs in the meantime.

markpb

I wouldn't worry about being seen to job-hop straight out of college. Most people don't care how long you stay in your first few jobs, it's accepted that you won't find their ideal job first time round. It's also good because you get experience of different companies rather than settling for the first people to give you a pay cheque.

Seamus is right, your skills are very incredibly useful for developers to have and lots of companies will eventually appreciate them but there are a lot of misconceptions about production support. A lot of people involved in development see production support as tinkering with config. They won't see it as being any way relevant to development. They'll also see any work on mainframes as antiquated or irrelevant.

If I was presented with a support guy and a developer, I'd lean heavily towards the developer. After two years of no development experience, there would hardly be a decision to make at all. Don't forget in two years your salary will hopefully will have risen but your experience as a developer will not. This means you'll be competing with guys with more experience or with lower salary expectations.

suavek

I'm a developer and my advice would be to post your profile on linkedin.com. Fill in your experience and skills, join some groups like Java/C#/whatever technology you're using in your job, and before long (like in a couple of days or weeks) recruiters should start trying to contact you. Talk to them and you'll get a better idea of what kinds of jobs are available. This is not to say you should quit your current job, just that seeing what the job market is like can be an eye opener.