Natural Career Progression -> Management?

ImARebel

So I've 15+ years industry experience, starting off in VB6/Access/SQL Server and now working with C# and Sql Server. Technically I would have been very strong in VB6 and SQL Server (I had an MCP in SQL Server a long time ago!) but I'm definitely not as strong technially in C# and I'm doing only basic SQL stuff now. I'm good but not great...

I've worked in many different areas, no job has been the same, I like variety and I'm with my current employer in the Financial Services for 8 years. The main reason being that it's held my interest due to the sheer scale and complexity of the system. Even now there are areas of the system I've never worked in and continue to learn.

But....

That time has come where the coding is getting less and less and the "mange-ment" as I call it is getting more and more. And slowly but surely instead of building up my competency in C# the work is getting sent off shore and I'm there really just to answer queries and support the team. Instead of VS being the most used item on my PC it's now outlook and word.

This has happened over the course of about 2 years and I'm not happy in that role, I find it boring, it's not challenging in any way, it's not that I can't do the job but I'm finding I don't want to do it. My first love was always coding (still is!) and it's killing me others are getting to do the work that I love to do.

Question is though - am I at that stage in my career that that's just what happens -> you leave coding behind and move into a more management role?

I'd love to hear from people in a similar situation. Did you go with it, did you leave and take a lesser paid role just to be coding again? Do I just need to grow up and accept the fact I need to move with the times, lol

I feel to go now and try and get a coding job I'd be laughed out the door as I feel the amount of coding I've done in the last 2 years isn't worth talking about. How can I even consider going for a full-Dev job? But at the same time I'm crying into my coffee when I realise I may never code again (sad but true, lol!)

I'd love to get my teeth in a new project and get involved in something constructive but I've lost all confidence in my ability to be able to do that.

Anyone been in the same boat?

moycullen14

I'd say most people find themselves in this position. And they find themselves in that position for exactly the same reason as you: a technology shift.

You're wandering along, happy as a clam, doing desktop applications in VB. Suddenly there's a technology shift and it's all java/.NET/whatever and your expertise now seems worthless. Kids 20 minutes out of college know more about C# than you do and your 10 years experience is suddenly worthless. Not alone is no-one going to pay your big salary, you'd be lucky to get a graduate's wage.

The solution? Let's go into management and spend the rest of your life filling in spreadsheets and giving good 'slide' to your betters. Great, you can maintain your salary and seniority. The one downside is that you hate the job and you're crap at it (one follows directly from the other). This wasn't what you signed up for.

Relax, some people do move into management because they like it. However lots of us stay developing well into our 50s and beyond. It can be done. It's not easy, you do have to work at it and there are pitfalls along the way.

Technology shifts have always happened - and will continue to happen. Moving from Mainframe to client-server to desktop to web to mobile; from Fortran/Pascal to C to C++ to Java; from CMS to VMS to Unix to Windows to iOS/Android.

You have two choices: either you ride each technology change or stay with a technology set that you are comfortable with. Cobol developers can pretty much name their own salary today. Not because there is a huge demand for them but because there are so few of them left.

The problem with the former is that you have to work at it - keeping up with technology isn't easy and it gets harder as you get older. If you haven't got a huge interest, it becomes almost impossible. Allied to this you tend to get a bit more cynical about new 'fads' as you get older - really nothing much changes but the gurus and consultants need to earn a crust, that's why the latest and greatest gets pushed.

The problem with staying with a technology that is declining is that the supply/demand curve can be quite 'lumpy'. I'm sure that the supply/demand curve for C++ will be better in 15 years than it is today.

Another thing to do is focus on long-lasting technologies. I learnt UNIX and Perl back in the late 80s and I still use those skills today. It still amazes me that I can accomplish things with a few lines of script that people can't manage with all the GUIs/IDEs/Web technology available today. This is a bit controversial but I would stay away from proprietary technologies (e.g. Apple/Microsoft). Their business models tend to build in obsolescence.

You will suffer from 'ageism'. Coming to terms with recruiters/managers who are significantly younger than you can be tricky - for you and for them.

Consider contracting. It is easier for unconventional candidates to find work as a contractor. Also, it forces you to keep up to date. Contracting can be tricky in Ireland outside of Dublin. You need a good pipeline of potential clients as a contractor and the numbers just aren't there.

The number of developers, apparently, doubles every five years. That means that 50% of developers have less than 5 years experience, 75% have less than 10 years and so on. It's not that older developers have gone away, it's just that there was never too many of them in the first place.

ImARebel

Thanks so much for the reply I appreciate it. I suppose the hardest thing I'm finding is trying to stay current and get more up to speed on C# but at the same time fit in time for my commute/family by the end of the day when I'm sitting down at 9 at night the last thing I want to do is open a laptop and do another hours "work". That is definitely my biggest challenge.

I can do the TL job in my sleep I did it for a while, got bored, asked for a transfer to Dev to learn C# (which I got) and then they shipped everything off shore.

i have friends that are Cobol programmers (they never made the jump to VB, lol) and they are happy as pigs in sh*t as they can name their price because they are so few of them. I would go back to Vb6 in a heartbeat but I think I'd turn into a dinosaur if I did. A happy dinosaur none the less.

I don't mind doing people management/team lead when I'm also coding myself but like everything it starts up 30/70 coding and starts slipping and slipping until it becomes 90/10 and stuff that was second nature to me I'm now having to google a solution to it.

Think I need to decide if I go with my heart or my head...my mortgage/family commitments say head but my inner geek says heart :-)

14ned

ImARebel wrote: »

Question is though - am I at that stage in my career that that's just what happens -> you leave coding behind and move into a more management role?

I'd love to hear from people in a similar situation. Did you go with it, did you leave and take a lesser paid role just to be coding again? Do I just need to grow up and accept the fact I need to move with the times, lol

I feel to go now and try and get a coding job I'd be laughed out the door as I feel the amount of coding I've done in the last 2 years isn't worth talking about. How can I even consider going for a full-Dev job? But at the same time I'm crying into my coffee when I realise I may never code again (sad but true, lol!)

I'd love to get my teeth in a new project and get involved in something constructive but I've lost all confidence in my ability to be able to do that.

Anyone been in the same boat?

Ultimately big orgs, especially in Ireland, always feel a need for more (good) managers whereas if we're blunt about it, programmers towards the bottom rung are highly substitutable with market supply given a year or two of learning curve. Big orgs specifically want people who are familiar with the internal org processes, internal org culture, and internal org esprit de corps. So don't think of the pressure to move into Management as losing your specialisation, what is really happening is you are choosing to specialise in your employer with all the pay and seniority benefits that comes with in exchange for the obvious risks.

I'm a bit odd for an IT contractor - I am equally trained in Management as I am in software, with a full undergrad and Masters in both. I ended up doing that retrain due to the 2001 tech crash and it's given me a very different perspective on management.

So here's what I'd advise: basically you're at the point where either you specialise in something if you want to progress upwards, else you're going to become seen as not a go-getter and you'll get culled at some point, so do one of:

• Option A: If you want to specialise in technology as the others have mentioned, then you'll need to ramp up your self-study outside of work to at least 15-20 hours per week to regain the technical edge you've lost, and then either try to progress up the technical track at your employer (most Irish employers pay lip service to such a thing in practice, it's seen culturally as a lesser track to management) or much more likely break out into contracting where almost all the domain technology specialists I am aware of in Ireland seem to work (other countries are much better on this than Ireland).
  
  
• Option B: If you want to specialise in your employer, take the increasing management roles they offer. Worry about the transferability of skills gained and the feeling of meaninglessness going to work every day now entails.
  
  
• Option C: Take a proper academic qualification in Management before specialising in your employer, and believe you me it will give you a totally different perspective on how your employer works and why, and this may put a spring in your step on your way to work in middle management every day. MBAs are the most expensive option, but have the big advantage of being just one year long and many employers will subsidise them heavily. Be aware the content of a MBA is "Management lite", the main reason you do a MBA is for the networking not the skills gained which are shallow and broad. A deeper option is a three year part time Masters like the research track of http://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f36, you'll actually learn a decent chunk of Management theory and practice though probably not as deeply as a proper degree + Masters in Management. The only trouble with the research track is it will scare the beejesus out of your employer even though the research part is by far the most valuable and interesting part of the qualification, so you may need to take the non-research track.

I personally would recommend you choose either Option A or C because most people choose Option B which is the least hassle, and therefore the most common if rather tied into the fortunes of your employer. If you want to remain employed long into the future without dependency on your employer, you want to tick more boxes than anyone else, and Option C is likely the best of the lot long term - I can tell you first hand that the big tech multinationals are screaming out for people with qualifications in both Management and Software because it's such a rare and sought after combo. You will find a small army of recruiters will follow everything you do on LinkedIn and approach you any time your employment status changes, which is nice.

In the end though it comes down to your own personal motivations. If you really, really love coding, then ask yourself "what steps do I need to take to get feature X into the ISO standard for language Y?" and that's a pretty good proxy for the steps needed to specialise in a specific programming language. If you're not sure that isn't too much effort for too much risk, consider taking at least some course in Management theory before deciding going down a Management route - even a FETAC Level 6 in Supervisory Management, which is basically semester 1 in first year of a Management degree, is still a valuable CV value add and costs only a few hundred euro and just a weekend to take.

Anyway good luck with your choice. It's not an easy one.

Niall

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

The problem with staying with a technology that is declining is that the supply/demand curve can be quite 'lumpy'. I'm sure that the supply/demand curve for C++ will be better in 15 years than it is today.

I spoke with some members of the Standard C++ Foundation recently and they tell me that for the domain specialist end of C++ it's better than ever, incomes are rising 8-9% per year and there is a huge shortfall between demand and supply. If you're a specialist in Boost or a significant member of ISO WG21, you can expect to be pulling more than a grand per day in US dollars. Top flight specialists in hard realtime programming for hedge funds etc can pull significantly more again.

For the majority of C++ programmers however, things are in a slow decline, though interestingly less worse than for the majority of Java programmers who are experiencing a sharper slow decline, as are .NET programmers. If you are in gaming, hedge funds, or anything where the programmer needs to actively care about hardware details due to tight worst case performance or power constraints, C++ is still probably a good long term bet.

For example, Facebook is currently building with no cost spared a world class C++ team of the very best of the best engineers. You might wonder why they'd need such a thing, and the answer is twofold: (i) server farm power consumption (ii) VR. In the former, every percentage they can shave off power consumption turns into lots of cost savings as cost is like O(heat^3), and quality VR currently requires very tight programming, even more than usual gaming.

Niall