Advice on how to salvage a mis-managed dev career

Esho

Hi,

I'm looking for career advice and apologies in advance for the lack of brevity.
I have limited experience in my new career so I'm trying to give as much background as possible.

I re-trained as a .NET dev with a H.Dip in Computing from IT Tallaght 4 years ago.
It was an excellent course, really top-class tuition and I got the coding bug.

Before I retrained, I was managing a small network of adult education training centres across the country - all aspects, from recruitment, induction and mentoring of new teachers/ learners to sourcing premises, to budgeting to reporting to the board etc. I had been working in adult Ed for 10 years.

I got my internship in a company that was upgrading its bespoke ERP from a corell paradox based system to .NET.
As I'd been a tech writer years before, my first task was to write end-user documentation for the implementation of the ERP across sites.
I was also writing dev specs for modifications and other documentation.

Then my responsibility was to develop new applications in paradox. I found this difficult, as there was no documentation for the ERP, and the devs who maintained/ built it were only available on Skype, and were difficult to get hold of. I got the apps over the line - in the end. Fixing bugs in paradox was easy, however. It is like SQL (and I like SQL).
But I think I was perceived as failing in this task by the managers and senior devs. It certainly damaged my own confidence.

Then the decision was made to stop building new devs in paradox.
I maintained a WebForms / jQuery app, helped a lead dev build a MVC portal and re-built one of the Paradox apps in WPF MVVM with DevExpress, nHibernate.
I really enjoyed that. I like using C# - Visual Studio is a dream.

I didn't realise it at the time, but I had a medical issue brewing.
After 3-4 months of not feeling well, I finally felt so sick I went to my doctor, and I ended up in hospital and out of work for 4 months in total.
It was my first and - touch wood, only - major health issue and I didn't think I'd recover.
My company was nothing short of brilliant to me and my family while I was out sick.
Thankfully, all's now well and I'm back in the full of my health.

While I was out sick, the company invested in a low-code platform to take advantage of a business opportunity.
Since coming back, I have built and maintained apps using this tech (and am the go-to guy for this tech) as well as building and demo-ing BI dashboards.
I missed using C# and didn't want my skills to completely atrophy, so I'm re-building the apps I built at work in MVC (in my own time).

All that said, I have not made much progress in my career over the last four years.
Many of my old classmates are project managers now, and all who made a career in development are earning more than I am.

I get the impression (from googling) that the tech I'm using is a career dead-end in Ireland (I don't want to have to work abroad if I can possibly avoid it).
It certainly is in my company. I don't think I have much more to learn from it and want to take on another challenge.

However, whatever challenge I take on has to have clear progression and lead to a position with more responsibility.
I have PM'd projects in my last career, and enjoyed it. I also enjoy coding in .NET.

I see my IT experience to date as a bit of a hodge-podge.

What are / are there any positives in my career to date that I could focus on?
What would you do if you were in this situation?

Talisman

What version of Paradox were you using? Just curious because a life time ago I worked on Paradox 9.

What's the low-code platform?

Where do you want to go with your career?

Esho

I'm not sure what version it was TBH - it wasn't like there was going to be an upgrade!

The low code is called out systems

I want to either go for PM or Lead Dev.

John_Mc

Esho wrote: »

I'm not sure what version it was TBH - it wasn't like there was going to be an upgrade!

The low code is called out systems

I want to either go for PM or Lead Dev.

Very different paths to get there. You need to decide which. If the former, you need to get some certifications in project management. If lead developer then you need to be building and maintaining systems with source code.

My advice is to never get pigeon holed with a tech stack. If your employer can't help you avoid it then change jobs. Dublin couldn't have be a better place for a developer seeking a new opportunity right now.

dazberry

No matter how nice the company were to you when you were ill, it really doesn't sound like somewhere that is a good place for your career - senior devs hard to get hold of, ancient and dated technologies, even WPF is a bit left of centre - the place sounds a bit bananas...

Really you need to look at moving on. The upside is that you've gotten "off the blocks", and have the interest to work on personal projects to keep your skill set, the downside is that if your job is going nowhere it will hold you back, it is difficult to compensate for this in your spare time.

The best advice I can give you is to look at your skills against the market at the moment, look at where you fall short and focus on trying to improve those - look at core coding skills, design patterns, SOLID coding, unit testing etc.

Best of luck

D.

Esho

Thanks John_Mc.

John_Mc wrote: »

Very different paths to get there. You need to decide which. If the former, you need to get some certifications in project management.

Would an IPMA certification work? Would you know if any companies take on a trainee-PM and I could work and learn?

John_Mc wrote: »

My advice is to never get pigeon holed with a tech stack. If your employer can't help you avoid it then change jobs.

So if I'm starting from .NET, then maybe get to grips with a scripting language like Python or PhP?

John_Mc wrote: »

If your employer can't help you avoid it then change jobs.

Any ideas where to go with this kind of mish-mash of experience?
I just think that I don't have anything tangible to offer

Very much appreciated John_Mc

Evil Phil

Just my €0.02: You could move on from that company at this stage. I know they've been very good to you and that's great but they've gone in a direction that's not good for your career.

You can use this to explain your leaving in interviews: The company changed tech direction for strategic purposes and you want to code.

The fact that you held a responsible position for 10 years tells people a) that your very capable and b) that you can hold down a job.

That 50% of the battle right there.

If the Microsoft stack is what you know then stick to that, it's not going away. That being said Python is wonderful.

Somebody else gave advice on here recently (and I wish somebody had given it to me years ago): Pick an industry. Online learning and electronic assessment are growth industries - with your previous experience you'd be a great candidate for interviews as domain knowledge stands for a lot. But even if that doesn't suit you pick something and follow that.

Where are you based?

Evil Phil

Also: Learn statistics.

John_Mc

Esho wrote: »

Thanks John_Mc.



Would an IPMA certification work? Would you know if any companies take on a trainee-PM and I could work and learn?

Sorry but I wouldn't know the certifications to go for, I just know that they exist. Whatever the industry standard is would be best.

Esho wrote: »

So if I'm starting from .NET, then maybe get to grips with a scripting language like Python or PhP?

Any ideas where to go with this kind of mish-mash of experience?
I just think that I don't have anything tangible to offer

Very much appreciated John_Mc

From the sounds of your OP, you haven't been writing .Net as part of your role. If that's the case then I'd definitely focus on writing .Net and getting professionally competent at it before looking at other scripting languages such as Python.

If you can't get assigned work writing C# .Net then create a Github project and work on projects in your spare time, or contribute to open source projects so that you can demonstrate the standard of your work to potential employers.

Esho

Wow. Thanks EvilPhil.

That is really, really encouraging.

I really appreciate you taking the time to answer.

I am based in Dublin.

E-learning is a growth area? I did work for an e-learning company(Smartforce) before my last career years and years ago.
I also developed an E-learning course for FAS.

I have done a bit of Stats developing BI apps - what in particular?

Esho

That's good advice @John_Mc.
I'm going to take it!
Thank you.

Evil Phil

General stats I guess, Mean, Mode, Median, interquartile range range, correlation and scatter charts, standard deviation.