Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Career Advice: Technical or Non-Technical

Options
  • 23-01-2018 8:27pm
    #1
    SimonTemplar
    Registered Users Posts: 2,815 ✭✭✭


    I wouldn't mind a bit of career advice please, especially from those who hire developers.

    I'm in my early 30s. Taught myself programming about 10 years ago (VB.NET), then went to college (Java focused) and got a degree. I'm currently in a job which involves about 50% of my time developing and maintaining various Microsoft based solutions (SSIS, SSRS, some small scale C# apps). The rest of my time is non-technical BA/PM work.

    At home, I keep myself busy learning some other Microsoft technologies that I don't use in work, such as MVC and Entity Framework. I also taught myself Angular.

    This year I plan to go back to that (fairly extensive) application I wrote in VB.NET when I was a novice and rewrite it as a MVC web app. I quite like its functionality but I'd be embarrassed by the code now.

    I'm earning about the same as a mid-level developer, and I'm looking at my career development over the next few years. I've never actually worked as a full-time developer and I am admittedly currently lacking in knowledge such as unit testing and continuous integration but I do learn very fast. I hope to get up to speed on unit testing within a few months.

    So with that background in mind, I feel I have two career paths. Focus on my non-technical role and progress as a BA/PM, or continue upskilling (MS certs, etc) and transition into development full time. The problem with the dev route is not dropping my salary level. I also feel that there would be so many developers with longer experience than me applying for the job, that it would be very difficult for me to get it.

    I should note that QA is another area I considered, perhaps eventually Automation Engineer given my technical skillset.

    Anyway, any advice is appreciated.


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    Talisman
    Registered Users Posts: 6,062 ✭✭✭Talisman


    Unit Testing is not difficult to learn but it does take time to master - you should start today. Once you become familiar with unit testing you should begin to write better code naturally because the unit testing process will help you to write smaller testable pieces of code.

    If you're looking for some motivation have a read of this blog post to see how easy it is to start and also learn to avoid some pitfalls that others learn the hard way: You Still Don’t Know How to Do Unit Testing


Advertisement