How do you get to work on projects that you're interested in and enjoy working on?

Question

My passion is creating software mostly iPhone or Web and what I've done since graduating( 2 years ago ) has mostly been IT work, which I find boring. I've left a fortune 10 company( about a month ago ) to work for a smaller IT shop so that I would have more time to work on my own stuff. My logic is that as long as I get to work on my own projects that I find interesting I will eventually be able to do this kind of stuff as a career.

Is this realistic thinking ? Has anyone been through the same thing I'm going through?
What do I need to do to eventually work on projects that you're interested in and enjoy working on?

Answer 1

Yes, it's very realistic.

Essentially, you can have stability by working for a large company, but you incur the cost of dealing with the inertia of the company; it's frequently hard to work on precisely what you want in those situations, and frequently, the technology is a generation or two behind. Or you can work for a smaller company; they tend to be more dynamic, more agile, more involved with the latest technology; but, as a tradeoff, they tend to be less stable.

The key, though, is that you have more self-direction with a smaller company, because as an individual, you make up a larger percentage of their workforce; individual efforts and contributions mean more just because there are fewer people. And in those situations, where you get to choose what technologies you want to work with, you can make a career doing more precisely what you want (at least, more frequently than at large corporations). And, if by being a directing force at a company using newer and more exciting technologies, maybe you can rise up the ranks with your expertise, when the company becomes a larger than small company (assuming that it does, see comments about stability and risk above). And then you can force new guys like you were to use the technology that was cutting-edge that you're an expert in!

Answer 2

You should start your own business.

However, this is easier said than done. First you need a good concept of what you're going to do and how you're going to make money (what is your added value compared to those millions of other software firms). You can for example concentrate on quality, or concentrate on a good price or concentrate on delivery time (never concentrate on more than one, then you're doomed to fail).

Then start thinking about a market. Who will be your future customers, how are you going to attract them, etc etc.

If you like idea of being an independent entrepreneur, then that is your way of doing things you like for a living.

If you don't feel like being an entrepreneur, then you should just do the stuff you like as a hobby and do the stuff you like less as a job.

Answer 3

Essentially, the only was to guarantee that you'll only work on stuff you find exciting is to become an indie developer, either as a contractor who's picky over what they work on or as a micro ISV.

This can be tough if you have to, you know, feed yourself. If you have a full-time job and your contract allows it (some say all code written at any time belongs to the company while you work for them), you could start slowly working on your own stuff in your spare time. You could even slowly transition over to contracting (even back to the company you're currently working for at the beginning) then from there slowly transition into being a micro ISV.

Problem: It's hard. If you're really willing to take a risk it's really worth it once you get there, but it's a challenge.

Check out these posts by Gus Mueller and Daniel Jalkut for hands-on info.

Answer 4

You might want to check more thoroughly on who owns whatever you do off-clock. As a general rule, do nothing personal on company equipment and try not even to think about your project on company time. Check on what you signed, and consult a lawyer if you're in doubt. Don't rely on what your manager tells you verbally.

That being said, you can either quit and start your own business, which is something most of us aren't going to want to do, or do other development on the side. Have fun!

Answer 5

This is completely unrealistic if your company is mainly focused in iPhone apps. The appstore is basically a lottery system and it would not be a good idea to bet your career in it.

Answer 6

You should have no trouble finding a job that's both "IT" and "Web." I think most CIOs have successfully convinced themselves that everything needs to be web-based, because the web architecture is centralized, much like mainframes were.

As for the iPhone, I think more and more business types will start asking for IT to make crap to run there as well. Decision-makers (and even deciders) seem especially to like such things, which bodes well for its corporate adoption. The bigger the paycheck, the smaller the computer, right?

So, you can improve things within the broad field of "IT," although you still might not find the results sufficiently exciting. I did internal software development for 7 or 8 years right out of college and eventually walked away from it with an overwhelming sense of pointlessness. Eventually I reached the point where I was working with the tools I liked best back then (ASP and ASP.NET), but it still wasn't good enough for me. Just about every request that crossed my desk seemed to practically beg for a whiteboard, a legal pad, or perhaps even a to-the-point phone conversation (as opposed to a software project).

If you feel that way, then the best advice I can give you is to learn a language, tool, or architecture which is perceived as difficult and/or outmoded.

You could learn Ada, for example; you won't win any points with the hipsters down at the coffee shop, but you'll get the opportunity to work on important real-time stuff running in buildings those guys aren't even allowed to photograph.

Even C++ has become distasteful to most; learn C++ and you probably won't have to work on anyone's (for example) drag-and-drop Silverlight vacation scheduler. You'll be too busy doing Other, More Important Work (tm).

I had a (pretty damn good) C# programmer say something to me recently along the lines of "you can just go ahead and display that number [for debugging] in hexadecimal, since that's so much easier in C++." Of course that's BS (C++ can display numbers in any common base with ease) but I didn't set the guy straight. Let them think C++ is an intolerable briar patch...