Have any developers changed careers into the domain they were developing software for?

Question

I'm potentially interested in changing the domain in which I work. One of the interesting parts about software development is the multitude of domains we get to experience over the course of our careers. Developers are often expected to become experts in the domain in which they're writing software for.

• Have any developers become so knowledgeable at their customer's domain that they dropped software development and changed careers full time? What was the domain?
• Are software development skills or attributes of developers easily transferable to other business domains?
• What recommendations can you make for someone considering the switch to a domain entirely unrelated to software development?

Answer 1

Why would you do that? If you are a software developer and knowledgeable in certain domain well enough that you could even switch career, then you probably have unique set of skills that is hard to top for anyone on both sides.

What you really want is to find some lucrative job where you can fully utilize set of your skills and gain respect in your domain you deserve or start your own business.

Answer 2

Be wary, you state yourself that

One of the interesting parts about software development is the multitude of domains we get to experience over the course of our careers.

if you switch careers and go into the customer's domain full time you might find yourself in time becoming bored with the day-to-day of the job and actually miss the variety you saw while working in Software dev.

I come from an organisation where the Technology side of the house is small relative to the main business and as such there is regular opportunity to "switch sides". I've never availed of the opportunity but from colleagues who have, some have adapted well, others have switched back.

Its a personal thing, the only advice I'd give would be to ensure you familiarise yourself with the day to day of the customer's domain. After your contacts have been involved in a new Software initiative they probably revert to the day job of using the new software and that may not be as interesting as the project dev & implementation phase that you would tend to witness from your current engagement.

Answer 3

Follow your heart. Work hard at it. If you love what you do, you will succeed.

Answer 4

I would like to add something as of now my exp..

I saw 4-5 persons (my old colleagues) was doing software developement and maintenence with some power quality electrical devcies of a client and it is a big power supplier organisation in europe after few years they finally have shifted to that company on very high package and higher position because this sector is growing highly now and packages are also higher/equivalent to software domain, Based on the domain knowledge one can get a very good package and position as well

so this is my personal opinion if you are expert in a domain and we can grow based on possiblities we should be ready for change..

one more thing in S/W developement its having rapidly change behaviour so here also we need to update/Change here after a little span because technology changed freqently