If you can't do a Support Role, does this mean you should not be in development?

Question

Hi, I've been shifted around roles a lot, and have been put in a support role which seems to deal out a lot of rubbish due to poor business management. Anyway, my line manager says that he's not sure he would recommend me for a developer role as they regard support as a poor technical role.

What I resent is the fact that not all the information is available to us about what we're supporting and I miss coding. This thing I'm supporting has been regarded as a disaster when it went in and is still highly unstable.

The thing is...does he have a point about Support roles being under developers, or are they completely two different kettle of fish?

Answer 1

I would recommend supporting a company and product that you feel good about.

If you're supporting a product that is garbage, you'll be unhappy about the situation regardless of your role.

Answer 2

At my place of employment; we tend to promote support techs into junior development roles (if the person doesn't want to continue down the network admin career path).

We figure that if you put in your dues supporting the systems we've built already (hunting down bugs, answering questions, writing basic queries, user training, etc) it's easier to transition that person into a dev role than a new guy/gal off the street since they're already acclimated with the environment.

However; I'm in a smaller company; where the teams are more closely intertwined.

At a large company; i'd think you'd have different levels of support (Level 1: triage; Level 2: Moderate support, etc.) I would assume that it would be harder to transition from level 1 into development than a higher level.

My opinion is that they are two different kettles of fish; but they're still fish nonetheless.

Answer 3

I think you should get out. What I think your manager is saying is that people who support the company's internal apps don't have a future in the company, at least in terms of technical roles, and that whatever coding background you have from school will not be considered.

There are many companies that use a "pay-your-dues" sort of system whereby you're hired into a support position with the explicit statement that you'll eventually be promoted into a development position if you do well. The problem is that your bank doesn't sound like one of them.

Answer 4

I believe the simple answer here is, "It depends." On the one hand, in small companies, a developer may have a handful of different roles to play as they are the sysadmin, network admin, programmer, tester, database admin, and support all rolled into one. Meanwhile, at other companies, developers may do very little bug fixing so in this case they are separate but I would note that a lot of developers do fix some bugs, IMO.

Where I work they are trying to separate development and support roles. How successful this will be is highly questionable, obviously, but at least we are going to try and see if it can work.

Answer 5

I have worked in IB for many years as a C# dev contractor. And i the one thing i can say, is i hate support and will never do it (after my first grad perm posn required 1 week out of every 8 manning the phones - which they never told me about in the interview).

Now any professional posn i apply for, i make sure there is at least a 1st line support team. Insulating me. And this has never hampered my ability as a "developer". Ignore what your boss says, it's narrow minded.