Getting moved out of a development job

Question

I'm a year out of college and I started my first dev job at a small (<15 people) company several months ago. It was an internship position that recently turned full time.

The position started out as development but for full time I got offered a grab bag of positions: qa, docs, call support and some dev work. It's clear that my employers feel I am lacking dev skills, which is true. I did not major in CS in college and did not have much dev experience. However, I'm convinced that I can be a good developer and I will be a good developer once given the chance to write lots of code.

My question is simple: what should I do? As I see it, there are two options.

• Work hard in the non-dev duties so that my employers may eventually give me significant dev responsibilities.
• Look for a new job where I will be a developer first and an all purpose guy second (if at all).

Thanks guys.

Answer 1

The longer you go without development tasks, the harder it is to get a job doing development tasks.

Answer 2

You can tell your employer that you are interested in software development and ask him what would it take for you to get a development role.

Answer 3

How about taking the initiative on a side project (job-related) that would prove you can develop and add value to the company? If anything it'll keep you developing. Otherwise, find a side project of your own, work at that to keep yourself sharp, and plan on moving on.

Answer 4

Reading this will help you a lot. I can also suggest you to start a project on your own and be patient about your everyday job. You never know what could happen in a development team, maybe tomorrow you'll be part of a nice and stimulating project.

And also try to spot a master inside your workgroup and stat close to him, you will learn a lot from colleagues with more skills and experience than you.

Answer 5

In my experience managers actually value the staff that do the "odd jobs" well more than they do the programmers. I know that's going to come as a shock to many here, but most companies aren't the Joel Spolsky ideal. Therefore, your first option isn't going to pan out - the harder you work at QA, documentation, project management, the less likely you are to get back to programming.

Look for a new job and if you have trouble finding one that'll give you a strickly programming role, maybe do some side personal projects to prove your worth as others have suggested.

Answer 6

If your employer is giving you jobs in qa, documentation, and call-support (egads!), they do not think of you as a coder. This could be because they haven't liked the quality of the coding tasks that you have completed. Or it could be for reasons beyond your control. You might be able to change their minds; you might not. But as it stands, it is clear that they do not think of you as a coder.

So, concrete advice. You presented two options. The first one, to work really hard and do really good work at the non-coding tasks you are given, is a terrible option. Coding tasks are not handed out as rewards for doing grunt work well. They are given to people who can code well. Your second option, look for a job where you get to write code, is much better. Sure, it's easy for me to sit here and tell you to jump ship. I don't have to deal with the uncertainty, the stress, the inconvenience, the risk, etc. But if you've described your work desires and your current work situation accurately, I don't think you are going to be happy hanging around hoping to get development scraps.