Career Crossroads: Developer to Business "Bridge" or Pure Developer?

Question

After working for a long time within a large business as a self developed developer you can become very proficient at translating "geek speak" into "business speak". This tends to include spending an increasing amount of time in requirements gathering, specification, project management, best practice, management of other developers etc and not writing code.

Is it possible to get a good balance between the Developer and Consultant roles where you can make the most of your skill set or do you need to choose?

Have you got a good balance of both? If so, do you have any tips for how to achieve that balance without working yourself into the ground?

Answer 1

I do not think this is sustainable over a long period of time; but If you serve two roles (one managerial and one as a developer), I believe it is very important to NOT have these on the same project. It may be possible to combine, but I think you need to choose one role per project. If you can additionally make sure such projects do not have deadlines at the same time even better.

In the longer run I believe you will be forced to choose. I chose coding and have since never looked back ;)

Answer 2

One is a path leading through management and business away from programming, and the other is a path to more programming with less business control and more following orders. It's truly up to what you want to do in life. I would recommend the business path, as it is probably better paying and has more upward mobility. The pure programming path puts you competing against code monkeys and new college grads. It also therefore depends on how old you are.

Answer 3

Yes it is possible to have a good balance as various companies may require varying specialties of developers: Some places want you to go from idea to completion and others want you just to do the one part of the overall roadmap. This kind of fits in with the large company or small company kind of workplace.

My balancing is still a work in progress because I can keep trying to develop my skills. My tip would be to know the combination of what are you good at and what do you like to determine where you'd like to fit in your ideal work environment.