12 Years of Programming - Which direction to take now ?

Question

I think I have reached a point, in my career, where I want to get as excited as I did when got my head around programming. .

I need excitement and a new challenge (that can still pay the bills). Do I :-

• Stay contracting - most boring option, been doing this for a long time now.
• Manage a team and become more a designer, orchestrator - lose technical skills and trust youngsters in "banging out" quality applications.
• Write iPhone apps (still learning Objective-C) and hope my ideas are not already out there.
• Start my own company - don’t know why, just sounds glamorous, but realise I have to put loads more time in.
• Something else - totally change careers.

The answer is not really a personal one, just feel people will get to a point in life where they need a new direction. Problem is which direction to go.

Answer 1

As an initial step, why don't you continue contracting, yet seek out jobs that require you to learn a new technology or a different type of programming?

This way, you can get to try different areas in technology without taking too big a step at first or jeopardising your job while times are already tough.

Answer 2

If i were you i would start my own company. Its not really that glamorous, but it can give you the freedom to set your own working hours for a change.

Answer 3

Keep your job because economy is little weak now. But, try to develop in your free time project that make you feel excited, maybe later this/these project will give you an opportunity to leave your job and do it full time. My suggestion is to go progressively if you switch.

Answer 4

Unfortunately for you, the only way to know what is the right choice is to try and see if it works out for you. Nothing replaces experience.

Answer 5

What about teaching? It´s great to share your knowledge with others, and would certainly give you a oportunity to work on diferent (possibly very interesting) projects with your students. Also it would give you motivation to study new things.

Answer 6

Hammer out some new awesome open source project like NUnit and change the development world.

Answer 7

A way for finding your answer has been published in Get Rich Slowly blog about life planning. Basically it involves answering three questions, in this order:

• Imagine you are financially secure, How would you live your life?
• Now imagine that you have only 5-10 years to live. Will you change your life and how will you do it? (No financial security here)
• Finally, imagine that you only have 24 hours to live. Ask yourself: What did you miss? Who did you not get to be? What did you not get to do?

Answer 8

I agree with edg. If you have a financially viable and stable position, now is not the time to get on the job market. The market totally favors the employers...

Also, I'd have to ask why you feel you need "excitement". There's always ebb-and-flow in any job. Maybe the novelty has finally worn off rather than the need for excitement? Seems to me that "continual excitement" and "job" are a little oxymoronic...

You are probably at a point where you can decide between three tracks: the Guru, the Manager or the Teacher. Layer one of those over your current skill set.

UPDATE: The common wisdom is that the best time to start a company is in the downturns. Make your mistakes while things are slow and build it up to be prepared when things speed up again. However, "consultancy" is just another word for "job", just more mobile, and I know with the layoffs in my area, there are lots of "new consultants" on the market.

Answer 9

Buy and read What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson (ISBN 978-0375507496) and find your strengths using the tools at Strengths Finder.

If the answer that comes out of that research is scary and makes you wish you hadn't been so introspective, then you're doing it right. If the answer is one of the things you are thinking about now, great, at least you're sure why.

What I'm really hoping, for you, is that the answer is something new, unexpected, terrifying, and in the end life awakening. That's what it was for me.

Answer 10

If you have a good business idea I think this would be the ideal time to start a business. It is relatively easy to find good employees now that many companies go down and the companies that survive will be looking for ways to save money and to stay in business.

So as long you can afford to take some risk and you have an ok base to start a business from I would suggest you do it! I would do it myself if I weren't moving to a new town in a few months.

Answer 11

Find something you love. If you don't enjoy what you're doing now, you have to change. That can be a long process. If you can try managing where you are now, maybe you should try transitioning into more of a managerial role. Maybe a different sort of programming job would work.

Get out there and talk to people. Find people who are in a position you think you might want to be in and ask what they think about it. Network. See what sort of things are out there.

Answer 12

I have 17 years of experience, and I've discovered the following things:

1. If you're even considering the possibility of a career outside of programming, it probably means programming is not your strong suite. This isn't meant to be harsh, or mean, just an honest assessment. Also, this may not be correct in your particular case.
2. I have found that the danger of "losing your skills" when you switch to management is largely up to you. You can choose to stay involved in the development to keep your skills refreshed.
3. Starting a company is very challenging, and takes a lot of guts, but it is, by far, the best way to bring a sense of fulfilment and excitement to your life. Also, your overall skills go through the roof, relative to your more domesticated peers. At the end of the day, starting a company paid me significant skill dividends, even though the company did not succeed.
4. Instead of starting a company yourself, consider joining someone else's start-up or small company. More camaraderie, more interesting problems, more jack-of-all-trades kinds of problems to solve. The pay is lower than large companies, but the skill dividend is still significant over time.

Answer 13

For me the great end if i am financially secure would be to do a world round trip.

either on a bot or on a bus with my backpack. Go to all continents meet other culture see what life really is... that would be i think my end carrer life project but more generarly if you want to be happy again think about your interest and find a way to pay bills with that interest

If you like golf and you've been programming for 12 year you could be good enaugh to start a main project for PGA tour :)

Answer 14

As the book Stumbling on Happiness alludes, the best way to predict your future happiness is to ask someone who has done what you are contemplating doing and see how they feel about it. We're terrible at predicting our own future happiness ourselves, so I suggest you take heed of those who answer from experience rather than speculation.

Answer 15

I like Galwegian's answer "seek out jobs that require you to learn a new technology or a different type of programming".

To get a little more specific, that includes not just new languages or frameworks or platforms (which software developers are creating faster than you can learn them). How about exciting application domains that you don't know anything about, yet?

For example, you could use your copious spare time to learn about molecular biology and seek out jobs where both developer skills and some biological knowledge would be useful.

edg's predisposition toward paying work is a good idea, too. Just replace the xbox with something good like family or new knowledge.

Answer 16

Become a lumberjack. After programming that long, it'd be good to get some fresh air.

Answer 17

I've been a professional programmer for about 20 years now, I'm currently contracting and apart from that, I've pretty much tried everything on your list - I've been a development manager, team lead, contractor/consultant, ran my own company and occasionally took a little time out during the inevitable "career pauses" you get as a contractor to do something completely different for a couple of weeks. Usually the latter showed that I really shouldn't be quitting my day job as a programmer, but it also gave me time to recharge my batteries simply because I was exercising different parts of my brain.

First, I don't agree with those people who say that "if you even have to think about doing something else, you're probably in the wrong career". I disagree with this statement for the simple reason that there is nothing wrong with looking around and reflecting on your current situation and spend some serious thinking time on where you are and where you want to go. Unless you want to have what I'd call an accidental career, you'll have to work out what the next step is that would get you towards your goal. Keep in mind that people change, your priorities change and career decisions you made when you were in your late teens or early twenties might well be different from the decisions you would make now. But it is up to you to do something about that.

If you are thinking about managing a team, I would advise to start small - see if you can get a team lead contract for a team with a few members. These do occasionally come up and it'll show you if you can both handle the demands of herding cats, err, look after two or three developers and more importantly, also enjoy doing it. It is very different from programming and it's not everybody's cup of tea and if you're struggling to handle 2-3 people, maybe leading 20 might not be the most brilliant idea. On the other hand you may find that you are really good at it and the world does need more competent software development managers. We've got enough incompetent ones already. Only one way to find out.

Running your own company writing iPhone apps - why not? You'll be giving up large chunks of your life as you'll have to fit in software development, user support, management, looking after the companies financials and dealing with the tax man into the available time. You'll forever wish for another 24 hours in a day, but you'll get over that hurdle. It can be immensely satisfying because you know that you've built up everything yourself, but on the other hand if you fail, it's all your fault as well. The latter can be rather depressing, been there, done that, lost the T-Shirt. Again, there's only one way to find out if it is for you...

Doing something completely different - well, the big question is what do you want to do? Do you have any hobbies or skills that are marketable and would actually pay some money towards your bills? For example, playing guitar in bars usually doesn't. Ask me how I know. I would ask myself the question - and I have had to ask it in earnest - what would you like to do if you found out you couldn't continue programming for whatever reason. You may never need the answer, but if you have the beginning of the answer you will be in a much better position than most people.

One of the advantages of being a contractor is that you could dip your toe into either of the two if you can find a client that only requires your services part time. Say, contract three days, work on your own stuff for two. That would give you some kind of cushion just in case your alternative doesn't quite take off as intended. Plus, having multiple irons in the fire is a good thing in the current economy.

Even if you can't follow through immediately with the ideas you come up with, there is never a wrong time to think about these matters. Staying put might not be an option if your client does a lead duck impression, for starters, so having plan B (and C, potentially) is A Good Thing.

Answer 18

I think there's always new developments in programming that you can "get your head around", to keep the fire burning if that's what floats your boat: are you fluent in functional programming yet? AOP? DI? EIP? Meta-programming? Behind all those buzzwords, there's plenty to chew on.

Designer/orchestrator/architect might be an interesting direction to take. Don't let this mean losing low level technical skills: it'll irritate your team no end if you set them tasks you don't sufficiently understand yourself.

I don't see the appeal in starting your own company at all - but that's me. Despite your protestations, it is a personal question. If you do see the appeal, and you have an idea you believe in, then go for it.

As a long term permanent corporate employee, I have a view on contracting: it seems that often contractors don't get to buy into a project on the same scale as permies. A contractor gets given tasks and does what he's asked. A permie has more elbow room to push the direction of a project. A permie is likely to understand the domain more deeply and have more interest in the wider implications of their work.

• Manager: "Write an J2EE servlet for this mockup"
• Contractor: "OK" (goes off and implements it to the letter)
• Permie: "Wouldn't the mockup be better if we tweaked this bit? Do you think we'd be able to produce better pages, faster, if we started by writing a generalised page template? What if I used Grails instead of standard J2EE?"

Maybe you'd find more job satisfaction if you went permanent somewhere.

Answer 19

If you're interested in some of the challenging questions facing computer science, now might be a good time to go back to school for a PhD. In the US, anyway, people who can program their way out of a wet paper bag have a huge advantage in academia, where most folks come to PhD programs directly from undergrad. Some of them take years to do research projects that folks with 12 years of experience could bang out in a month or two.

By the time you finish, perhaps the economy will have improved! And there is a lot of work for PhDs in industry - much more so than 10 years ago, even. The type of work is often different - more research oriented - but I also see many CTOs and R&D directors with PhDs.

Plus if you are interested in teaching, a PhD virtually guarantees you'll always be able to find some kind of teaching job. In many ways it's a glorified union card.

Answer 20

How about all of the above? It may sound crazy, but it is quite plausible. You are currently operating as a consultant (I am guessing a lone programmer with his own client list). Instead of looking at consulting as a single-person operation, consider expanding your practice. Turn what you have already built (loyalty, name recognition, trust, process, etc.) into something bigger. Make yourself the head geek with the intention of finding work that you will have someone else do (or share with). You can still manage the project and that person, giving you more exposure to people management and project management. You have the opportunity to learn how to sell larger projects that you are now capable of servicing because you have two resources while leveraging all the hard work you already put into your existing practice.

Starting a company is stressful, but you have already done that (you are a company of one, but still a company), now it's just time to expand. Forget about the naysayers telling you that it can't be done in a down economy. Just because the economy is bad doesn't mean every business has come to a standstill and no software development is needed anywhere - that's simply ridiculous.

I think that by expanding you are minimizing your risk, exposing yourself to new challenges, and giving yourself the opportunity to get into different projects that may lead to something exciting. By the way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with writing those iPhone apps too! It doesn't have to be just one thing at a time.

I started my company from my house as a sole consultant doing everything. Since then, we have grown to four people and we started in a recession to boot (did I mention I had just bought a house at the time as well).

Side Note: BTW, to those responders who tend to be on the cynical, play it safe side, you might want to consider the word "balance." With balance in mind, you don't have to jump off a cliff and risk everything. Just because the pay is rolling in right now and you are unhappy, believe me, the pay will not continue to roll in for long, especially if you grow more unhappy - it affects your behavior. Nothing new and exciting is done by continuing the status quo when your belly is fired up for something new. Go with it, smartly, but go with it and the naysayers will eventually be working for you.

Good Luck Ferds and may the force be with you no matter what you decide!

Answer 21

Try working for a small company i.e around 20 people. Due to there small nature you tend to get involved in a larger amount of very different programming projects, unlike large companies where you can get stuck on one project.

Since smaller company's are trying to be completive they tend to be more leading edge with their technology choices.

Also you generally will get to try out/help in a number of different positions as well i.e Team Lead, pre Sales, Infrastructure. It can be very enjoyable swapping hats and doing something different for a bit and then continuing on your primary role(i.e programming)

Answer 22

How about find an open-source project you like and start contributing? That way you get to choose what you work on, gain valuable experience that looks good on your CV, and possibly help make something that lets people get more out of their computers for free. There's plenty of possibilities - Linux distros, desktop environments, and other projects, many of which could benefit from your assistance.