A couple of months ago I agreed to take on the 'development lead' position for my team at work. We are a software development team and we have always had a 'program manager' but never a 'development lead'.
Since I seem to always be the guy that is out looking for ways to improve the system, coming up with newer and faster algorithms, and just general thinking outside the box, I was asked to become the 'development lead'.
I now find myself not having looked at any code in a couple of months and I am currently installing MS Project to track what everyone else is working on. Basically, I seem to have gone from being a developer to being in some sort of position that requires a great deal of organization/delegation. My input does weigh heavy in design decisions which is ultimately good for our product, but for the most part I seem to be doing things other than what I'm best at.
My strength is not all this organization, task tracking, pseudo-managerial type stuff, and I don't really enjoy it at all. But, our team needs it and I'm probably better at it than anyone else we have.
After we finish development on this release I'll have to make a decision. I can either 1) keep on with being development lead and try to get good at the other stuff and learn to enjoy it for the good of the product or 2) express that I am not really happy in this role and that I don't feel like my skills are being utilized in the best way possible.
In short, I feel like I was asked to do Job B because I am exceptional at Job A. Unfortunately, the skill set required for Job B is not the same as what is required for Job A. While, I might actually be the best person we have at Job B, anyone else on our team could probably do the job just fine. On the other hand, I am easily the strongest performer we have at Job A.
I don't really know what I want to do because this is a great stepping stone in case I ever really want to 'advance' at this company. But, I'm not sure I really want to 'advance' beyond just being a developer.
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Your new name sucks.
The big bucks are in management. You sounds like a young person who has not matured into realizing that you will not be a developer for the rest of your life, eventually, you will be worth so much more to a company if you can bring your knowledge and skills to the engineering and planning side. If you expand yourself to learn organization and delegation, you will be happier in the future. That is unless doubling and tripling your salary does not make you happy.
MentalFrog wrote:
Your new name sucks.
I agree
Do what now?
Seconded.
Elderon the Wise wrote:
The big bucks are in management. You sounds like a young person who has not matured into realizing that you will not be a developer for the rest of your life, eventually, you will be worth so much more to a company if you can bring your knowledge and skills to the engineering and planning side. If you expand yourself to learn organization and delegation, you will be happier in the future. That is unless doubling and tripling your salary does not make you happy.
I understand what you are saying, and I definitely realize that the big bucks are in management, but so are the big headaches. I have actually managed over the last several years to work myself into a great position development-wise. Very, very little overtime, clear cut requirements, and freedom to choose the way we implement things. I am underpaid for what I do, but I still make way more than I need and the job market here isn't exactly booming.
For my purposes, I make plenty of money now. Sure, more money would always be nice, but the extra stuff that comes with it might not be for me. On the other hand, you are right, I don't want to be a programmer forever, I'm just not sure what the next step will be. I'm not yet to the point where I'm sure enough about what else I want to know that I should stop being a programmer and start down some other path now. I'm really on the fence about the whole deal. Some days it seems like a good move, and some days it seems like it does today.
Quote:
After we finish development on this release I'll have to make a decision. I can either 1) keep on with being development lead and try to get good at the other stuff and learn to enjoy it for the good of the product or 2) express that I am not really happy in this role and that I don't feel like my skills are being utilized in the best way possible.
A friend of mine here at work ran into pretty much the same situation. He was very unhappy with his new position (he used to say he was a babysitter) and chose option 2. The company hired someone new to fill the lead position who is a true manager, with little technical knowledge. Now my friend is doing what he enjoys again, but has to hold the hand of the new lead. So in stead of babysitting several people he's just babysitting one.
Some people are like slinkies, they aren't really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.
Kaelesh the Puissant wrote:
Seconded.
Thirded.
Professor CrescentFresh wrote:
I'm just not sure what the next step will be.
You could always move into sales or *shudder support.
But from where I sit, the next step from programmer is the guy that tells the programmers what to do.
"I have lost my way
But I hear a tale
About a heaven in Alberta
Where they've got all hell for a basement"
But I hear a tale
About a heaven in Alberta
Where they've got all hell for a basement"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
Your situation is not enviable. I am faced with similar career prospects in the coming years. I've spent the last ten years being an excellent systems administrator and network engineer. What you are to coding, I am to infrastructure.
Unfortunately, I've advanced my career to the point where there aren't a whole great many more positions available that allow me to both increase my personal compensation and retain a hands-on job. I'm currently working at a place where my tech skills are used only tangentally. They have even given me a subordinate to hand off work to. I really don't know what to make of it.
If I might make a recommendation, perhaps you don't need to see your love of coding fall by the wayside due to your change in job titles. Instead of working for the boss, try coding for yourself. Take up development on an open source project that interests you.
I got started in systems as a hobbyist. It was a lot of fun when I was a kid. It stopped being entertaining when I was working 60 hour weeks in terrible environments. I'm hoping it'll become fun again as I become more hands-off at work. Perhaps the same can be true of your coding.
Alternate: Instead of letting them press you into a management mold, perhaps you could shift from lead developer to "applications architect" or something suitably nifty. Instead of coding the majority of an app, spend half your time working with a customer to figure out what it is they want, and the other half coding key features/important sections of the overall application. Pick and choose, take the juicy bits for yourself and hand over the meat and potatoes work to the rest of your team.
There are n+1 ways to skin a cat.
Quote:
In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.
...
The employee's incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being "more difficult" — it may be simply that the position is different from the position in which the employee previously excelled, and thus requires different skills, which the employee may not possess. An example used by Peter involves a factory worker whose excellence at his work results in him being promoted into a management position, in which the skills that got him promoted in the first place are no longer of any use.
...
The employee's incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being "more difficult" — it may be simply that the position is different from the position in which the employee previously excelled, and thus requires different skills, which the employee may not possess. An example used by Peter involves a factory worker whose excellence at his work results in him being promoted into a management position, in which the skills that got him promoted in the first place are no longer of any use.
Your situation is not enviable. I am faced with similar career prospects in the coming years. I've spent the last ten years being an excellent systems administrator and network engineer. What you are to coding, I am to infrastructure.
Unfortunately, I've advanced my career to the point where there aren't a whole great many more positions available that allow me to both increase my personal compensation and retain a hands-on job. I'm currently working at a place where my tech skills are used only tangentally. They have even given me a subordinate to hand off work to. I really don't know what to make of it.
If I might make a recommendation, perhaps you don't need to see your love of coding fall by the wayside due to your change in job titles. Instead of working for the boss, try coding for yourself. Take up development on an open source project that interests you.
I got started in systems as a hobbyist. It was a lot of fun when I was a kid. It stopped being entertaining when I was working 60 hour weeks in terrible environments. I'm hoping it'll become fun again as I become more hands-off at work. Perhaps the same can be true of your coding.
Alternate: Instead of letting them press you into a management mold, perhaps you could shift from lead developer to "applications architect" or something suitably nifty. Instead of coding the majority of an app, spend half your time working with a customer to figure out what it is they want, and the other half coding key features/important sections of the overall application. Pick and choose, take the juicy bits for yourself and hand over the meat and potatoes work to the rest of your team.
There are n+1 ways to skin a cat.
Wingchild wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
This is exactly the thing I have been afraid of but I didn't know there was actually a name for it.
Wingchild wrote:
Alternate: Instead of letting them press you into a management mold, perhaps you could shift from lead developer to "applications architect" or something suitably nifty. Instead of coding the majority of an app, spend half your time working with a customer to figure out what it is they want, and the other half coding key features/important sections of the overall application. Pick and choose, take the juicy bits for yourself and hand over the meat and potatoes work to the rest of your team.
As far as positions with my current employer, this is definitely the best route I could take.
Another thing I have to consider: the overall mission of my current employer isn't terribly exciting to me. Sure, the parts I develop are cool, but the mission of the company isn't anything that really interests me.
I've been in this general business for about 10 years. The first half was spent in a company with just myself and 1 other person. We had 4 customers and they were all local manufacturing companies of some sort. We did software for manufacturers of hunting/sporting goods, industrial rollers, boats, and graphite rods. The work was very rewarding because I could see the immediate impact I was having on the jobs of the people who worked at these places. I was really making their jobs easier and I liked it. As a bonus, I got to learn about really cool manufacturing processes and got to write software to control cool hardware/tools/etc. In the late 90s/early 2000 my partner decided to get out of the software business and become an author. I was pretty young, engaged to be married, not really a risk taker, and my wife-to-be still had 3 years of full-time college remaining. I decided to not continue the work on my own and opted for a more stable position.
That more stable position is the one I am still in today. My immediate work is interesting, but after 5 and a half years there I still honestly don't know how it is used. The company is so big that I never even know the impact of my software until there is a problem. The only customers I ever hear from are the ones making complaints. To top it off, the mission of the company is something that doesn't interest me in the least. Even when something is wrong with our software and is supposedly a "crisis situation," I can't get too worked up about it. It just doesn't seem very important to me. Pride in a job well done is the only thing that really makes anything seem like a big deal to me here.
Last year I got involved with a side-project for a local bookstore here in town. I wrote some software for them to automated their USPS and FedEx shipping from their daily amazon.com sales list. This felt like "the good old days" for me again. Doing smaller scale work that is very important/helpful to the people who need it. It really made me think seriously about starting my own business. My wife is out of college and has a stable job now that would cover the bills if it had to (it would be tight though). I am seriously considering this, but I don't really know how to find prospective clients and make the transition. I know that, at least for a while and maybe for a long time, it would be a lot more work compared to what I am doing now. But, it would be much more rewarding work.
To add to the situation, the intellectual property rights of the software I develop at this company have been sold to another company. For the next 2 years, I will continue to work for my current company and enhance the software. At the end of 2 years, the new company has the option to buy the entire division from my current company. At this point, I would become an employee of the new company which is based in Boston. It is just an option for them at this point, but it seems fairly certain. They are already starting to have talks about scheduling time for HR to meet with us. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole situation. It could be a positive change or it could be negative. I won't really know until it happens.
The next 2 years might be the perfect time to suck it up, put in the extra hours, and try to get some business going on the side as a foundation for the future.
Opportunity knocked, but he didn't call before he came.
*sigh*
Just remember this: wherever you go, there you are. If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Platitudes are platitudes because they have that everlasting kernel of truth about them.
If you're concerned about your sense of achievement at work as much as you seem to be, I'd say you have a responsobility to yourself to strike out on your own or at the least in a new direction. You can always go back to the drudgework if you don't find your way without it.
Platitudes are platitudes because they have that everlasting kernel of truth about them.
If you're concerned about your sense of achievement at work as much as you seem to be, I'd say you have a responsobility to yourself to strike out on your own or at the least in a new direction. You can always go back to the drudgework if you don't find your way without it.
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