Stay in the Trenches
As you progress in your skills and your career as a software developer, you’ll find yourself in the position of advancing your career due to your successes. You’ll take on a managing position or even a position and find yourself coding quite bit less. You’ll see your path as improving but it’s advancing your career in that company and not in your abilities as a software developer.
It’s imperative that regardless of all duties at the company, you try to stay in the trenches. Keep building your skill-set and training yourself around software development. Your company might not need that manager role in the future, your company could go bankrupt if it fails, you might be put into an even higher position that pulls you even further and further from any actual coding. The path of the software developer doesn’t have to diverge from your career path.
I found this one interesting as it makes sense. I have thought, what do managers of programming teams do in their spare time? I only figured they would take up coding something related to the company or even just taking up spare coding work from other teams. It never occurred to me that someone in that position might take the ramp off the long road of software development and instead focus their career on gaining a higher position in the company that they work in. This in of itself is a perfectly fine choice to make for their career, but the desire to code is likely how they ended up here and I find myself wondering why they might give that up.
It could be a little tempting if I am being honest. It’s kind of strange to me at least that those higher up in the company still end up getting paid far more than those who do the actual work to make the project physical and marketable. At the same time the actual workforce you need to get a project like that built requires several people and if all of them were getting the highest tier of payment then the company probably wouldn’t be profitable. Money in modern days is very tempting as those who have experienced hard physical labor understand how tempting it is to earn a six-figure salary and in essence get paid to attend meetings, write emails, and manage a team of programmers. I don’t imagine myself taking one of those positions though. If I’m not actively doing something while working, physically or mentally, I find myself incredibly bored and frustrated. I don’t think I’ll have many issues if I end up in a higher position. I likely would have followed this principle without even knowing about it.
From the blog CS@Worcester – A Boolean Not An Or by Julion DeVincentis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.