Software development career change

[dern]

Hi, I'm after some advice if anyone can see anything in the following that rings bells...

I graduated in 1990 and have been commercially developing software since then... 7 years of C and about 20 years of Java. I love developing solutions and even code in my spare time... currently writing games in Unity using C#. I'm 50 if that makes any difference.

About 6 years ago I finished contracting and joined a company as a senior java developer and got promoted due to slightly weird circumstances on the first day to the team lead position. I really enjoyed this as my team was superb and I still got to write software. The stress and responsibility increased but I had more opportunity to do things the right way. I then got promoted again, moved companies a couple of times and ended up at a company that I stayed with for three years starting as head of development and ending up as technical director.

That company went through some pretty severe financial problems and I absolutely hated the process of laying off perfectly good staff and ended up leaving after a couple of rounds. That was 18 months ago.

I'm on my 3rd job since then. The first was a major retailer in London which was supposed to be a highly technical lead job and just turned out to be an upwards reporting, spreadsheet filling in exercise. The second was nearer home as head of development and I was taken on to bring agile to the company supported by the CEO. We all know this only works if supported at the top and this didn't happen for whatever reason so the job was pretty much pointless. The current one I stepped in to as head of dev but working for a CTO I really liked who convinced me we would be working together to write an awesome solution... all the things I wanted. He promptly left after a month and here I am again, working as tech director filling in fking excel spreadsheets and explaining over and over again why although a backlog provides flexibility it shouldn't be used to change context on a daily basis and trying to keep a frustrated dev team happy.

So, deep breath... it's the new year and I'm very fed up. I've got three options...

1. I can stay here for another 18 months so that my CV doesn't look quite so fragmented and then do something I want to do. This will be very very very hard to do,

2. I can look for something else doing what I'm doing but I'm both unsure whether I actually like doing it as I'm right up against/with the non software development people and while I like solving problems with them the lack of capacity to understand the process is frequently breath taking.

3. I can step back down the ladder and look for a senior dev or team lead job. If I do this how do I convince people that this is genuinely what I want to do and not that I'm st at what I've ended up doing (I'm really not, I just lack the patience to deal with idiocy... maybe that means I'm not good at it, dunno). I do I convince a company that I've not lost the skills... do you think that java certification would be worth doing even though I have 20 years experience with Java?

Anyway, any advice/comments would be most welcome (unless rude).

Any breath.

Cheers,

Mark

[rsbmw]

Sounds like you would be better off contracting in a purely technical role. Plenty of money to be made, little of the stress.

The higher you go up the tree, the more time is spent talking bks and staring at spreadsheets.

[dern]

Coming to the same conclusion. Did that for 16 years and left to go perm to 'get more involved'. Some of getting involved is superb, some is less so.

[CzechItOut]

Most "Head of" roles are likely to involve a majority of management tasks. Have you considered roles like Solution Architect, which will likely be less of a step down salary-wise, but still technical (albeit not hands-on)?

[Crasher242]

rsbmw said:

Sounds like you would be better off contracting in a purely technical role. Plenty of money to be made, little of the stress.

The higher you go up the tree, the more time is spent talking bks and staring at spreadsheets.

^ this

It's what i did - 3 years ago - not looked back, and have enjoyed getting my hands dirty again and not having to worry about the people management malarky

[dern]

CzechItOut said:

Most "Head of" roles are likely to involve a majority of management tasks. Have you considered roles like Solution Architect, which will likely be less of a step down salary-wise, but still technical (albeit not hands-on)?

That's an interesting idea, thanks.

[Olivera]

dern said:

Coming to the same conclusion. Did that for 16 years and left to go perm to 'get more involved'. Some of getting involved is superb, some is less so.

If you've been contracting for 16+ years on a good rate then it should be more of a case of 'what do I want to do with my time', or retirement.

[dern]

Crasher242 said:

^ this

It's what i did - 3 years ago - not looked back, and have enjoyed getting my hands dirty again and not having to worry about the people management malarky

One of the reasons why I stopped contracting a few years ago was that I was aware that the contractors I was working with were getting younger and I was wondering if the market for a developer declined after a certain age. So fear, basically

[sammc123]

Hi Dern,

Sorry to de-rail the thread slightly would you mind if I PM'd you? I am currently a "Junior Java Dev" and your career path sounds very interesting, I have a few questions if you don't mind?

Let me know and ill send a PM or vice versa!

Cheers

[768]

dern said:

...here I am again, working as tech director filling in fking excel spreadsheets and explaining over and over again why although a backlog provides flexibility it shouldn't be used to change context on a daily basis and trying to keep a frustrated dev team happy.

What I'd start with is...

- Stop filling in spreadsheets. Write some software to do it, find an alternative, show it's not adding value, get a monkey to do it, any excuse.
- Let them add to the backlog, ignore it until the sprint planning without even talking about it, perhaps try longer sprints if you need to ignore it for longer. No one outside the team touches what's in the sprint commitment on pain of death.

Make the job work for you in other words, be awkward about it if you have to, worst case they ask you to leave a job you don't want to do, best case you improve productivity and make it a job you do want to do. The people up the chain don't know any better, it's not malicious, but IME they often need guidance that's firm and only someone in your position is able to push back. I suspect you need to do it not just for you but the dev team(s) too.

I appreciate it's not easy, the best person I ever saw at shielding dev teams from board level ended up truck driving for a less stressful life.

[dern]

sammc123 said:

Hi Dern,

Sorry to de-rail the thread slightly would you mind if I PM'd you? I am currently a "Junior Java Dev" and your career path sounds very interesting, I have a few questions if you don't mind?

Let me know and ill send a PM or vice versa!

Cheers

Of course, glad to help if I can.

[dern]

768 said:

I appreciate it's not easy, the best person I ever saw at shielding dev teams from board level ended up truck driving for a less stressful life.

I appreciate the comments and the rub is that it isn't easy and although I've done all the things you suggest in the past the enthusiasm has gone.

Cheers.

[dern]

Follow up...

Walked away from the aholes at the last place and joined a new company in a senior but much more technical role. Spend 95% of my time coding and ignore the rest of it.

Much happier

Cheers

[768]

Great result.