Considering a career change. Any suggestions?

[Christopher Duncan]

Just got your email from my site, thanks. And no, I never got anything from you about tech writing & such - I always return my emails. Sorry it got lost in the bit bucket!

Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com

[Vikram A Punathambekar]

Yeah, I just replied from my Yahoo account. You may want to watch your Spam/Bulk folder: my mails often seem to end there :doh:

Cheers, Vıkram.

Carpe Diem.

[Dan Neely]

Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:

To be fair, college simply doesn't prepare you for daily life as a programmer*

I've been told that schools that offer a software engineering course generally do provide an injection of reality into things. I never took my schools offering. It was one of the three classes with a high RUN AWAY!!! factor in their reputation (only take if you've got N reliable friends to partner with, otherwise you'll probably be stuck with a bunch of slacktards and have to do all of their work as well). The second was compilers (the only CS class scheduled at 8am; a second impediment to casual students taking it). The third, and only one I took, was "advanced theory of computation for people who'd rather take it as a senior than in year one of grad school"; I took this as much because it fit my schedule as anything else (and I did NOT want compilers). Fortunately I did well in basic theory though and got through it without too much trouble.

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

[Lost User]

amymarie3 wrote:

secondary career

Maybe teaching? Pass on your skills and knowledge to beginners.

Why is common sense not common? Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level where they are an expert. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to be lazy Individuality is fine, as long as we do it together - F. Burns Help humanity, join the CodeProject grid computing team here

[Miszou]

I felt like this a couple of years ago, and about the only thing that I could think of doing that would command a half-decent salary was teaching, but apparently I was unqualified for that without going back to school myself first. It turns out that I was just bored with what I was working on and I didn't really like most of the people that I was working with either. One job change later, and I'm much happier. A change of scenery will do wonders for your motivation. Don't employ this strategy too often though. ;)

The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter

[code frog 0]

You are exactly the person many companies are looking for I think. You don't need to be able to recite the first 100 API's in the framework. You just need to *want* work and be excited about it. I think you are good to go and I wouldn't change a thing. Your skills are current what's more current than that you've been writing code? I think you need a vacation or someone to fix your perspective. You sound just fine to me. :-D

[Henry Minute]

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:

but my french is becoming rusty

Then maybe you need some of this[^]. ;)

Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”

[Ray Cassick]

Maybe try your hand at an architect position. You get to think at a bit higher level that the 'nitty gritty' nuts and bolts, but then, depending on where you work, you might be able to have some fun and poke your head into part of a project for a while. Its a bit more technical than being a project manager and part of your job is to stay current on new tech that can help your projects.

---

LinkedIn[^] | Blog[^] | Twitter[^]

[leckey 0]

I have not read the others' answers, but if you want a guaranteed job, go into the health care industry. Either get a nursing degree (some can float from hospital to hospital and make $30 per hour and have their major expenses paid) or become a doctor.

Back in the blog beatch! http://CraptasticNation.blogspot.com/[^]

[yossibz123]

Speaking from my own personal experience I think you just graduated basic software school and went on to leading/management. My reasoning is: 1) After being round for 10 years you'd likly have enough experience to go round. 2) Not caring about getting to use latest technology lets you focus on important things: - What would be best for my company revenue? - What would enable me to deliver faster and more reliably? - What would get me to get home faster? Trust me when I say customers and your company CEO don't care if you know the diffrence of .Net 3 to .Net 2.0, they only want to know you can help developers write faster code and not do a mess while at it. I've seen cases of people that talk to you in Hexa decimal and can recite windows API backwards, most of them couldn't design half decent products or analyze why projects had problems.

[DirtyAndy]

Hi, maybe you don't need a career change at all - maybe just a change to a smaller firm. Sometimes when you work on a big team you can get very stuck in one area, and you tend to be developing very critical applications that do require you to make the absolute most out of the framework etc - 1 second loading time makes a big difference each day if you have 10,000 users etc etc. Often when you work for a smaller firm you get to do the full lifecycle of development - the analysis, the design, the project management, the development, the testing (it couldn't all be good), then the user training and delivery. How well the software scales, whether or not you can change the database from SQL to MySQL to Oracle all in two days, whether it uses the 2.0 Framework or 3.0 or 3.5 generally doesn't matter. I find it gives you a sense of ownership, you get to work closely with the users, you get to truly see what they are working on etc. In terms of other related careers some software people are good at looking at business processes and helping redefine them, that sort of thing can be interesting - but you really need to find someone who will take you under your wing to achieve a career change like that. Most things are going to require you to start from scratch and if you are going to do that you might as well try something you think you will love. Personally I'd love to leave the software industry and maybe do something wine related - but it aint going to pay my mortgage or kids school fees so for now it is a no go. Andrew

[jarajeshwaran]

when I read what you have written I feel like I have written myself. I have 8 years of experience . I had my own software company startup. But now I have closed it up and working for a software giant. I like working on a computer but as you said I am not a techie. I am also a c# developer. I face the dilemma similar to you but I have learnt that this is how it is going to go ahead. I cant waste all my experiences and go in to a new career. But no body stops me from having a parallel career. I like writing a lot. I like to speak on politics and spirituality so I have started my own website www.BeginWithDisbelief.com[^] here I go ahead with a career I like. It does not affect my actual way of life. I have done this very recently and I need to put a lot of work into it. This is how I like the change to be maybe you too can follow the same. dont waste those long years of experience you have acquired

[Member 2778933]

Rag picker out behind the supermarket?

[Zhat]

MAybe try marketing for a software company? You obviously know programming/software after 10 years. So, take that and become a saleman for a software focused company. It get's you out of the cubicle and out and about...

[Bob work]

I ran into the same wall a few years ago. My life was on a treadmill of work, eat, sleep. Lots of deadlines, little sleep, and the kids and dogs and wife were noticing my increased apathy for the whole mess... So I took a welding class. Arc, TIG, Oxy-Actylene were covered at the local high school's vocational ed. evening classes. Yup, 10,000 degrees of pure energy. I had always enjoyed working with my hands and tinkering on stuff when I was growing up. Made my own bed (litterally) and dresser and desk. Now I can hook really big stuff together in a snap without using those ancient and crude friction-based fasteners. Perhaps, and I'm only projecting here, you don't need a completely new direction, just a diversion to channel some lost creativity or passion into, or out of, your work-a-day world. [Hey, reatding back, it is pretty non-committal and new-age sounding, but this is the lounge.] :-D

-Bob

[Meridith Levinson]

I second Big Daddy's recommendation to consider a career as a business analysts. It could be a very good fit with your programming background and your desire to stay in the software development world *and* with the fact that you enjoy working with users. I don't know how the economy has affected demand for business analysts, but before the economy tanked, they were a hot commodity. I'm an editor with CIO.com, and we wrote a lot of stories about business analysts. So if you want more information on the role, a simple search on CIO.com for "business analyst" will yield a lot of info. Good luck!

[BrienMalone]

It sounds like you are ideally suited to software project management -- either as a project manager or manager of software development.both make use of tech skills, but are abstracted from coding. A lot of people who enjoy development are being forced in that direction to grow (or keep) their careers... You are lucky to find yourself gravitating in that direction naturally.

[ely_bob]

Computational Sciences... Pro's: :thumbsup: No need to stay "up" with new language nuances... C or assembly are just great and if your parallel (C or Java) people will be interested in you. Programmers with a lot of experience can debug Scientific programs usually faster then scientists can. You get a small module to develop and can test (develop) against benchmarks (usually) Con's :thumbsdown: You'll need to go back to school and get at least a masters in physics, math, biology, or chemistry (or all of the above) You're time will most likely be spent 50% school 25% teaching 20% research and 5% research programming.. Depending on what area you get, and how lucky you are in getting a "good" project you may end up stuck back in the same position. or get lucky and get a 200K+ job. Or at least that is what I was told... I'm gonna do some art this summer and see how things go.:confused:

[Chris Trelawny Ross]

You like working with users, and designing software - that sounds like the descriptiong of a Product Manager, sometimes also known as a Systems Analyst. By whatever title, the role is one of interfacing with customers/clients to identify their needs that your employer's software doesn't yet address. Your software development experience will allow you to recognize the feasibility/usability, etc. of the ideas the users suggest - because often users suggest solutions, rather than presenting the problem and letting the vendor identify the solution. Best, of course, is when vendor and customer work together (iteratively) discovering (perhaps using prototypes) the best design/architecture/UI/etc. that solves the problem they have. Your preference for working with users suggests that this role of "helping the user to understand the problem they are really trying to solve, and designing an appropriate solution for it" would be fulfilling for you. Product Managers & Systems Analysts are often office-bound. If you think you'd like to be out on the road then Technical Sales is the equivalent position. A Technicals Rep partners with another (non-technical) sales person; the non-technical rep does the work of opening doors, haggling, negotiating, etc. At some point in the process the Technical Rep is introduced into the conversation to present the actual capabilities of the product being sold, and to demonstrate how they would solve the prospect's needs. None of the above would require a new education. Of course, if what you really want is to go back to college, then that's another thing. HTH, Chris