I keep hearing this around me and is more than annoying. People .. including those with just a few years of coding experience want to stop coding and become managers ,sales persons .. they keep telling me that coding is a low-level job.
Some older guys (around 29-30)think that it is an age thing and you just can't keep up with the new technologies so they want more money without actual technical involvement (like sales ,project management).
I too want to become an architect , to design software to build something from the ground up (this is fun no question about it) , but I don't think coding is under qualified job as everybody else does and I still want to code if only just to verify a proof of concept.
Everybody keeps telling me that a manager can gain 3 times as much as a coder (even in a senior position) that may be true but what everybody "forgets" is that being a manager requires a whole different set of skills to begin with. So investing 5 years of your life to study computer science + 5 years (in my case) as a developer just to become a manager sounds like a stupid thing to do. We (the developers) undervalue ourselves at this point and make development look like a secretaries job which can be done in a open-plan space with poorly trained and poorly payed juniors something I cannot accept.
Well this thread discusses this and I am happy that there are a lot of older developers like myself on StackOverflow to support this point of view.
Anyway as I wrote in the previous thread I am not ready to make career changing decisions now. I have other priorities for now. but I really feel the need to write this on the subject.
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Hey there Wolf...1st of all I wud suggest that u change ur name. The word 'lonely' in itself brings to u a kind of negativity which in some or the other way might risk transofrming your perception to view everyday things with some negativity. Although wolf is good. U can use Hungry Wolf may seem better looking at ur hunger for coding...hehe. jk.
ReplyDeleteBy d way I am too a developer. I work on jsp & servlets. Well to tell u I have a collegue who is also a developer who is of age 31 and still coding. He holds a degree in computer apps but is unwilling to look things at a managerial perspective. He codes for himself...is accustomed to coding so much that he is obsessed with it. He can become a manager and enjoy the art of managing software projects but only if he is willing to change his attitude. He is so unwilling to cross the coding territory that he thinks he might not fit in the management category. He too tells me that this aint the right time to jump for that position. I say y not...he is 31 yrs of age...i ask him do u want 2 spend ur whole life coding 4 a piece of software...U wer right in saying that u must try not 2 delay things and he is doing the same.
Well sorry lonelywolf is who I am (unfortunately) and this is not likely to change.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment (the first comment on my blog).
I am a J2EE developer too but I think we must have more respect for coders in general and the work they do.
The way we look at ourselves contributes to how we are seen by management.
Of course being an architect is good but coding is not a low level job and that's final(for me at least).
I agree, coding is both art and science. You can write one function in million ways.
ReplyDeleteBTW, 38 and still coding!