What to do?

There have been a few blogs recently about people finding their true vocation and discovering that it’s not developing software. This is not a “me too” post. I do still develop software for a living and I don’t intend becoming a writer or anything else any time soon. But like most people (I assume) my career has taken turns that I never would have imagined when I started out.

In fact when I was at school I took quite some time trying very hard not to be a software developer for a living. I took geography rather than the rather more obvious (if you know me) chemistry because I wanted to be a pilot. I was so determined to keep programming computers as a hobby that I almost took woodwork instead of computer studies when I was fourteen.

Even when I went to university a few years later I tried (and failed) to read maths. After graduating with a Computer Science degree I fell into a job in software in many ways because I wasn’t sure what else to do.

If this sounds negative it’s because that’s what I was thinking at the time. With hindsight I’m glad that all the effort I spent avoiding my current career didn’t pay off.

The job I took turned out to be a lucky break in some respects. It was at a medium sized consulting company which allowed me to work in lots of different positions on lots of different projects in a relatively short period of time. The effect of this was that I was able to mentally break up the job “Software Developer” into aspects that previously I would have conflated.

What I learned is that I enjoy creating stuff more than managing people. That I’m better at sketching designs on a white-board than I am at testing the resulting code. That I like to make things that are useful rather than just architecturally beautiful. And that I like working with end users, even when they ask for the impossible or contradictory things. (Okay, not exactly at the time they request it but you get the idea.)

In practice this means that I seek out roles that are broader than a stereotypical developer ((I think it’s fair to say that the responsibilities of a “developer” vary more from job to job than that of, say, “accountant.”)) and certainly require more than just coding. Hard-core developers may sneer at the fact that the most common job title I’ve had over the years is some variation on “Consultant” but I actually quite like that it means very little. Under the same title I’ve done everything from development to pre-sales consulting to business analysis.

The point, of course, is not that this is The Right career, only that considering “development” as a single activity wasn’t a helpful way of thinking about what I wanted to do. By breaking down the role into its constituent parts I’ve been able to get a balance of variety and control that I’m happy with most of the time.

Put another way, I’ve been functionally decomposing my career and optimising it for years. I guess I really am a developer at heart.