Careers in Software Development?

[Kata Franciscan]

Hi all
In my opinion, the notion of a "career" in Software Development is a bit strange. Isn't a "successful career" normally about earning as much money as possible while having power over the biggest number of employees possible?
I chose to work in Software Development precisely because those things do not matter to me, I want a job that is challenging my brain and lets me solve problems in programming with my own hands, not with the hands of people I can tell to do this for me. The work of a programmer involves learning new things every day, meeting interesting people, work in different teams on different projects, so why would I want to be a boss who spends most of his time in meetings?
Anyone out there who has similar feelings?
Cheers,
Kata

[Vyas Sanzgiri]

No a successful career is not about money. It is all-round: good time at work, good relationship with colleagues, good technology, challenging work as you described as well as quality time with family. You just cannot work 12 hrs and earn $$$ and consider that SUCCESS!!

Every one has likings and if you like to be technical throughout then you can go ahead and become a technical manager or something but others prefer the managing people and dealing with higher management.

[K. Tsang]

Hi there, yes you are right about software development for junior to middle level. As any developer tends to increase responsibilities and level, they will need to handle people and projects just like any manager level people need to. Of course senior people can always do the programming themselves too.

The higher up you go, the more analysis and design you need to participate, ultimately the entire software/system architecture. At this level every thing is high level using UML diagrams and such. So at some stage in your life you would need to do these high level stuff and if you are the boss... you can decide what projects to develop.

[Chad Fowler]

Kata Franciscan wrote:Hi all
In my opinion, the notion of a "career" in Software Development is a bit strange. Isn't a "successful career" normally about earning as much money as possible while having power over the biggest number of employees possible?

Oh, no! That might be what most careers look like (at least they look like attempts at what you describe). But I think this is the path to most software developers' (and professionals in general) unhappiness. There are many givens in our field in terms of career that we take for granted. The idea that we need to move into people management to be successful is an example. Another is that we should move from tester to developer to designer to architect, etc.

Here's one definition of 'career' from dictionary.com:

a person's progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking

"General course of action through life". That's what we want to be remarkable. I think the notion of "successful career" that you described is exactly not remarkable. It sounds like drudgery. It's the path I was on before I decided to wake up and realize that I could control the direction my career went and be happier for it.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Kata Franciscan wrote:In my opinion, the notion of a "career" in Software Development is a bit strange. Isn't a "successful career" normally about earning as much money as possible while having power over the biggest number of employees possible?

No. And that's why good techies aren't always the easiest people to manage.

You may find this thread interesting - it touches on development vs management as a goal.