When I started my software career, practically every year my manager/supervisor would ask me during my annual evaluation about my 5 year and/or 10 year goals. There was pressure to make up something good and I did. Later in my career I decided that it's okay to admit that I love writing software. It's okay to say you love what you're doing now and don't have plans to do something different in the future. Of course you'll want your software development skills to improve, but I don't think we all need to have a desire to manage other software developers or move into less technical roles.
Maybe you're already have your dream job.
···
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Copeland [mailto:tom@infoether.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 9:02 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Unit tests ... not just for the young
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 09:56, Michael Campbell wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 22:48:30 +0900, Tom Copeland > <tom@infoether.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'd be afraid to hire a code-monkey who said yes.
> >
> > Hm. Do you feel that there's a different calling to
which a programmer
> > should aspire? I mean... "architect", or some such?
>
> Maybe not some specific calling, but one should have SOME aspiration
> to "move up/on" occasionally; I THINK that's what he was getting at.
Yup, I agree that that's what he was getting at. But is
"architect" the
sort of thing that one would move up to? Or maybe "CIO" or some other
non-technical sort of thing?
Or were you just thinking of "moving on" in the sense of moving to a
different type of programming - i.e., embedded vs web or some such?
I guess I'm just interested in exploring what folks think a programmer
should aspire to move on to.
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ask me during my annual evaluation about my 5 year and/or 10 year
goals. There was pressure to make up something good and I did. Later
in my career I decided that it's okay to admit that I love writing
software. It's okay to say you love what you're doing now and don't
have plans to do something different in the future. Of course you'll
want your software development skills to improve, but I don't think we
all need to have a desire to manage other software developers or move
into less technical roles.
Maybe you're already have your dream job.
That's fine, and well stated. That's an aspiration. What I'm leery
of are the folks who [say they] want to do exactly what they're doing
andnothing more. Technologies change, and I want people who will
want to stay on top of them at least.
In my limited experience, there are lots of different types of
programming jobs, and most of them suck, at least in some way. It
depends on what you're willing to put up with. Most of the time, you
have to put up with managers who think programmers are disposable, or
that programming is just a step towards management. Also, we all know
how many projects fail, or go very close to it.
The bloated state of the industry is mostly based on puffy CRUD
application development, which I can't bring myself to enjoy. [1] The
proportion of real work to puffy work has thus declined over the
years. There are millions of grads out there so it's harder to
distinguish yourself.
Of course there are many other sides to the story - that's just my
isolated experience in an isolated country. The happy ending is that
I've taken a pay cut for an interesting research-type job, part of
what the media assures us is a growing trend. No job is perfect, of
course, but at least there are no dickheads in this one 
Yours, hoping the above contains something useful,
Gavin
[1] It's even harder to enjoy when conservative micro-managers insist
on everything being done a certain way, both for the obvious reason,
and because you don't get to experiment with various techniques, thus
there's no real opportunity to improve your skill.
···
On Thursday, June 10, 2004, 12:53:02 AM, Mark wrote:
I guess I'm just interested in exploring what folks think a programmer
should aspire to move on to.
When I started my software career, practically every year my
manager/supervisor would ask me during my annual evaluation about my
5 year and/or 10 year goals. There was pressure to make up
something good and I did. Later in my career I decided that it's
okay to admit that I love writing software. It's okay to say you
love what you're doing now and don't have plans to do something
different in the future. Of course you'll want your software
development skills to improve, but I don't think we all need to have
a desire to manage other software developers or move into less
technical roles.
Maybe you're already have your dream job.
Quite right, wholehearted agreement here...
Tom
···
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 11:10, Michael Campbell wrote:
What I'm leery
of are the folks who [say they] want to do exactly what they're doing
andnothing more. Technologies change, and I want people who will
want to stay on top of them at least.