Which career path for programmers?
Recently, in the Vietnamese developer community, the concept of Career Path is evident. Are you setting yourself a career path yet? Especially when you are turning into the age of "three children"?
In the article "Trot following programming" , Le Hoang Dung wrote as follows:
“When you were nearly 30 years old, you were playing a role in software development, either QC, QA or programmers, and your salary was below $ 1000. That means you can have more than 20 million a month, and for many people, you are quite successful. And if you want, you can have more pay. But if you are happy, I am not sure, because the measure of success or happiness is different from the income measure. Even if, income accounts for a high proportion of happiness, then with that salary, if you live in Ho Chi Minh City, it is not worth it. "
That's right, I think, no matter what career path you choose, it is important that you have to be happy and do the things you like to do; And the current "career ladder" is probably just fleeting, and that's just our product as a drawing staff.
The following article was written by Jeff Atwood at the time he moved to Vertigo Software ( he later retired from Vertigo and built StackOverflow.com ). The article also shows us the concern about finding happiness in your work. And before I go into this article, I would also like to quote the concern of an Indian programmer in the article "Indian Programmers Mistakes" posted by previous blog Vinacode:
Have you ever felt tired and disoriented in programming?
“Rao concludes that my plight is the same as the one I read when I was a kid, the story is about thousands of caterpillars trying to climb over a wall, the height of that wall they don't know. . They kept climbing, climbing, falling, starting again, but still continuing to climb. They do not know that they will eventually be able to fly.
He could not remember how the story ended, but the feeling that Indian coders today are just like those caterpillars, keep working hard in their way while there are many better ways. to reach many goals in life … ”
I remember very well the suffering my father had experienced throughout his career. He studied very hard to earn an MBA degree (master of business administration) at a prestigious university. That degree opened many opportunities for him, but I don't think he found exactly what he was looking for. During our childhood, we had to relocate continuously from his job from one place to another, never staying in one place for more than a year. I'm not sure he found work that satisfied him, even today. When I read the book What Color is Your Parachute ( What color is your umbrella), I see images of my family in it.
What color is your umbrella?
It may take a long time to realize what you really want to do in life.
Like my father, I also spent many years after graduating to finish one job after another. I have nothing to complain about. I created a wonderful life and never had to sit and wait for a long time before some new opportunities appeared. I am also very interested in my work, but have yet to choose a career path and have let things randomly decide who I am, and what I become.
At some point in your career, you must end up floating in your life like a bird feather in Forrest Gump.
Unfortunately, I don't think my father ever realized what he liked to do. He never decided on the color of the umbrella he wore. But I'm more fortunate. A few years ago, I realized what I really like to do, the work that I really enjoy doing more than anything else, is to write software and make fun games with computers. This seems to you to be obvious, but you are not me. Self-awareness is a very difficult problem with things deep in my heart.
Life is too short to just sit at a job where you can't do what you want, where you don't like yourself. And yet, in the place I am working on, I have become a guy who has lost all hope of love with all the computers and software, working at a company where the software is seen as a commodity. chemistry, a cost center, an essential demon:
A friend of mine who worked at a company witnessed a big "take-away" of programmers. The best people leave first, and the average people follow. In the company, there are only those who work after hours to earn salaries and are not proud of what they are building. The company now has the consequences that they have taken for themselves: a team full of low-level coder. And the people from the beginning, full of enthusiasm and ambition have left.
Companies that view programmers as "low-skilled goods and workmen" suffer from tragic fate and only the average qualified programmers stay with them.
To be fair, that's just the bubble above. The work there is also interesting, but one thing is clear: software is not the blood flow in the bloodstream of that organization. The trend of outsourcing to third world countries is hanging above the head. Although my colleagues are also qualified, none of them have an obsession with software like me. My passion is software and everything around it, and this passion has no one to share with.
I decided to change that. Companies will no longer be able to choose me from a wide range of similar candidates. Instead, I will choose the companies that I respect, those that can share with me the passion for software. With over 30 years of age and wisdom, I no longer let random opportunities decide my career path. I will choose the place I want to do.
In a recent article, Joel Spolsky described the rear-oriented philosophy in his software company:
In fact, the main reason I have to create this company is to have fun at work. The working environment at Fog Creek is designed to create comfort. We started building this company because we wanted to have a great place to work, to use all our time in the most effective way. And we are a bit greedy when trying to do a lot of things, especially if it will make fun or if it helps us to work better. That will make us have to build the company a little longer, but I realize this journey is a worthy reward of my life.
That's exactly why I chose to work at Vertigo Software. Because we have the same philosophy of life. At Vertigo, I am surrounded by incredibly talented software engineers, whose passion is all about software. And one important thing is, damn, we have fun.
If you love software as much as I do, then you deserve to work at a company where people come to work not to sit around for the clock, but because they also love the software. You deserve to work at a company where software engineering is respected and colleagues meet to enjoy building software together.
We are in the middle of a giant technology bomb; Some people may even call it another technology bubble. Opportunities are full.
Choose wisely your own career path.