Long-Term Career Plans for Programmers?

zeno_lee asks: "Over the weekend, I spoke to a successful man in his 50s. He works in finance, but has had jobs in construction, trucking, and accounting. All throughout he has had concrete goals and pursued them vigorously. In his 20s he set a goal to be an expert in his field in finance, and achieved it successfully. I'm in my 20s and he advised me to envision what I want to do when I'm in my 50s, set my priorities and goals, and achieve that vision. He mentioned that success (career wise) depends on carefully planned goals with a vision, not a haphazard obstacle course with no end in sight. Beyond receiving a paycheck in the short term and steadily gaining expertise in my field, I have not given my long-term career any concrete thought. I don't have a vision of what I will be doing when I'm 50. Has anyone thought of their long-term career thoroughly and are working towards it? By this I don't mean the usual vague response 'I'll probably be in management one day.' I'm looking to hear from both junior 'careerists' in their 20s who have concrete goals, and the older folks in this field who have established careers and have an opinion about this."

Comments

Philip Greenspun's Guide

[Bouncings]

I suggest you read some of the works of Philip Greenspun on this topic. He's part MIT-professor, part photographer, and cofounder of Arsdigita. In particular, you might want to read:

• Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists -- a humour look at the role of education in job seeking. Not very serious, but a good read and actually very thought provoking
• How I Became a Scum-Sucking Yuppie Materialist and his advice on investing are a good and geeky introduction to money.

When all else fails, read Seven Habits of Highly Annoying People. ;-)

Timely...

[superdoo]

Well, today was my last day with a company that I've been with for 4.5 years. Before that I was with a startup for about 1.5 years. I'm 25. I've known since I was around 7 or so that I wanted to get into programming. The startup company was a fluke, but it was a trial-by-fire introduction into the corporate world or wheeling and dealing and on-the-spot, impress-the-possible-investor situations. Since then I've worked for 4.5 years with a services company, starting out installing hardware, and moving on up through every facet of large corporate network management and administration. Software solutions, large-scale migrations, etc. I've always know that I want to get into programming, so why have I been doing these other jobs? I think most people get sidetracked by their impatience. They want to start coding now! I want a long, rewarding career. I didn't want to code for 80 hours a week and be burned out by the time I turned 25. Instead I've built up a lot of experience in how IT works in large companies. Now that I'm starting a programming job on Monday I have years of experience to know how program requirements and design choices will actually affect the people that use the programs. I know that the last 4.5 years will not get me a programming job but they will show that I know how to function in a large corporate environment. I think that is something that a lot of IT people don't realize. A valuable programmer is one that understands how the business works, not one that is stuck in a closet somewhere coding inside a black box and trying to make everyone conform to his data structures.

If you take a long-term approach to your career you can avoid getting caught up in the "now! now! now!" attitude. Take some time to think about the skills and experience that will help you down the road. And it's not learning a new scripting language, it's understanding how to add value to a business.

My two cents anyways...