Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Life After Software Development?
An anonymous reader writes "I've been writing database apps for various industries as the senior developer or tech lead on a given project for most of the past 20 years. The last few years have become particularly taxing as I struggle to reiterate basic concepts to the same technically illiterate managers and stakeholders who keep turning up in charge. While most are knowledgeable about the industries our software is targeting, they just don't get the mechanics of what we do and never will. After so many years, I'm tired of repeating myself. I need a break. I need to walk away from it, and want to look at doing something that doesn't focus heavily on the IT industry day in, day out. Unfortunately, I'm locked to a regional city and I've just spent the majority of my adult life coding, with no other major skills to fall back on. While I'm not keen on remaining in front of a screen, I wouldn't be averse to becoming a tech user and consumer, rather than a creator. Are there similar Slashdotters out there who have made the leap of faith away from tech jobs and into something different? If so, where did you end up? Is there a life after IT for people who are geeks at heart? Apart from staying in my current job, is there any advice for someone who can't really risk the mortgage and kid's education on a whim?"
If you have experience on a given subject, coding or otherwise, there is a market for books and teaching. I happen to like coding and plan on keeping at it till my mortgage is paid off. Then I'll retire.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Apart from staying in my current job, is there any advice for someone who can't really risk the mortgage and kid's education on a whim?
"On a whim" is exactly what you're talking about doing: leaving what I assume to be a well-paying job, with absolutely zero skills outside your current position, to find something new (which, incidentally, is a process you're obviously sufficiently clueless about to be unable to figure out for yourself).
My advice? Do the responsible thing and stick it out until retirement or mortgage/kiddo's schooling is paid off, then take your walkabout.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It's a series of rules. It doesn't take much intelligence or creativity and pays pretty well. It can be taught very quickly. Learn to like copying and filling out forms. Bonuys, as a developer, you probably won't forge anything due to your own inability to recognize what someone can or cannot prove via provided documents. As a PREPARER, you aren't 100% liable for validating these documents, so it's pretty much boilerplate.
It's what I intend to do once I lose an important sense/appendage (as long as it's not both my hands and both eyes completely, in which case I'm fucked)
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
If you put what you wrote on the heading of your resume and sent it to some startup companies (or VC of those startups) you'll get attention.
Now, if your tired of telling people basic concepts because you're an arrogant ass, well, you'll get attention and be shown the door. If you're a person who has passion for good work, have done good work, and are willing to try something new with a similar passion, entrepreneurs will notice.
Whether the attention is good or bad is up to your attitude but put what you wrote in the header and you'll show you have balls, which is exactly what's lacking but needed most in many of the applicants I see for a startup company.
>Game Development
Infinitely worse. The only people who think game development is "light hearted" and "fun" are ignorant people who know diddly-squat about the games industry.
Been there.
Done that.
Now I raise pigs on pasture.
Shepherding pigs is more fun.
Love it.
Dear Slashdot,
I've spent my entire life doing one thing. I have no marketable skills except doing that one thing. I like doing that one thing, and that alone. I hate my job because it also involves doing something other than that one thing.
I want to stop doing that one thing, or anything related to it, but still make the same safe, secure, decent amount of money doing something else. But I have no idea what that something else is, and I don't want to take any risks finding out.
What do I do?
Answer:
You're fucked.
Seriously, open your horizons some (management or technical sales is where many geeks go when they reach this point), or be willing to take risks. But the magical safe, secure, job you are looking for does not exist.
Been there, done that.
A few years ago I quit a good job because I was tired of the same thing, day in, day out.
Decided to try my hand at different things, collapsed economically, got depressed, felt I was useless and then...
I got me a job (lower paying) as IT Manager again. Guess what, I'm happy because I know what I'm doing, I feel good because I know the ins and outs of the job and it is, frankly, a piece of cake.
So take a vacation, cool off and get back to the good job you have.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
Game development may sound fun, but as people who have actually done it for a living are going to point out, this is not the job for someone who has a mortgage or a family as a consideration. It doesn't pay well, it demands long hours, and the risk of losing your job is through the roof compared to basically anywhere else in the computer industry.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
1) Move up the management chain. Stop moving up when you can't take the bs. You don't code anymore. You are still paid well. You have to reduce your reliance on technical skills and switch to people skills. It is messy. I find it hard because the goals are harder to understand. People don't act in their best interests and so doing something illogical (e.g. not allowing an employee to build a better solution because the current solution is owned by someone with more influence than you have) is the better choice if you want to keep your job. It is really hard to avoid becoming the dilbert manager when a dilbert manager decides your fate.
2) Move into sales or marketing. Again you have to tone down your technical skills in favor of people skills. If you move into writing white papers you can keep some of the technical skills but you will need to understand people well enough to influence them. It takes getting used to. I didn't like it at first but so far it has been easier than coding, a little boring but I feel my work is useful to the company and customers. If you move into technical presales you typically get a bonus but you also have to travel a bit more.
Dude, you're an adult, you're not going to like your job every day, and you're not going to like everyone you work with. I'm working on finishing a project I hate, for a client who is a complete dick right now. But, he's the dick that pays my bills, and I manage to keep the work interesting by doing it different ways, rather than repeating the same thing over and over again.
There's really no way around repeating yourself. It's one of the evils of this industry. The thing I've found that works is talking about things in terms of electricity and plumbing. Some of it doesn't really fit, but it's a metaphor that people can visualize. The problem with explaining software mechanics to people is that there's no pipe to envision, no wire to point to, and the guts of the thing exist in the ether where they're shielded from perception.
Another thing that works is to make yourself less approachable. Not being rude per say, but people won't ask you a lot of questions, if you're not forthright in answering them. Or, if you give them an answer in terms you know they'll never understand. At the company I work for, the team in England is notorious for doing things like that. Even to other programmers. When dealing with technical people, you're asking them, at that point, to rewire something without telling you. But, if you're talking about non technical people, they won't understand a word of it; which means they'll find you less useful for answering questions, which means fewer questions.
If they ask you to do something stupid, do it. If they ask you to do something that will break your product, do it. It's not your job to do the job right. It's your job to do what the idiots in management want you to do, even if they don't understand what they're asking you to do. This isn't art, it's production. And you're not a highly skilled person doing a job. No, you're a very expensive piece of software that delivers what they want. So there's no point in questioning it.
As far as life after software development... there's always entrepreneurialism. You probably know enough to make a fair amount of money doing it. But it's not the kind of thing you can just go out and do. You'll need to find an idea, plan, and execute it. So you've probably got time if you're not in a hurry.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Apart from staying in my current job, is there any advice for someone who can't really risk the mortgage and kid's education on a whim?"
There's a reason the monetary system is debt based. You just found it.
Deleted
this guy needs a hobby something awful.
i think he needs to take a 'vacation to reality'.
step 1. try to live on minimum wage for 2 months. i give him 4 days before he breaks down and buys a pizza or goes to a movie or something else financially disastrous to the ordinary person.
step 2. fill out interviews for jobs in other areas, like, say, cashier at Target. make bets on how long he says in an exasperated voice "ive sent out dozens of resumes and nobody is calling me back!"
step 3. actually go to job interviews. see how the 'clueless idiots' in management seem like when they dont actually depend on you - when you are just some expendable blob for them to use.
after all that i think he might change his opinion. he might be able to get a job with less hours, but he is not going to run off without thinking.
My wife and I were very lucky on this. Her parents, ages 88 and 95, needed in-home care, and were willing to pay for us to move to their town to provide it, as we were nearing retirement, and I was transitioning to full-time tech volunteering. It turned out to be vastly cheaper to live here in Indiana than in Silicon Valley, especially with the jobs gone away in the current recession just after they started coming back from the previous recession. We now live in the inherited house and have a comfortable income, between retirement and inheritance.
The writer is in a very different situation, but also has options outside the conventional I assume that the writer has significant home equity after 20 years, and has some savings and investments socked away, some in tax-deferred retirement accounts. Consider, then, the option of moving somewhere vastly cheaper. Quite comfortable houses in our town are available for as little as $70,000. There is a university town nearby (Indiana University, Bloomington), and we have several colleges and university affiliates right here in Columbus.
If you would like a different challenge among the enclued, you could do much worse than to join my outfit, Sugar Labs (a partner of One Laptop Per Child) working on Free Software for education plus Open Education Resources for millions of children now, and ultimately a billion at a time. Our mission is to end global poverty and its many associated ills, using technology as infrastructure for everything else needed. But there are other options right around here. For example, the OpenMRS Medical Records System is being developed in part nearby in Indianapolis. Your database skills would be perfect for them, and they even pay. ^_^
The schools here are pretty decent, and I and my wife also have experience in homeschooling our son and daughter.
So there really are options. Look around, and ignore the naysayers who claim that it can't be done.
"A knot!" said Alice, ever ready to be useful. "Oh, do let me help to undo it!"