Ask HN: How to work your way down the career ladder? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to work your way down the career ladder?

4 pointsTyrannosaurs4 comments

I've been working in IT for about 20 years now, initially as a programmer and more recently as a Project Manager and Development Manager.

While I'm a competent manager, increasingly I find myself longing for the days when I was coding as things seemed more straight forward and more interesting back then.

So my questions are:

1) How would people recommend I start working my way back down the career ladder? I'm still OK with databases but my last hands on coding experience was c. 2000 and even back then I was a generalist rather than a specialist so just picking up what I was doing then technology wise wouldn't give me too much of a head start.

2) What am I forgetting about? I know that the grass isn't greener on the other side but right now the issues of management are far clearer to me than the issues of being a developer. What are the crappy bits I've forgotten but will hate?

3) How would people suggest I pitch the career move to companies and recruiters? Done wrongly it has the whiff of failure but the reality is that it's about what I think will make me happy.

Important missing info: are you working currently full-time for someone as a DevMgr?

1) In the MSFT world, certifications are still an interesting "get your foot in the door" approach. If that's an interesting option for you, you could pick your path and work your way through the cert. Personally I enjoy the process of learning and testing myself but I understand it isn't for everyone. Other options would be teaching yourself via books, open source projects, videos, classes, etc. If you are employed, see about getting your company to send you to training events and conferences.

2) You're forgetting how great it is to write unit tests all day, every day for two weeks! Yay! :D Well, here's what you're forgetting: important decisions will be made without you and, whether you agree or not, your input will likely often be ignored or you will be expected to just shut up and code it. "Sorry - the decision's already been made. Yes, I agree that it isn't the best but it's out of my hands. Can you have that class finished by Friday? Thanks for being a team player."

3) I don't think this is a real issue unless you want the "cream of the crop" developer positions. Small companies would kill to have someone with your experience take a dev job with them.

When thinking about ScottWhigham's last point, it occurred to me that telling many of the people at small software companies that "I tried my hand at management and while I'm not bad at it (or whatever) I've realized I prefer development." (And probably add some of the reasons.)

Of course one danger is that you will end up doing some management, if for no other reason than there being no one better suited. That said, that sort of reluctant manager is not likely to have some of the worse pathologies we see in all too many managers.

To be honest I wouldn't mind a bit of management, something like team leading - the 60/40 technical / management split. It's the 0 / 100 split that's getting me down.

1) Can you go part-time? Then you could get some open source or consulting experience. Would your company be willing to demote you, or let you work on some of the code in the projects you are developing?

2) Coding is boring drudgery and you have less of a view of where you are going than the managers (we hope :-) You'll be stuck with bad colleagues bringing you down instead of being able to get rid of the dead weight. You'll be out of practice and not experienced in a lot of new things, but it sounds like you already put ten years in coding so you will be able to catch up.

3) What you said here made sense. You could also sell yourself as a "fixer", who has both the programming skill and the management nouse to get stuck projects going again. Another alternative is to go into consulting, but I'm guessing neither of these options appeal if you just want to go back to coding. You could try cutting your hours and work on open source the rest of the time in order to improve your CV. Hell, your company might let you work one day a week on open source a la Google if you pitch it right (like, I'm good and I'm quitting if you don't give me this.)

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