043 Do I Have To End Up In Management As A Developer?

What is the career path of a software developer? Do I have to become a manager? What about software architect? Is that the next level? These are the questions we will tackle in this episode of Dev Questions.

Website: https://www.DevForge.com/ 
Ask Your Question: https://suggestions.iamtimcorey.com/
Sign Up to Get More Great Developer Content in Your Inbox: https://signup.iamtimcorey.com/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Do I have to end up in management as a developer? What is the career path of a software developer? This comes out of a question that Allison asked me recently, and I think it's one we need to address. Let's start off with the very clear answer to do I need to become a manager as a developer? No, no, you don't. You get to choose what you do, and that doesn't mean that you stop your career trajectory early. So let's talk about what the perceived path is for a developer. The perceived path is you come in as an intern or a junior level developer, then you move up to mid-level developer or just developer, and then from there you go up to senior developer, maybe architect, and then move into management. That's the perceived path of developers. But if you've gone into the real world and gotten a job, you may find, especially if you have multiple, you'll find that that just it's not a reflection of reality. Yes, some companies may have very clear steps to developers, but if you go to a different company, they'll have different steps, or maybe no steps at all. And every company that you encounter will be a little different. So, no, there's not a clear development path. When I first started out, I started out as an intern while in high school, and then after my first year of college, I immediately became a consultant, which feels kind of like the senior developer level, in the fact that I was coming in telling companies how to do things. And I was coming in as the hired muscle to get jobs done on in development. And the reality was I was a clueless kid who was just figuring out as he went up, went along. So that was a little weird. And if you put a title on me, that might be what you'd think the title should be, when in reality it's more like I was a junior developer. So that was a little odd. But it was a company of four. There's four of us. And yet we were going and working with Fortune 500 companies and other international companies, and as well as small mom and pop shops. So that was it, it's not typical if you look at that career trajectory. And yet that's a pretty common thing you'll see with smaller companies. When you get hired, usually you're not they're not hiring a certain level of developer. They just need a developer. And so they'll hire you, and you're expected to do usually everything. And if you're the only developer, that means you're both a junior developer who's learning stuff and the senior developer who's in charge of everything. So there's that shifting uh level there of what your skills are, aren't necessarily a reflection on what job you're doing. So it's messy. You get into a very, very large company, they'll probably have much more clear defined roles. If you try and work at Google, you'll have a very clear and defined role. Not saying it's not messy, but you'll at least have what seems to be that clear-cut trajectory. But when when you talk about what your career path should be, that's where it gets into not what others tell you it should be. You get into what do you want to do? Because being a software developer is not the same thing as being a manager. And even being a junior level developer is not the same thing as being a senior level developer. You may find that your sweet spot is that mid-level developer where you have responsibilities in programming, you have a little bit more freedom and a little bit more um cool stuff you can do, but you don't have the responsibilities of architecture or of kind of leading the team, being a team lead for developers. That may be your sweet spot, is that mid-level. And you may be really great at that. Don't let people take that away from you because you they want to give you a more of a responsibility. If that's what you're good at, stick with it. Now, yes, sometimes more money comes with more responsibility. And so if you're looking at your budget and saying, you know what, I'd like more money. And you know what? We all we all would, right? But if you're looking at that and say, I want more money, there's no shame in going for a job that provides you more money. But just know you do have to balance that against what they're gonna ask you to do. And as you go up, you may lose some of the things that you most love. I've been a manager, I've been an IT director for a college, and there's a lot of things I loved about it. I love management, I love being able to lead people and set direction. I think I'm good at setting direction. But at the same time, there's a lot of things that I missed while doing it. I wasn't as heavily into development as I wanted to be. I was still a developer, but it was not nearly to the level I wanted to be. And so I actually took the next job as just a developer. In fact, I didn't have anybody that reported to me. I was just a developer. And the job after that I took, I was just a developer. Now I turned into kind of a management kind of position, but I started picking jobs that met what I wanted to do, rather than having someone tell me, well, this is what you need to do in order to get the the money you want or the prestige you want. I wasn't in it for prestige. I wasn't even in it necessarily for money after a certain point. Money is always important. And if you don't have a choice, then you don't have a choice. But if you have a choice, choose the thing that makes you happiest. So, Allison, if you don't want to be a manager, don't be a manager. You'll probably not be the greatest at it, anyways. Because if you're not, if you're not looking to do it, if you're not loving it, then you're gonna have a harder time finding that ability to love it. I'm not saying you're not gonna be a good manager, but it's if you're a good developer and you love doing that, that's where I would stick. And I definitely wouldn't encourage people to move on to something they shouldn't be, or to be in something that they just don't feel comfortable being. Okay. So the career path as a developer, if you're coming in right now, you're gonna start off at the bottom. You're gonna start off with the easier programming problems, the easier programming work, you may have to do some grunt work. And that's just part of getting started in the in this path of software developer. But as you look towards your career and look towards moving up the ladder, figure out for yourself what you want and figure out what you think the next best step for you is. It may not be the next step you're offered, and it may not even be at the same company you're at now. If you find that in order to grow, you want to have more responsibilities as a developer, but not be a manager, that may require you to move to a different company. But figure that out, and then you know what your next step is, you know where to go next. That doesn't mean that you can necessarily plan out five steps down the road. If you are just starting out now, you probably don't know what you want to be eventually. That's because your your tastes will change. You'll find things that you love, you'll find things you don't love. Maybe you get tired of being a developer, and you want to set direction. That was my thing, is I wasn't tired of being a developer, but I was tired of seeing choices being made that I didn't agree with. I felt like I had a better perspective on things, and I didn't always, okay. Usually when you're looking from the outside in, you think differently than when you're actually doing the job. But I really wanted to make change. I wanted to be the catalyst for change. And so I decided to move into management, and that was a job I would not have thought about doing five years earlier. And then when I did it, I loved it. But at some point I say, you know what? I want to go back to being a software developer full-time. And that's not something I would have thought, okay, now that I'll become a director, now I want to move back to developer. It's not about up and down, it's about what I felt was best for my career and also what I felt was best for my quality of life. So make those choices, kind of plan out your next move and start working towards it. But don't try and plan out multiple moves ahead. Try and just do one step at a time, evaluate and think through your ad. Don't let anybody else tell you what to do as far as your career path. Also, unless it's a requirement, don't just follow the money. There comes a point in your career, hopefully, where you have choices to make where either choice will give you the money you need. So at that point, choose the one that's going to give you the best quality of life. Whether it be the least amount of hours compared to, you know, for nights and weekends you have off instead of being always kind of on call or at work, or whether it's having enough vacation time or enough benefits, or just doing something that you love compared to something that you can do or you're good at, but don't really enjoy. So that's what I'd kind of focus on. So it comes to do you have to be a manager? No, you don't. And what's the career path for a developer? Every developer is different. Okay. Don't get locked into thinking it's one way only. You get to choose what's best for you. Don't let anybody else decide that. All right. Thanks for the question, Allison. If you found this episode helpful, I appreciate it if you would share on your social networks. Thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share dev questions. You can also send your questions to questions at iamtimcorey.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to Iamtimcorey.com and enroll in a course.