{"id":1102,"date":"2010-09-14T08:35:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-14T15:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2018-04-13T17:13:14","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T21:13:14","slug":"im-a-career-developer-and-thats-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/im-a-career-developer-and-thats-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m a Career Developer and That’s OK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I feel like Greg Focker in Meet the Parents.\\n\\n\"liedetector\"<\/a>\\n\\nThere is a part in the movie where Greg goes to the breakfast table to be greeted by his girlfriend\u2019s sister\u2019s fianc\u00e9, Dr. Bob, and his father who is also a doctor.\\n\\nThey ask him what he does and he says he is a nurse.\u00a0 They think he is joking at first, but then they realize he is serious.\u00a0 They assume the MCATs were too hard, but he tells them he prefers nursing because he can work in several areas of medicine and not have to deal with the bureaucracy that doctors do.\\n\\n\u201cYou are a programmer?\u201d\\n\\n\u201cYes\u201d\\n\\n\u201cDidn\u2019t you want to move on to become an architect or manager?\u201d\\n\\n\u201cNo, I like writing code and solving hard problems.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t want to deal with the bureaucracy that architects or managers have to deal with.\u00a0 I just want to write code and keep getting better at it.\u201d\\n\\n<\/p>\n

What exactly is a career developer?<\/h2>\n

\\n\\nThe closest thing we have to this title is a Software Craftsman, but that seems a bit presumptuous.\u00a0 I am OK with being called a career developer.\\n\\nIt means that I don\u2019t consider advancement to be something beyond writing code.\u00a0 Becoming a manager or a high level architect is not something I consider to be career advancement for me.\\n\\nEven becoming a technical lead is not something I strive for in my personal advancement.\u00a0 Leadership is something that can never be assigned, but is always earned by reputation and willingness to help others.\\n\\nIt means that I consider advancement to be becoming better at writing code, learning more about best practices and implementing them.\u00a0 I measure advancement in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge in the field of software development and the ability to get things done.\\n\\nA career developer is someone who values the process of learning and advancing their skills at programming and software development in general over a title, and, unfortunately in a large number of cases, pay.\\n\\nAlthough, it does not mean that career developers will not be paid well, it just means you have a harder time finding the right company that will recognize the value that you can bring and pay you accordingly.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

Why?<\/h2>\n

\\n\\nI can\u2019t speak for everyone, but for me it is about staying true to the reason I got into programming in the first place.\u00a0 It is the feeling of pure amazement and excitement, as you realize you can make the computer do what you want.\\n\\nIt is hard to match the satisfaction of seeing all your unit tests turn green, knowing that you wrote those tests before writing the code.\\n\\nThere is no novel that compares to the joy of reading through well written code clearly revealing its intent.\u00a0 Just as real as a character in a book.\u00a0 The greatest joy is when it is your own code.\\n\\nThere are not many things more exhilarating then facing that really hard problem that seems impossible to solve, not knowing if you actually will be able to solve it, until you finally break it down to small bite-sized pieces, and when you look down at your plate, you see the problem is suddenly gone, and you have emerged victorious!\\n\\nWhat else can stimulate the mind in so many ways?\u00a0 What other activity can challenge you mentally to the same degree that programming can?\u00a0 What other act of creation allows you take take virtually nothing and make it into something real?\\n\\nWhere can you exaggerate so much, but in a blog?\\n\\nYes, perhaps I go a bit far, but at times what I say above is completely true, at least it seems that way to me.\u00a0 And that is precisely why I choose to keep slinging code.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking for my next programming high.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let the man get you down<\/h2>\n

\\n\\nThere is nothing wrong with striving to go into management or into higher level architecture instead, but you have to make the choice yourself, and you should not make the choice lightly.\\n\\nOne problem in the real world is that not many companies realize that there even is such a thing as a career developer. \u00a0There is not really a job title for it.\u00a0 Senior Software Engineer doesn\u2019t quite cut it.\u00a0 There are plenty of those out there.\\n\\nDon\u2019t be discouraged though, if you choose to go the route of the career developer. \u00a0There are companies out there that do recognize the value of a developer with 10 years experience versus a developer with 1 year experience 10 times.\u00a0 There are many companies that want to hire exactly the kind of programmer that only wants to be a programmer, and will pay them well.\\n\\nI\u2019m fortunate enough to have found such a company.\u00a0 And I can\u2019t be happier that I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I feel like Greg Focker in Meet the Parents.\\n\\n\\n\\nThere is a part in the movie where Greg goes to the breakfast table to be greeted by his girlfriend\u2019s sister\u2019s fianc\u00e9, Dr. Bob, and his father who is also a doctor.\\n\\nThey ask him what he does and he says he is a nurse.\u00a0 They think…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14560,5895],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","category-self-improvement"],"yoast_head":"\nI'm 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