I don’t like to just post links to another blog or article. Anyone can do that, and there are far too many blogs out there that create no original content. So I try to write original thoughts and articles. That said, sometimes this is a rule worth breaking. Jeff Atwood has a great post over at Coding Horror titled So You Don’t Want to be a Programmer After All.
Atwood asks the question, “What career options are available to programmers who no longer want to program?” This is converse to a subject I’d like to write about soon (still gathering my thoughts: What career options are their for programmers who wish to move up in their career, perhaps into management, while never losing the ability to actually write code?”
Unfortunately, it seems to me that in this field the general career path goes something like this:
Junior Programmer->Senior Programmer->Super Senior Programmer->Awesome Amazing Programmer->Manager (stop writing software)
I know of at least one person who got into management, didn’t like it, and gave it up to move back into a full-time developer role. What about the programmer who wishes to do both? And why do we assume that software management means an end to coding in the role? Sure, this isn’t always the case, but in general I think it is. It strikes me that many of the best developers move into management, thereby eventually losing their hands-on skills. That seems unfortunate.
MTR 