Bill Pyne
Posts: 165
Nickname: billpyne
Registered: Jan, 2007
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Re: Are you Not Trying if you're Just Standing Still?
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Posted: Jun 7, 2010 8:37 PM
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> Some, I for one, associate career plan with career path.
> And career path, in general, connotes climbing the ladder
> r over one's colleagues dead bodies. OK, a bit sarcastic,
> but largely the case. For Kiddies, the plan/path usually
> means getting out of coding as fast as possible. For
> those who have done some professional work for a length of
> time, and find that they enjoy it, often have little
> desire to stop doing it. And many find that their
> managers have a negative value add.
A plan and a path are not the same. A plan seems more of what you'd like to do whereas a path is how to enact the plan. For instance, a plan is becoming a language designer by age 40. A path to it is getting into a graduate program under a language researcher then using your contacts to get into MS Research for example.
Speaking as someone who has spent 18 years in the field without a plan, I find it critical now to develop one. Without a plan, it's too easy to move from job to job and find out how dull business applications are: take input from a screen, run query, and display to screen. To work on more interesting applications, a developer needs to work toward the 20% of applications that do not fit this scenario: language design, AI, UI design, etc. Often graduate work is involved. Without a plan, it's difficult to break out of the 80% mind dulling work.
My own recommendation for younger developers is to spend 5 or so years jumping about finding out your interests in development, organizational structure, and organization size. Develop a plan around year 5 and start working towards it. Once family and mortgage are involved, choices narrow greatly.
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