The path of becoming a better developer must be intentional. This is not a goal that one achieves without effort and planning. Advancing an IT career is not different from any other. You need a plan, and then you need to execute it. Before embarking on our quest to be better developers let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of the path we have chosen.
The Downside of IT
I want to end on a positive note, so that leaves us to start with the negatives. An IT career has some down-sides. I think that this is not a career for the faint of heart. The most significant challenge is the speed at which it moves. Technology has pushed every area ahead at an ever-increasing pace, but IT leads that charge.
Frontline for Rapid Change
This rapid pace of change means an IT career demands that one always pursue knowledge. The moment one slows down, they are falling behind. It is an exhausting choice for a job. However, there are options off of the front line. Management often becomes a way out of the hectic life of a technician to a slightly slower-paced leadership role.
A Roller-Coaster Lifestyle
The IT lifestyle has nothing on Rock and Roll, but it still has a high burn out rate. The drugs are different with caffeine being the most popular among all IT staff. However, there are plenty of others that are common as well. Our job that often demands long hours and late nights or even all-nighters. In fact, I don’t know any veterans of IT that lack stories of extreme fatigue and exhaustion.
There are examples of team outings to see a movie in the middle of the day or trips for laser tag. However, those are far outnumbered by horror stories of long sleepless periods, lost weekends of work, and calls in the middle of the night.
One Of Many Stories
I have several favorites, but a good example is a phone call we made after a late night of rolling out software. The bridge opened at midnight on Friday, so we all worked a typical Friday and then came back to the office around 11 PM. It was around 7 AM when we started wrapping up, and people headed home. One developer was on his way home after a long Thursday night as well. We knew he needed sleep, so he was in the first wave to be dismissed. A little after he left we ran into something that we needed him to answer. We were sure he was not home yet, so we called his cell phone. He responded with a groggy hello, and we asked if we woke him in a joking manner. He answered that yes we had, but that was ok because he fell asleep at a stop light.
Plagued by the Trivial
The good and bad about writing code is that it does precisely what you tell it. I have found that even the most accomplished programmers never grow past minor things like a typo, misspelling, or improper capitalization being the source of hours of lost time. Coding takes more precision than we expect.
When you combine this with our humanity, it is too easy to miss something. Often these imperfections can be seen and corrected almost as fast as we make them. However, every so often, a mistake slips by and ends up triggering an error. At that point, we might see the source quickly and correct the mistake, but it is just as easy to blindly skip over the problem and fall into a rabbit hole of presumed issues. Little missteps can lead to massive losses of time.
Challenged By Perceptions
The perceptions users and customers have about IT can often be an obstacle. Frustration is not uncommon. This tends to go one of two ways. Either every small change is thought to be vast and unworkable or the opposite. When every significant difference is considered trivial, we have to defend why the software is not complete. This is a better situation than when every change is considered so substantial we never hear about them. In this case, we have to dig and pull our way through user discussions to find out what they truly need or want.
Of course, education is the key to overcoming this obstacle. Unfortunately, most of us are not very good at training and education. Well, we are excellent consumers of content, but often weak in creating an delivering the same.
Mentally Exhausting
The bulk of our tasks in this profession are mental. Our days are full of problems to solve and concepts that need to be visualized. When these challenges are combined with a stressful commute, it is easy to reach our limit through the day. Mental exhaustion is not always apparent. Thus, we may not be sweaty and dirty at the end of our day, but that does not mean we are not exhausted.
This can be tough on our friends and family as it can make use seem even more anti-social than usual. Sitting down after a hard day of physical work is easy to understand. Spending time avoiding heavy thought is not as easy to grasp. It also can be a challenge to explain a preference to watch the Simpsons instead of a thought-provoking documentary.
The Upside of IT
Now we have that out of the way. Let’s look at the good things about an IT career. Not all of these will be a plus in your mind. But that is ok. There are plenty of good reasons to assure you this is the right path to take.
Never Bored
I think one of the best lessons we learn in our first job is that you never have a lack of something to do. When you are at work, there is work to be done. This fact can be a challenge in some careers. There is just not always a steady stream of work, so “busywork” fills in. My wife had a job where they would manually shred paper when other work was done. If that is not busywork, then I do not know what is. That is also not the kind of work you look forward to. No one gets up in the morning saying “great; I get to tear paper today!”
Although busywork exists in IT, that is never needed. There is always far more work and learning to be done. In fact, the busywork we often get in this career is adding features to software or looking at new advances. Our on-the-job training never ends in this profession. Likewise, our ability to contribute grows every day. Thus, it is easy for technology workers to get better every day and every week.
Always Needed
There is variation in the kind of technology jobs available from city to city. However, there are often open positions, even in the smallest towns. Better yet, this is the kind of employment that is readily adapted to remote work. Therefore, you can live almost anywhere in the world and have a successful IT career.
Along these same lines, there are always IT jobs available. They may not be a perfect fit for your skills. However, a little training or a cram session can often get you in the door for a near fit. Of course, patience is required as well. A good or “good enough” job may not be available today or this week. That is ok. One will show up soon enough. If it doesn’t, then you are not trying hard enough or you are a being picky.
Interesting Work
Although it is not always easy to explain our work to others, it can often be summarized as something exciting. You may say you build websites for hot companies or integrate with Google or Amazon. There are also applications being developed that can be an excellent ice-breaker for conversation. These include things like trading systems, e-commerce sites, financial and healthcare apps, and many more.
That is just the summary of your work. We know how cool some of the technology we work with is. The first time you automate a call to a phone or have a system send e-mail is exciting, and the way we make systems interact leaves us with few dull moments.
Work From Home
I often see those “work from home” advertisements and emails. They make me laugh as an increasing number of tech jobs are allowing precisely that. It is hard to work from home all the time, but a day or two a week is often productive. The very nature of our jobs and the lack of need (or even utility) of constant interaction with others make us the perfect remote workers. Things only get better as we build tools to support these sort of environments like Slack, Jira, and even E-mail.
The Newest Toys
In my experience, the best equipment in many organizations ends up in the hands of sales and IT staff. The salespeople get small and slick looking devices, but the developers get the beefy and high-powered ones. The tech staff often get demos and hand-me-downs as well. Those old iPhones that we had for testing or monitors from the days of desktops like to find their way to developer and QA staff.
Better yet, we often have a perfect excuse for purchasing new devices and regular upgrades. They are needed for us to ply our skills and advance our opportunities. This includes things like having a few cloud servers at our fingertips or the latest tablet. Of course, we also need to have a better configuration than the base model. That extra memory or processing power can save us time and time is money after all.
Chyx Dig It
This facet is a gender-neutral benefit. Geek guys are desirable for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, geek girls are all the rage as well. Whatever your gender, a job in technology can help increase your attractiveness to the other sex. This may seem simplistic, but even geeks need love. The good news is that our careers can overshadow our paler than usual skin coloring.
Far From Manual Labor
Although a tan is nice to have at times, the cost of some jobs is pretty high. One can make decent money working in fracking or doing roofing. On the other hand, those jobs are physically demanding and downright uncomfortable at times. Almost every IT job allows the worker to make themselves comfortable and weather rarely impacts their day. Yes, there are the occasional blackouts or a bad commute to work, but the job itself is not likely to require medical assistance. These are jobs you can do well into your elderly years or while otherwise physically limited.
