Career paths, part 1

In the short term…

(i.e. for my next job) – I feel that I will need to stick with what I know, because it is my only significant experience to date.

Of course, it follows on that if I don’t do something to expand my experience, I will have the exact same problem the next time that I look for work! And for that reason, I have decided that I have to look at different career paths now rather than later – the longer I leave my efforts to expand my career, the more difficult I will find it to do.

For this reason, I am lucky that I have no commitments – I am not paying off a mortgage or supporting any children – and therefore, I have the luxury of being able to think beyond the next pay cheque.

I’ve considered some potential career paths here – for this post, I have only mentioned software development related careers, but in a later post I’ll mention possible career paths outside software development. (Yes, there are some!)

How do I choose a career path?

Anyway, I have summarised each path with the following points:

How much do I want to work in this career?

Is this career path something that I am truly interested in?

How easily can I change to this career?

From my current position, what do I need to do, for how long and how much effort do I have to expend in order to get a job in this area?

What is the reward for working in this career?

Would I be paid well, have job security and enjoy my work with a job in this area?

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

Currently, I am in a position where I feel as if I need to work within a different industry sector, and I am in a phase of my life where I am actually able to devote the time (and lost income) to this change. This is something that I may not be able to spare later on in life.

Therefore, I feel as if I need to consider how possible it is to move to a different career from this career. What sort of transferable skills would I acquire in this industry, and what sort of networks would I be able to build?

What career paths do I have?

Software Engineering

In order to work in a software engineering / embedded device environment, I would need to develop my skills with more formal methodologies (UML, project management) and languages (C/C++).

How much do I want to work in this career?

I feel that I would greatly enjoy and be quite fulfilled by a career in software engineering – it is what I chose to study, and I have always enjoyed coding and the challenges that it offers.

How easily can I change to this career?

It would be difficult to prove myself enough to move into this career, and it would take a lot of time, work and study to do so, but it would not be impossible.

I would have to spend a lot of my own time working with hardware, setting up servers and software systems, writing a lot of my own code, and staying current with software (though it is a conservative profession).

Once I am good enough, there are very good jobs out there for the right people.

What is the reward for working in this career?

I feel that this career would offer no shortage of work, because it is a career that not everyone has the talent to be able to get into. (Do I? I don’t know yet!)

This career would let me work with the latest hardware and software, and would prove that I was worthy of working with the best IT and software people in the industry.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

I probably would not have much in the way of career prospects outside of software engineering – it is very much a career goal in itself.

Software Development (business)

This career would involve working with more widely-used and general-purpose languages such as Java or the .net framework. The actual work that I would be doing in a position like this would vary from job to job, but I do have the feeling that the work environment would be more disciplined than the environments that I have worked in previously.

How much do I want to work in this career?

In the short to medium term, I would like to work in this area. However, I would want to consider alternative career paths for the long term.

How easily can I change to this career?

I’m nearly there already – all that I have to do is to continue to familiarise myself with these technologies, either through work or through projects that I work on myself.

What is the reward for working in this career?

I believe that I would be well-paid in a job in this career, and there would be no shortage of work – in addition, I would be able to associate with a wider range of people than I do at the moment, because of the fact that I would be likely to work in larger teams.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

Once my foot is in the door at a large company, I feel that I would have a good opportunity to be promoted or to move to a different path within that company. However, I would need to take into account the possibility of becoming trapped in an undesirable career, if I do not continue to educate myself.

Software Development (government)

From the government departments that I have been to interviews for, they (somewhat surprisingly) tend to work with more cutting-edge technology (at least as far as software goes) than business software development houses.

Otherwise, I see a career in government software development as being much the same as one in business software development; there are a few differences, though, and I’ll mention them here.

How much do I want to work in this career?

As with business software development, I would want to work here for the short to medium term, but in the long term would want to consider other opportunities.

How easily can I change to this career?

Once again, I am nearly there already – a government role would probably involve working more with raw data than with applications (at least from the roles that I have seen), so I would have to familiarise myself with data processing.

What is the reward for working in this career?

I would be well-paid (maybe not as much as working with business software), and be able to work with more recent tools, and with a different range of people than with business software – I get the feeling that positions of this type would tend towards a more collaborative environment, and tend towards open-source than proprietary technologies.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

I can’t really say at this stage – this field of software development may not give me as many contacts as I would make in business software development, as I get the feeling that much of the work would be solitary, or performed in small teams.

However, by the time that I am ready to leave this career, it is likely that the systems I will be working with will have found their way into the business software development world; I will then have the opportunity to move into that path from here.

Software Development (mobile applications)

This area of software development is certain to grow in the future – as more powerful handheld computers and phones are developed, and become more accessible, demand for mobile applications would develop.

How much do I want to work in this career?

It is something that I would enjoy working with quite a lot – I did enjoy the work that I did on the development of a mobile site at my previous company.

How easily can I change to this career?

I have some experience in this area, which will give me a foot in the door – the fact that it was a development on top of an existing product could work against me somewhat, as opposed to it being a completely new product.

What is the reward for working in this career?

I would be well-paid (as with most careers in the IT industry), and also work with cutting-edge hardware in a growth industry. For some reason, I also feel as if I’d have the potential to travel in this career – possibly because mobile devices are inherently more portable than most technologies.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

I see a career in mobile device development as a possible step into the software engineering field, or as an exciting career path in itself.

Next time…

I’ll try to detail some career paths outside of software development – however, for now I will continue to look mainly at the IT industry.

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