Part of the reason that I worked on my own projects was to keep my skill set current, as an effort to make myself more employable. Now that the employment situation has been resolved, I find that I don’t have much need to work on any of these projects.

Changing the focus of my project work

I have come to the conclusion that personal project work, for its own sake, isn’t something that I’m interested in at the moment. This doesn’t mean that I’m no longer going to work on my own projects – it means that currently, I’m not interested in working on projects where learning is the only goal. Instead, I want my next project to be one with clearly defined deliverables – from there, the learning that I seek to gain from my own projects will come naturally. For example, looking at this article – http://www.theage.com.au/news/smart-phone/iphone-a-goldmine-for-geeks/2008/10/14/1223750013791.html – the creators of these projects had an idea for a product, and then delivered that product. Also, they’re getting rich

After all, not long after I finished university I came to the conclusion that the best way to learn was to do…

In conclusion – I’m no longer motivated to do project work, and the solution is to switch the focus of my project work from learning to creating.

The longer version: I have not felt the need to write much lately, as I’ve been quite happy – I have been offered and have accepted an excellent job, which was my short-term goal.

Now what?

Over the next few months, I will continue to periodically evaluate my progress in my work life against the goals that I’ve set myself here. In particular, I’ll consider whether I’m continuing on the right career path, and if not then figure out what else I need to do to get myself back on track.

This doesn’t mean I’ll never post here again – there’s other parts of my life that could do with a makeover, the most obvious being my social life…

I believe that writing can be separated into two levels – the points that are being made, and the words that are being used to express that point. I think that I struggle more with making a point, or deciding on the point to make, than with deciding on the language to use.

One step that I could take to improve my writing would be to think about the goal that I’m trying to accomplish with what I’m writing, and only then should I express that point, as clearly as possible.

A few days ago, I was at home with nothing to do, feeling down because of that. Clearly, nothing would change if I continued to just sit around – but that’s what I did, not knowing what else to do. Later on that day, I realised an important lesson – I need to be more proactive. Whether it be contacting people or searching for prospective employers, I have to make the first move.

I feel that teaching myself to become more willing to make decisions and take action is one of the most important things for me to do. If something I’m doing isn’t working out, then it needs to be changed!

What has changed?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found I’ve had less time and desire to write here. I have been working at least two days a week, and I have other interests that take up time outside of work as well. Also, I’ve settled into a routine, and don’t have as much willingness to consider my plans for the future.

What’s still the same?

I’m still looking for work – while I’ve got the two days a week with occasional contract work/temping on top of that, I am still searching for a full-time position.

How I’m progressing with my career goals

Pretty well – I have some contacts who may be able to help me gain experience in alternate career paths. This would involve devoting a couple of hours a week to performing tasks on a volunteer basis, with a view to gaining experience in areas that I wouldn’t gain experience through employment.

I still feel that I need to devote more time and energy to my own projects, especially my personal web site.

Reactions to this blog

I’ve had a couple of friends give me feedback – mostly positive, with some constructive criticism that I am a bit long-winded.

I haven’t yet told many people about it yet – I’m staying anonymous for now, and have only told close friends about it.

My opinion on this blog

My original writing on here was very long-winded – I have tried to be a lot more concise recently.

I also feel that at times I struggle to get a point across with my writing, which leads me towards expressing myself using more words. I still believe that I have made some good points – the challenge now is to be able to communicate them more clearly and concisely.

Possibly the biggest weakness in my writing has been my inability to effectively conclude a post – I can cover several points reasonably well, but always have trouble tying them all together.

In conculsion

I’ve reached a point where I am making decent progress in my work life and my writing.

In the future, I’m going to look toward improving my writing, and devoting more time and energy towards my own projects. I want to write more frequently, but more concisely, and around a single theme per post.

Balancing for current needs

My current workplace places its focus almost completely on its present and short-term needs. I tend to think more towards long-term requirements, and I initially had trouble focusing almost exclusively on short-term requirements.

I did complete the work that I needed to, but the quality of my work was average.

Balancing for the future

At a previous workplace, I was encouraged to plan for the future in my work.

I feel that I produced higher quality work when my emphasis was on how what I developed would work in the future – however, this had the negative impact of reduced productivity.

Which do I prefer to work for?

Now that I have had experience working in companies on both sides, I would say that I don’t have a preference for either, as both have their positive and negative points from my point of view as an employee.

Working for a company which focuses on the present keeps me strongly focused on deadlines and immediate goals, and helps me feel as if I am at my most productive. However, it is a draining environment to work in, and I often feel as if I don’t do my best work in this environment, which may hurt my longer term career goals.

Working for a company which focuses on long-term goals enables me to create higher quality work, due to the lack of pressure involved, which also enables me to feel happier at work. The negative is that I tend to over-analyse the work that I do, which leads to lower productivity and a lack of focus.

I’m looking for a balance between the two – somewhere where I am able to stay focused on current requirements, but have some breathing room to concentrate on what is needed in the future.

I know that the actions and choices that I make tend to be influenced heavily by the opinions not so much of my current group of friends, but from my friends from my school years. Although I do not remain in touch with many people from this time, I still feel as if they expect me to follow a certain path in life (similar to the one that I am on now, but I would have been expected to have achieved more than I have to date), and that they will see me as having failed if I choose another path. While it sounds ridiculous – especially because I’m not in regular touch with any of them anymore – it is the way that I feel.

How this relates to the present

My current job involves working with a code base of average quality. I am finding it difficult to resist the temptation to rewrite or at least make architectural changes – therefore, I’m allowing myself to be tied to the past, because the needs of the present (get this project out the door! now!) don’t allow for anything else. However, I know that if I don’t make these changes now, then they will cause problems later on.

I’ve been in this position before – in another software project, I resisted the temptation to make widespread changes, because of looming deadlines. Later on, I felt that this was the wrong choice – I would have been better off discarding much of what I had done, because the work that I was continuing to do was working against my future ability to meet the needs of the project. I don’t think it would have greatly affected my ability to meet deadlines in the short term, and would certainly have improved my ability to do so later in the project.

However, being able to discard the past with impunity is a luxury that may not exist in many other fields besides software development. After all, the cost of experimentation in software is low; there are no materials or construction costs to pay for, so discarding the past is and should be a natural concept in software development.

My point…

The past is exactly that – we should not be afraid to discard old ideas and methodologies when something that works more effectively comes along.

Next time

I talk about my feelings regarding the present. Maybe after that, I’ll talk about my thoughts for the future. You didn’t expect that, did you?

But I’m not good at anything other than computers! (And one could argue about how good I am with even that…) Seriously though, career change is something that most young people think about these days, because the days of lifelong employment with a single employer are mostly gone.

I’m not going to look at each career path here in the same way as I did over parts 1 and 2 – for the time being, I do not know enough about any of these careers to go into them in detail.

Self-Employment / Consultancy

I believe that I am going to become self-employed (at least in part) over the next week or so, because of a project that may be coming my way.

I am beginning to feel that I know enough about software development (as well as about my personal strengths and limitations) to be able to be able to create software by myself, and to hire outside people for tasks that are outside my area of knowledge.

Architecture

It is a field in which I have some interest – however I do not think that I have the artistic capablity for architecture, and I don’t know whether I would be able to sustain an interest in the field for the amount of study (and time) that it would take.

From my limited knowledge about it, I have figured that it would involve some of the same techniques that I have already applied in software development.

Accountancy

Not a chance Seriously, I’ve worked with accountants before, and have a very basic knowledge of bookkeeping; I was bored by just about every concept that they introduced me to.

Of course, many people would say the same of IT…

Trades

There is certainly good money to be made as a tradie – the issue is, would I be any good at it, and would it suit me? I’m about the last person that I could imagine as a tradie.

Hospitality

I can sort of see myself as a chef – I am not a poor cook, but I don’t think I’m good enough to make a life out of it. After all, how many Formula 1 drivers are there, as compared to the amount of people who drive a car?

Writing

Pipe dream Though I am getting better at writing, which was one reason that I chose to start a blog in the first place.

Will I ever write a book or even a short story? Who knows?

One last point

All of these paths would involve me breaking with my past to some extent – while that is kind of the point of this career introspective, I still have expectations of myself (and others have expectations of me) to be a certain type of person.

More on this in a post within the next week…

This time around, I’m going to look at a few paths that are a bit outside my current career path – however, all of them are ones that I could see myself in, eventually.

I’m going to summarise each career path here in the same manner as I did in Part 1, using the same four criteria:

• How much do I want to work in this career?
• How easily can I change to this career?
• What is the reward for working in this career?
• How easily can I change from this career to something else?

There is a strong possibility that I will be off the mark a bit with my analysis of each of these paths – reason being, I don’t have a great knowledge of them.

Which career paths do I have?

Game Design and Development

This career would involve me working with a game development house, of course. I am not well suited to visual design – therefore, any employment that I would gain within the games industry would be either in programming or gameplay design.

How much do I want to work in this career?

While I started out wanting to get into game development, I am not a big gamer anymore – the time
for me to get into game design and development has passed, more likely than not. And I really feel that more than most fields, genuine enthusiasm would be required.

How easily can I change to this career?

To get myself noticed, I would have to work on developing either my own games, or mods for existing games. The major problem is that it’s more fun to play games than it is to write them, and it’s unlikely that a game will be as fun to play when I’ve written it and the game doesn’t hold any surprises for me.

Also, judging by the amount of job ads for game developers, work would likely be harder to find in game development than in most industries.

What is the reward for working in this career?

I would be able to work with people that had a very wide range of skills, but then the same could be said of most careers.

While I like the idea of working in the industry and imagine the pay would be good once I got there,
I just don’t think that there would be enough work in the industry – the game development industry in Australia, whilst growing, is small compared to many other software fields.

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

I’m not sure how applicable the skills that I would gain would be in other fields, though software development positions would be easy to get with experience in the games development industry.

Business / Requirements Analysis

In a nutshell, business analysis would involve liasing with clients to determine the business processes that they use, the requirements that they have of a new software system, and how that new system would impact their business processes.

This career path would require more “soft” skills (i.e. people skills), as the majority of the work would involve working with clients, and determining their needs and desires. For this reason, it would be easier to move away from the IT industry from here than from software development.

How much do I want to work in this career?

I am not sure – I have the feeling that a lot of the job would involve reporting and client meetings. This is something that I would have to discuss with business mentors of mine.

How easily can I change to this career?

Once again, I’m not sure – while I do have some experience with the gathering of requirements and the analysis of the needs of a business, but most likely the employers of business analysts are looking at business education and experience as much as they are at IT experience.

I feel that it would take at least two years of self-education to get into a position from which I could move into this area.

What is the reward for working in this career?

The financial rewards are excellent, as is the job security (judging by the job listings). In addition, I would be working with a very wide range of clients, which opens networking opportunities.

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

There is excellent potential for moving outside of IT, because the skills that are used in business analysis are transferable. With good client facing skills, a business analyst could easily move to different industry sectors.

Potential within the IT industry may be limited, however.

Project Management

This path would involve working with software development teams to ensure that they know what tasks they need to perform within their project, to ensure that projects stay on track time and cost wise, and to know which parts of the project are the most important in the event that the project is running over schedule.

How much do I want to work in this career?

I’m ambivalent – whilst I am sure I would be able to adapt, project management seems to be a very non-creative field. I may miss the software development tasks that I am used to.

How easily can I change to this career?

I have some contacts through which I would be able to perform project management work as a volunteer. After a year or two of devoting time to it, I would be in a good position to begin interviewing for project management roles.

What is the reward for working in this career?

As with business analysis, there is good money available, and little shortage of work.

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

Out of all the careers that I have mentioned, project management is probably the easiest to move from – management skills are required in all industries.

Next time…

Watch as I start considering careers completely outside of IT! I’ve always talked about the possibility that I won’t always be working in IT, but now I’m going to examine some careers that are totally unrelated.

(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.