It’s definitely been an *interesting* two weeks. Where to begin? This all revolves around the company that I work for. Last week one little change happened. That snowballed into a couple of more drastic changes before Friday. On Monday, the snowball turned into an avalanche, and by Tuesday the avalanche had buried me.
Ultimately, here’s the end result of all the changes… In my current job, software development will be scaled back. No, I’m not losing my job, it is just that the focus has changed from coding, to implementing solutions.
I have to say, I agree with the change. Most companies do not need custom software. It’s expensive and resource draining. Internal software development is a money pit that is hard to dig out of. Prebuilt solutions added to some data transformation services can really do wonders for interoperability.
Now, what does this mean for *me*?
The long and short of it is that within a short period of time, I will not be doing much coding. I have spent almost 23 years of my life writing code, managing code, eating code, drinking code, etc… I *like* to code. The reality is that it would take more money for me as a single coder to write an application than it is to buy one off the shelf. Plus, the business gets more support by buying off the shelf products.
So, I have a choice to make. Stay with the company, start learning on an ‘enterprise’ level how to tie these disparate systems together with Middleware, and learn very specific products. Or, start shopping for a shop that wants me to write code. I don’t know which I’ll choose. On one hand, I feel it’s time to grow beyond a ‘coder’ or even ‘developer’. On the other, I would be tossing out a *lot* of experience and know-how.
Fortunately, either one has some good rewards!
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