I’ve been programming for X years … now what?

You’ve been a programmer for some number of years.

You are stuck in a rut and bored.

You still like programming but you need to do something new.

Is this you?

Career development for programmers has always been a sticky subject.  The most traditional path is into management, even if the programmer doesn’t have any management skills or interest in management.  This leads to disgruntled and bad managers which only aggravates the career development cycle for future programmers.

Some (usually larger) companies offer a senior level technical track, often titled “Technical Lead” or “Software Architect”.  The duties are different than that of a manager, but still involves leading other programmers in some manner.

There is a good reason for pushing senior programmers into management roles

When you’re a good junior programmer, your value steadily increases over the years.  You’re learning new technical skills and also more subtle nontechnical skills related to software building.  As a good senior programmer, you’ve already achieved a good value in your work, and can potentially translate that into more value by identifying time and cost saving solutions and setting an example for junior developers.

But then, your value starts to level off.  There is only so much code you can write as a senior programmer and only a certain level of quality it can attain (especially without a huge time-sink trade off).  Sure you may continue to learn and even branch out your skills, but you’re really not becoming more valuable than the other senior programmer who is just hitting his plateau.

Presumably, you don’t want your salary to level off as well.  In order for you to be worth more to the company, then you must provide greater value somehow.

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