I have a theory that 3yrs is the maximum amount of time a programmer can work in a given problem space before things get routine. It doesn't have much to do with your team or the company ... it's the challenge. The rest is an "exercise left for the reader."
Certainly there are exceptions. People can last longer but, to me, it seems generally they become ghosts in the machine. All the good programmers will tell you the same thing: "program on the side", "learn a new language", "experiment with an API", "moonlight".
But are your extra-curricular activities aligned with those who write you a check? A recent trend is for programmers to be let go for "not being engaged" ... that's scary.
Or, are you one of the really lucky ones? Is your work so in-depth and challenging that you constantly have to research new techniques to solve them ... and you are given the time to do so?
I think the quote on "Beards and Keyboards" regarding Change says it best:
So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s just flat wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out. And that’s the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.
— The first few pages of the book “Switch, how to change things when change is hard” are priceless. Get it! By Chip Heath & Dan Heath
4 comments:
Sounds like I may be overdue, I've been here six years now. :)
I think part of the problem may be that in an established development team, the tool set and technology tends to stabilize over time and new or even different technology is avoided in favor of 'what works' which for a developer is a little boring.
If you are on a team that has lots of different types of projects to work on, this may change somewhat, but in an industry where new tools come out weekly or even daily, the same old team with the same old hammer may not be enough for some.
You might try a small consulting firm.
Small because there shouldn't be enough people to overly specialize.
Consulting because you naturally move from project to project, giving different problem spaces as you move on.
Of course, the downside is they rarely give you enough time to fully explore a tool.
@Shawn ... that's true. The "new shiny" of six years ago is perhaps the "wtf?!" of today.
Do you find you're still being challenged or becoming complacent?
@Sandy I would still say that there are challenges where I am given that the problem domain is vast for voting software. But you're right about the wtf factor...
Post a Comment