Wingchild wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
This is exactly the thing I have been afraid of but I didn't know there was actually a name for it.
Wingchild wrote:
Alternate: Instead of letting them press you into a management mold, perhaps you could shift from lead developer to "applications architect" or something suitably nifty. Instead of coding the majority of an app, spend half your time working with a customer to figure out what it is they want, and the other half coding key features/important sections of the overall application. Pick and choose, take the juicy bits for yourself and hand over the meat and potatoes work to the rest of your team.
As far as positions with my current employer, this is definitely the best route I could take.
Another thing I have to consider: the overall mission of my current employer isn't terribly exciting to me. Sure, the parts I develop are cool, but the mission of the company isn't anything that really interests me.
I've been in this general business for about 10 years. The first half was spent in a company with just myself and 1 other person. We had 4 customers and they were all local manufacturing companies of some sort. We did software for manufacturers of hunting/sporting goods, industrial rollers, boats, and graphite rods. The work was very rewarding because I could see the immediate impact I was having on the jobs of the people who worked at these places. I was really making their jobs easier and I liked it. As a bonus, I got to learn about really cool manufacturing processes and got to write software to control cool hardware/tools/etc. In the late 90s/early 2000 my partner decided to get out of the software business and become an author. I was pretty young, engaged to be married, not really a risk taker, and my wife-to-be still had 3 years of full-time college remaining. I decided to not continue the work on my own and opted for a more stable position.
That more stable position is the one I am still in today. My immediate work is interesting, but after 5 and a half years there I still honestly don't know how it is used. The company is so big that I never even know the impact of my software until there is a problem. The only customers I ever hear from are the ones making complaints. To top it off, the mission of the company is something that doesn't interest me in the least. Even when something is wrong with our software and is supposedly a "crisis situation," I can't get too worked up about it. It just doesn't seem very important to me. Pride in a job well done is the only thing that really makes anything seem like a big deal to me here.
Last year I got involved with a side-project for a local bookstore here in town. I wrote some software for them to automated their USPS and FedEx shipping from their daily amazon.com sales list. This felt like "the good old days" for me again. Doing smaller scale work that is very important/helpful to the people who need it. It really made me think seriously about starting my own business. My wife is out of college and has a stable job now that would cover the bills if it had to (it would be tight though). I am seriously considering this, but I don't really know how to find prospective clients and make the transition. I know that, at least for a while and maybe for a long time, it would be a lot more work compared to what I am doing now. But, it would be much more rewarding work.
To add to the situation, the intellectual property rights of the software I develop at this company have been sold to another company. For the next 2 years, I will continue to work for my current company and enhance the software. At the end of 2 years, the new company has the option to buy the entire division from my current company. At this point, I would become an employee of the new company which is based in Boston. It is just an option for them at this point, but it seems fairly certain. They are already starting to have talks about scheduling time for HR to meet with us. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole situation. It could be a positive change or it could be negative. I won't really know until it happens.
The next 2 years might be the perfect time to suck it up, put in the extra hours, and try to get some business going on the side as a foundation for the future.
Opportunity knocked, but he didn't call before he came. *sigh*