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Why I am getting out of software development after 10+ years of coding

 2 years ago
source link: https://jamesrainbows.medium.com/why-i-am-getting-out-of-software-development-after-10-years-of-coding-839d5196de1c
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Why I am getting out of software development after 10+ years of coding

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Software Developer Cowboy staring into the vast coding galaxy. Unsplash
Isaac Ibbott

Well that’s it. I’m getting out of modern software development. Let me say that again, I don’t want to be a software developer anymore! You might want to get out too, and there are good reasons to do so. Because times have changed and so has software…

But why do you want to get out of development?

It comes down to a simple observation. Everything is chopped up into tiny parts making us into experts of radar wheels instead of a whole car. Think the evolution of splitting up frontend and backend development, loading a dependency for every problem at hand, microservices and the explosion of frontend frameworks.

In conclusion software development has become more granular. And arguably, more boring as well. But I hear you, of course, I understand, efficiency and specialization. Then again we can argue about this efficiency argument. Because the overhead granularization brings for small teams building a product might not even be worth the trade-off having to maintain all these dependencies and skillsets.

We all seem to have become lemmings running for the latest fads some tech giants cooked up in their industrial kitchens.

Next to that we are creating extra barriers in communication, and more need for ‘specifications’ and ‘contracts’ even within development teams. Hello bureaucracy? However I feel that nobody is making these considerations thoughtfully. Lots are going with ‘industry standards’ when setting up a development team topology and choosing a tech stack. We all seem to have become lemmings running for the latest fads some tech giants cooked up in their industrial kitchens.

Alienation of labour in modern software development

This process reminds me a lot of Karl Marx’s observation on the alianation of labour. There is no more direct contact with the end product (1) and (2) the connection with end users of the product are mostly left over to non devs:

ALIENATION (Marx) : the process whereby the worker is made to feel foreign to the products of his/her own labor. (A)

‘Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings.Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person.

1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt.

2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work …

So how to find another career path as a coder?

You start by writing down all the qualities you have not directly related to coding. For me these are:

  • Passion for languages
  • Writing and speaking
  • Solving technical problems
  • Web content building and optimization …
  • Cooking
  • Guiding

Then you distill out the jobs that match with these qualities. For instance, I could be fulfilling any of these roles:

  • Customer Support / Customer Experience
  • Online marketing consultant
  • Teacher or trainer
  • Kitchen helper
  • Tourist guide
  • Content writer

Of course some may mean a trade off in salary :-) But at this stage we are just scanning possibilities to keep our mind in a creative state. We can critically narrow down on specifics later.


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