OT: Perl Programmer Career Path

While I have developed software in a variety of languages, I still mostly consider myself a Perl programmer. I've held a number of developer positions in the past 14 years, and my current title is 'Senior Design Engineer III'. As I begin to age, I find that my seat-of-the-pants approach to life may not have been very well-thought-out, and I wonder if some career planning might be beneficial, even at this late date. I have observed several career progression alternatives available to developers; I would welcome comments on the relative merits of these paths (or help in identifying others that I may have missed, since my experience is almost entirely within the context of large organizations).

The Principal Engineer: If some knowledge is good, then expert knowledge must be better. I've seen a few of my mentors achieve this lofty position; in many organizations this is as high as you can go (in terms of prestige and salary) without being a manager. These people are usually given the really hard problems and are generally expert level in at least two languages. They spend almost all of their time developing and mentoring junior developers. Not a bad gig, if you can get it, but I'm not sure how well it pays. These guys are almost invariably introverts and are kept in back rooms for fear of a competitor luring them away.

The Software Architect: This person is usually given oversight and responsibility for the larger, sweeping architectural decisions that are made for a department or working group. While they still get to code some, they spend a lot of time in meetings, ordering hardware, and writing design documents.

The Development Manager: Often a senior developer with good people skills (now there's a rare breed!), this person is usually placed in charge of a small group (3-9) of developers and is responsible for making sure that the other developers actually contribute to the goals of the larger organization. Such positions rarely involve much day-to-day coding, whatever promises are made. This poor guy gets paid a little better than his direct-reports, but he goes to meetings at least half of the day. Some developers become managers of this kind because they are so sick of seeing this job done badly, and they need the money for their kids orthodontia.

The Senior Staff Developer: Frequently a former Developer Manager, this person works at a high level (sometimes reporting directly to a VP) but usually manages less than 3 people (often because they discovered they didn't enjoy it). Frequently responsible for managing Vendor or third-party software, this job involves minimal coding, but can lead to a Director or VP promotion. I've only seen one or two people actually succeed in this role.

The Senior Developer: Some people have the ability to be satisfied when they have risen to a certain level. While this role lacks the prestige of a 'Principal' developer, many programmers are very happy to continue coding without taking on additional responsibility, and they make do with small annual salaray increases. Such positions probably offer the highest proportion of actual development time, and avoid a lot of grief in terms of managing or even mentoring others.

The Project Manager: Often a developer who is organized and can communicate effectively, this person is responsible for herding all the cats involved in a major development effort. Lacking much (or sometimes any) actual coding responsibility, the job requires technical credibility and acumen as well as considerable people skills. The kind of person who takes this job is someone who can enjoy the thrill of organizational accomplishment without actually serving as an individual contributor.

The Entrepreneur: I've seen several developers launch out on their own (usually in company with someone who either has money or knows how to get it) and serve as CIO and office-boy for a startup firm. Most of those folks are back working for a more established company within a few years, but I keep hoping that someone's ship will come in.

Personally, I don't have much of a taste for the Project Manager or Development Manager options. I hate meetings and I am not sufficiently complex to vicariously enjoy the accomplishments of others whom I have enabled. I tried (and failed) on the Entrepreneur track. I guess I'm shooting for the Principal Developer role since no VPs have asked me to become their hired gun, and the Software Architect role just doesn't seem very cool to me.

Are there some I have missed? What kind of career path have other monks taken, and with what degrees of success?

Update: With a nod to Limiting my career path, I guess I am looking for a path that will still allow me to be a programmer, even if only in stealth mode. And although I've developed in Java, VB, COBOL, SQLWindows/Centura and dabbled in C, C++ and Assembler ... I still prefer Perl.

No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde

Comment on OT: Perl Programmer Career Path

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Re: OT: Perl Programmer Career Path by Tanktalus (Canon) on Jun 20, 2006 at 16:49 UTC
I've been with my current employer for over 9 years now, and can tell you that, while we use many similar terms, their definitions vary wildly from what you've posted. Which should be of little surprise to most people (it was for me - a little surprising, but not much). My recommendation really is only to talk to your manager about what you like doing and what you don't like doing and then work out with him/her the best way for you to maximise what you like and minimise what you don't, as that way everyone gets to maximise happiness (presumably, you'll be more productive doing things you like). I've gotten to the point in my career where coding opportunities have nearly dried up. Which is unfortunate, as that's the part of the job I liked the most. However, I've found that I'm pretty good at a few of the other activities that pay much better, and enjoy those activities as well, though not quite as much as coding. Going into management, especially at this company, looks like an extreme negative for my happiness, though, so I've been avoiding that. Working from home gives me the advantage there: they're not likely to let me be a manager from this distance anyway. ;-) Have a frank discussion with your manager about what you like, what you're good at, and what your employer needs. You may be able to find a solution right there that everyone can be excited about.	[reply]
Re^2: OT: Perl Programmer Career Path by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jun 21, 2006 at 15:59 UTC
Good advice, but a word of warning as well: In my experience, bosses seem to have difficulty wrapping their heads around sets of duties which don't quite fit into one of the job title pigeonholes that they're familiar with. Depending on who you work for, just getting them to understand what you want to do could be a major undertaking.	[reply]
Re: OT: Perl Programmer Career Path by samizdat (Vicar) on Jun 20, 2006 at 18:50 UTC
The companies where I've been happiest have been the ones where the programming staff has fewer members than your title list. I've been best paid where I was "it" in my arena. You need to find a company that needs your skillset specifically, but once you do, you'll find that they'll pay well to have a screamin' daemon on board. Being an entrepreneur is difficult, but you need to realize that part of the E game is learning how not to fail. It's a skill like any other, but it's definitely different than Perl programming. ;-) I've had five entrepreneurial projects in two separate startups, and two of those (in the Internet arena) are still going and producing nickels. I have, however, taken a day job so as not to kill my golden egg-layers while they grow up. :D Don Wilde "There's more than one level to any answer."	[reply]
Re: OT: Perl Programmer Career Path by metaperl (Curate) on Jun 20, 2006 at 17:52 UTC
I spent 6-7 years doing Perl professionally 100% of the time. At my current job, Perl is 1-20% of what I do. The rest of my time is spent training to be an MS SQL Server DBA. I am happy for the switch. I always believed that more and more of what I and others were doing in Perl was due to not having a powerful database available. Admittedly Perl and Oracle is more of a bread-and-butter fit in terms of jobs, but I am gaining more and more respect for the Windows technologies and thought that taking a job with paid training to learn SQL Server was a great way to get my feet wet with the "other way" of doing things.	[reply]
Re: OT: Perl Programmer Career Path by ady (Deacon) on Jun 22, 2006 at 05:53 UTC
Hi ptum I changed job 2 yrs ago from R&D "specialist" to a formal title of "business developer". I wanted more dirt (and occational tree splinters) under the fingernails, less analysis and reporting, more smell of program rubber hitting the road. The team i joined wanted a "software architect" up front to structure and document their interim solunion (which of course had been put into production), so I did that, and followed up with architecture groupwork for the next generation of our product. We then collectively decided on an iterative development practice, which meant that I and the lead developer did the overall tech. design of the application, including fitting it sensibly into an existing app. framework. In parallel with that, i started some, partly "under the radar activities", including compiling statistics for our running solution (Perl including Win32::IE::Mechanize & GD::Graph) and setting up a project machine for automated documentation, build, test and deploy (CruiseControl, NAnt, NUnit, NDoc &c family of tools). That would be in a role as "tool smith" and "test coordidator/developer". I sketch this story to underline, that in my current job i've worked maybe 10% in the role of my formal job title, and for the remaining 90% i've drifted into the niches needed by the project and seen by me as demanding and, - fun! I leave the conclusion to you. Best regards, Allan update... and hey! I managed to contribute mabe 25% solid C# programming too along the road, which actually was my original main motive to switch job, but as stated I found other goals along the road. "Navigare necesse est ..."	[reply]