Tuesday, February 7

IT's time for a Change

Hopefully this will be my final year working in the IT industry.

It is not lightly that I consider turning my back on a role and an industry that has done right be me for a decade.  I am not overlooking the fact the this sector of the job market has provided me with a home, a car, and the money to afford too many hangovers to count.  It's just time for a change.

It might be easy to dismiss my desire to get out of IT as coming about as a direct result of the fact that I am stuck in yet another bug-fixing phase, with issues stretching out in front of me as far as the eye can see.  Anyone who's been there can probably sympathise with what a soul-destroying, long winded process that can be, the true shitty end of the waterfall process. 

(Despite what anyone else might say to the contrary here, we are still falling down the waterfall with our current software development..  Have you ever seen the end of the waterfall?  It's chaotic.  A churning, turbulent chaos as the falling water hits the bottom, an image that quite aptly fits the headless-chicken approach to testing and issue fixing most software projects go through in the final weeks and months)

But I can honestly say that even the thought of some new spangly innovative project employing fantastic technology X and CV-enhancing language Y fails to inspire either. 

It might be easy to point at the fact that, for the third year running (possibly fifth actually, if memory serves), the powers-that-be are looking to define, or is that redefine(?), our software development process again.  The days when I used to be quite enthused about this sort of discussion have long since passed, as each process presented seems to have little with improving the quality of the actual software being developed, but is more concerned with having a detailed audit employed only to cover one's arse when the inevitable blame game begins in the post-development review (after the software failed to impress due to lack of quality processes being in place - d'uh!).

Another easy thing to blame might be the "glass ceiling" effect..
It would appear that lead developers (well, those that actually have a technical role and are not glorified Microsoft Word/Excel users who spend too much time in meetings) are never promoted from within the company. 

"Architects" (i.e. those annoying wankers who use the word "architect" as a verb when it is quite clearly a noun) invent themselves into the role when they are filthy money-grabbing contractors.  They then bombard dim-witted Software Companies with their CV and so fooled and impressed are Software Development managers by the title "Software Architect" that they will throw an seemingly bottom-less pit full of money at these jumped up pompous charlatans.   Also, from the moment they employ them, Managers will consider everything these Architects say as Gospel and anything that long-suffering developers who actually know the software as utter bollocks.  So unless you want to spend your entire life in pointless meeting (quite often about process, see above) or writing documents that will never be read in Microsoft Word, your career advancement is about zero.

But the truth of it is it's all of the above and a whole lot more that's making me think that I want a change in direction in my career.  If all goes to plan by mid-2007 a new career should be supplying me with my disposable income and looking after me and mine..  ..and it cannot come soon enough.

1 Comments:

Blogger Pedders said...

I know what you mean about some of the points you've raised. They are nicley explained by the following terms

BLAMESTORMING
Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

Seagull architect.
An architect who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

1:16 pm  

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