I really like the tweet that you cited from Amy and your point around it. I think the software development industry inadvertently encourages tunnel vision around the act of writing code itself, leading you to believe that being "good enough" requires single-minded dedication to the "craft" of coding.
But, in reality, that creates diminishing returns, especially once you've been at it a while and learned different languages and paradigms. At that point, I think it's time to branch out into ways to put those automation skills to use.
I personally had a similar experience to yours. I logged a lot of years as a software engineer, and then a few in management. But I liked to train people, to write, and create content. So I pursued those things as well, and it led me opportunistically to training gigs, management consulting, paid writing, and eventually even into content marketing. My participation in all of those things has oriented around software, but the variety has kept me from getting bored, a fate I probably wouldn't have avoided with a second solid decade of nothing but banging out code.
Brian Rinaldi is a Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly with over 20 years experience as a developer for the web. Brian is active in the community running CFE.dev and Orlando Devs.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It is tough in an industry where we often look up to people that, at least based on their public profiles, seem to work long hours and then go home and spend their nights and weekends coding side-projects. However, I do feel that this culture is slowly starting to shift.
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I really like the tweet that you cited from Amy and your point around it. I think the software development industry inadvertently encourages tunnel vision around the act of writing code itself, leading you to believe that being "good enough" requires single-minded dedication to the "craft" of coding.
But, in reality, that creates diminishing returns, especially once you've been at it a while and learned different languages and paradigms. At that point, I think it's time to branch out into ways to put those automation skills to use.
I personally had a similar experience to yours. I logged a lot of years as a software engineer, and then a few in management. But I liked to train people, to write, and create content. So I pursued those things as well, and it led me opportunistically to training gigs, management consulting, paid writing, and eventually even into content marketing. My participation in all of those things has oriented around software, but the variety has kept me from getting bored, a fate I probably wouldn't have avoided with a second solid decade of nothing but banging out code.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It is tough in an industry where we often look up to people that, at least based on their public profiles, seem to work long hours and then go home and spend their nights and weekends coding side-projects. However, I do feel that this culture is slowly starting to shift.