"Past it"? On (Maybe) Losing a Step

I'm a 40 year old working software engineer.

I'm not a program manager, project manager, team lead, architect, business analyst, sytems analyst, or whatever other term means "Doesn't code anymore."

I make my living by telling machines what to do so the company I work for can make money (alot of it) and pay me money (a little of it, but an obscene amount still).

As I sit here, I'm 2 days away from ending a three year stint with one team, and picking up with another within the same company.  The reasons aren't complicated, but it's impolitic to go into them.  Suffice it to say, I've been looking around for about 6 months internally and it took about a month to get through the transition.  Monday is 'Go' day.

So I ponder: How many more of these do I have in me?

If I think really hard--then give up and look at my CV--I have had these jobs professionally:
  1. IT support (scripting, custom apps) for a group of 200 mechanical engineers
  2. Programming a Java-based client/server network management application.
  3. Developing the *next* version of that application...which was still client/server and still in Java.  But it cost alot more and did somewhat more.
  4. Writing some print driver code, badly.  Very, very badly.  Let me tell you about Overlapped I/O in Windows sometime.
  5. Developing on-printer Adobe Flash apps, and an App Store that went with it.   Nobody used them.
  6. Developing an SDK so other people could write Adobe flash apps that nobody used on a printer nobody bought.
  7. Developing a Java library so thick applications could talk to all of our whiz-bang proprietary interfaces over the network.
  8. Intermission: Harold is miserable as an architect.
  9. Wrote an OAuth 2.0 Identity Provider with a small team to drive a new Microservice Architecture.  I *kinda* think this worked, but I left before I'm sure.  I did learn to hate Zookeeper...
  10. I think I committed like 1 thing into the system that prints every label in a Safeway, Wegmans, Randall's Grocery store.  It also runs the eInk screens at Kohl's and does the pricing changes.  Won't claim that one.  At this point, I'd been programming for seventeen years
  11. Started my job in Amazon Business running their Account Management web interface.  Simply a great team.
So, like 11 discrete "Jobs" in 20 years, average tenure on one program was ~2 years. Longest was #2 at almost 5 years.

I'm good at learning new things, but I wonder: How much longer can that continue?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Southeast Christian Church Easter Pageant

Easter Pageant?! What is this, amateur hour? Who cares about some piddly church passion play? What's next, "Best Little Christmas Pageant Ever"? How's this for Piddly: Two professional composers, a 9000 seat auditorium, 75,000 tickets over a month-long run, a 300 person chorous, two IMAX-size video screens. Traditionally, Southeast's Easter Pageant has been the biggest theatrical production in Louisville. They took a year off to retool and rework it, comissioning a rework from the ground up. Whereas the previous iteration had been a "cast of thousands" broadway-style production, they wanted something...different. Hoo-boy, it was different. Let's talk about "theatre" that is 1/2 movie, 1/2 live action. Apparently, they shot it at a quarry during last year's drought, and it looks pretty good. Still, I didn't like it...distracting and interrupts the flow. Likes It's not the same program they've put on for
Read more

Driving for the Cure...? (Or, how I got blacklisted...)

Image
Let me summarize: I got asked to leave and not come back. I was asked to LEAVE A CHARITY EVENT and not return. This is not a proud story, but I'm learning to deal with it. Here goes: I got to Don Jacobs BMW around 1:15 and signed my waiver with my information (including my cell phone #). They had all sorts of BMW's to drive, from Z4 roadsters to 3-, 5-, 6-, and 7-series cars, all with different engines and Rear- and All-wheel-drive configurations. I was in heaven. The place was busy, but I was interested in driving only one car for my first drive, a BMW 335i coupe (E92 in BMW parlance). This was THE car, BMW's first turbo passenger car in 20+ years, twin-turbocharged and tractable. So, I put my name in and waited patiently, watching the crew of permatan 20-somethings shuffling people in and out of the 18 cars, wagons, and SUVs they brought. This was a much bigger event than the last one I attended on a lark back in 2001. After about an hour, Gal in the White Cap ca
Read more

No, I don't have Connective Tissue Disorder

subtitle: OWWWWWWWWW! So, Whitney and I were hanging out last night, practicing some of her Bradly exercises, specifically Tailor Sitting . As we sat there, we were discussing flexibility and she said I should lean forward from my 90-degree position as far as I could. I leaned at about a 45 degree angle and finally felt a little stretch in my behind, so I kept going. Turns out, I could bend all the way forward, still in the seated position and touch my nose to the carpet. She was suitably impressed... ...Then I got up this morning, and every piece of connective tissue from my lower back to my knees hurt. =-) Seems I'm not that flexible, after all.
Read more