Gustible - under the rubric of [$_SELF]

I am trying something new…Sitting on the front verandah, and blogging…it’s cold, but the laptop is keeping me warm. Sad, I guess. Thanks to Cheese for the picture of me below…the CSS alignment does not seem to be working out, but anyway and whatever – we soldier on. To the topic then – next steps.

I work in information technology, have done so for many years -everything in this post is from a perspective in the software development industry. For most of my time in software, I have been on the side of the divide where the techies live – programmers, hackers, coders – all the bits and bytes people. “Divide”, you ask ? Yes, divide indeed. The enemy is on the other side – the enemy is always “management”, or “sales”. These are the people who know little about technology, but who talk a lot, and are enamoured of ludicrous timelines. On one side the creative craftsmen (and craftsgirls, too). The ones who harness the twinkling little on-off switches, the ones who make the interpipes play beautiful music. On the other side..on the other side we find corporategreymoneytimelineresource shouldhavebeenfinished timeismoney people.

I do sound prejudiced, don’t I ? Yet – believe it or not – I am finding myself, more and more, crossing to the grey side. And it is not a sudden, or new, thing. For the past 4 years, at least, I have noticed that in my day-to-day work I do less and less coding, and am consistently focusing more on “soft” skills. It is time to think deeply about this, for several reasons. Here’s the reasons:

• Technical people, ie coders, find employment much more easily than those with soft skills
• I am effectively changing what I do – is this what I want to do, for the rest of my working life ?
• One certainly loses a certain cachet in the development community, once one has changed sides
• And really, one joins a completely new and different social and professional group

So…in that list there are upsides, and there are downsides. The immediate thing that jumps to mind is that this move to softer skills is a natural progression as one grows older. However – I do not quite buy that. I know many people who consciously choose to stay in technology – meaning coding – rather than move into the soft, or “management” side of things. Equally – I hear plenty of people wistfully saying – “I would love to be a programmer again”. I do not have a lot of time nor sympathy for this latter category of people – really, the decision is yours, and you WILL be able to find work as a programmer if that is what you want. But back to me – this is a personal blog, after all.

I have realised that I do not want to be a full-time programmer anymore. I am perfectly happy to be moving into the side of softer skills – but I do find that my background in technology gives me an advantage over those who have never been deeply involved in the creative side of software development. Why do I not want to do full-time programming anymore ? Because I have come to realise that I find the bigger picture much more interesting than the details – and again, this is a completely personal preference, not a judgement call.

More and more I am drawn to studying the intersection between technology and society – this can express itself in many ways of course. As an architect, one inevitably touches tech-business-people. From a knowledge management viewpoint, one touches tech-business-organisation. When I lecture, I touch tech-education-people.

So where does one go from here ? Do I choose the safe route and stay with pure technology – job security, comfort zone, bored ? Do I move somewhere new – not sure what exactly it would be, nor how it would turn out ?

To me it seems obvious – go for what is interesting. I want to stay in touch with technology, always – at heart I am a technologist. I will code at home, as a hobby – I do anyway. I recognise that my interests change, and also that such a change is not tied to age, to career, or to anything other than life and learning and personal development. Right now that intersection: technology and society, is where my head is at. Options include: architect with an expanded responsibility into knowledge management/KM  (ideal), focus on KM (also good), unknown option … (probably good, most exciting!)

Time to explore then