Getting out of Development

[Gumbo Robot]

I've never wanted to return to permiedom - mostly because I just couldn't endure the sheer tedium and monotony of what I do as a contractor on a perm basis.

Don't get me wrong - when I started doing this 10 years ago I really enjoyed the work & I've had some good clients and I've been to some interesting places. I can't say I've enjoyed the past couple of years contracting though; mostly down to Agile, scrum and all the associated micromanagement and the technical work I've done has been extremely dull and unchallenging. This coupled with the situation in which it looks like roles are harder to come by & all the proposed legislation changes has got me thinking I'm going to have to at least consider a move to perm in the medium term.

Just wondering if anyone has ever moved sideways into a different kind of role - i.e. if you were purely hands on technical, maybe something that still requires the technical knowledge combined with other soft skills. I'm thinking along the lines of pre-sales consultancy, something like that. Or, perhaps, be a consultant for a product, travel to client sites (hopefully more exotic ones) to provide support.

Anyone done anything like this?

[GJABS]

No, but I am in a similar situation to you, and have been having similar thoughts (ooh-er).
Perhaps one option is to identify a small but successful and rapidly growing company whose growth is constrained by a limit on the funds they can borrow, and speed of hiring of permanent staff. And offer to invest £100K with them (assuming you have this amount of cash) for a share in the equity of the company, and on condition that they hire you on a zero-hours contract basis (rather than perm).
With so much skin in the game you are bound to feel more motivated to code better, and that helps you and the company.
But it is risky of course.

Alternatively maybe I don't know what I'm talking about

Anyway, stop worrying about your career/life situation, it's 9pm on a Friday night - time to get down the pub

[clearedforlanding]

No, but I am in a similar situation to you, and have been having similar thoughts (ooh-er).
Perhaps one option is to identify a small but successful and rapidly growing company whose growth is constrained by a limit on the funds they can borrow, and speed of hiring of permanent staff. And offer to invest £100K with them (assuming you have this amount of cash) for a share in the equity of the company, and on condition that they hire you on a zero-hours contract basis (rather than perm).
With so much skin in the game you are bound to feel more motivated to code better, and that helps you and the company.
But it is risky of course.

Alternatively maybe I don't know what I'm talking about

Anyway, stop worrying about your career/life situation, it's 9pm on a Friday night - time to get down the pub

Umm, I would offer skills for equity before cash. Let those without skills put cash in.

[GJABS]

I've never wanted to return to permiedom - mostly because I just couldn't endure the sheer tedium and monotony of what I do as a contractor on a perm basis.

As an aside, there are lots of people, permies, who ARE able to endure or enjoy the work as a permie. Is that because they are better than us as contractors, or just different?
Sometimes I feel a little ashamed of myself for getting bored of a contract after x number of months in a gig, yet see the permies around me beavering away with no apparent loss of motivation.

[BolshieBastard]

As an aside, there are lots of people, permies, who ARE able to endure or enjoy the work as a permie. Is that because they are better than us as contractors, or just different?
Sometimes I feel a little ashamed of myself for getting bored of a contract after x number of months in a gig, yet see the permies around me beavering away with no apparent loss of motivation.

Its more likely the herd instinct of being one of a crowd or not wanting to leave the cosy world of paid holidays \ sick absences, not having to travel more than 15 - 20 minutes to the workplace and the like.

Some permies just dont see it that they may have a marketable skill.

Re the OP, Ive seen people move specialism. They've generally had to start on the bottom rung again and tend not to like that because of the experience they held. Then they seem to think within a couple of weeks they're the 'go to SME' when they're not.

[fool]

As an aside, there are lots of people, permies, who ARE able to endure or enjoy the work as a permie. Is that because they are better than us as contractors, or just different?
Sometimes I feel a little ashamed of myself for getting bored of a contract after x number of months in a gig, yet see the permies around me beavering away with no apparent loss of motivation.

Actually some of them bloody well love it.

I feel the same way as the OP. Spending 30 minutes in the morning standing, listening to non-technical folk talk for a long time about something I don't care about because we're doing "stand ups" and then spending my time making tickets and going through a Jira kanban board which is a laggy piece of Tulip because some management layer needs to justify their existance, then sitting in hours long retrospectives where non-technical people complain it's hard to keep up with the technical side of the project isn't really what I signed up for.

Very little of that has to do with development but it's almost always an autistic developer pushing the issue and demanding I write user stories that start with "as a user" and end with "or your app won't work" because that's so much more helpful than a story that says "provision servers".

Ah well, I do DevOps now and when they ruin that like they ruined agile, I'll jump on the next buzzword and charge them even more for the luxury of having me ignore them.

[Cirrus]

As an aside, there are lots of people, permies, who ARE able to endure or enjoy the work as a permie. Is that because they are better than us as contractors, or just different?

Permies don't think about what they are doing. They think about the Chilli con Carne they're making tonight or taking the dog to the vet, getting some new curtain rings, playing five-a-side etc etc.

[Zero Liability]

I am looking into whether it is worth re-specialising and going into it, whilst I'm still fairly young. Is development really that bad a career choice? I figure that even if I end up not liking it, it's still better paid than the vast majority of work out there and it can also lead into roles like business or systems analysis, which benefit from a knowledge of software development.

[TykeMerc]

I am looking into whether it is worth re-specialising and going into it, whilst I'm still fairly young. Is development really that bad a career choice? I figure that even if I end up not liking it, it's still better paid than the vast majority of work out there and it can also lead into roles like business or systems analysis, which benefit from a knowledge of software development.

I'm not a developer, never have been, my technical background was infrastructure and comms, but as a PM I see a lot of development either being directly offshored (still, barking mad I know) or partially offshored. Even though it's not as cost efficient in the long run the accountants just don't see it. They do look for even cheaper dev resources though.
To my mind the architecture role is the pivotal technical function with a long term future, many architects cover the BA bit (which is a role that's disappearing slowly due to there being very few that are actually good BA's, I've worked with a couple that put the rest in context as just documenters) and support the PM work extensively.
Solution design, technical integration and knowledge together with a willingness to attend meetings to help convince the customer that their "bright idea" is actually a bit thick, but here's a workable option.
That's my 5p's worth anyway

[Gumbo Robot]

Its more likely the herd instinct of being one of a crowd or not wanting to leave the cosy world of paid holidays \ sick absences, not having to travel more than 15 - 20 minutes to the workplace and the like.

Some permies just dont see it that they may have a marketable skill.

Re the OP, Ive seen people move specialism. They've generally had to start on the bottom rung again and tend not to like that because of the experience they held. Then they seem to think within a couple of weeks they're the 'go to SME' when they're not.

I've done pre-sales before. You have to have the technical skills, obviously, but ability to think on your feet - e.g. when the client says the product doesn't do xyz you knock up an excel solution & tell him it will be a feature in the next release.

As an aside, it used to be great fun going round the trading floors of Amsterdam and Paris. Used to do much of the work with a very sore head.

Actually some of them bloody well love it.

I feel the same way as the OP. Spending 30 minutes in the morning standing, listening to non-technical folk talk for a long time about something I don't care about because we're doing "stand ups" and then spending my time making tickets and going through a Jira kanban board which is a laggy piece of Tulip because some management layer needs to justify their existance, then sitting in hours long retrospectives where non-technical people complain it's hard to keep up with the technical side of the project isn't really what I signed up for.

Very little of that has to do with development but it's almost always an autistic developer pushing the issue and demanding I write user stories that start with "as a user" and end with "or your app won't work" because that's so much more helpful than a story that says "provision servers".

Ah well, I do DevOps now and when they ruin that like they ruined agile, I'll jump on the next buzzword and charge them even more for the luxury of having me ignore them.

Yes, all of that. And it's worse when you have a client who thinks that the smaller your contribution to standups, retrospectives etc the smaller your commitment to " the team".