Diving into a 'lone wolf' project which propelled me into bad practices, a tonne of stress, and a narrow specialism.
Around 5 - 6 years ago I was the only developer within a finance team - I just did ad hoc developments around the finance system, few integrations - basically it was a stop gap job as I was going to be moving countries in 6 months time, it was pretty chilled and a good location.
When the time came to leave and move - I was encouraged to stay, to embark on a big project to build a completely custom Purchasing system. Big pay uplift, complete freedom to design and develop, it sounded great. It was not great.
No colleagues, no support, no proper processes... essentially I was a one-man Product owner, Developer, Lead Developer, QA... the project lasted almost 2 years. I worked 90 hour weeks and developed stress induced alopecia. It was never going to succeed but I didn't see that at the time. The system did go live. But by that time I was super specialised being tied in to the Finance/ERP package that the system was built on. I tried applying for general dev jobs but I was too out of touch.
I did get out - I was able to join a consultancy that specialised in the Finance/ERP package, and joined a project working within a large development department that was implementing that package into their event driven architecture. They offered me a full time role as a developer and in exchange for my specialised knowledge on the package, I was able to enjoy a huge learning curve, getting back into 'normal' development practices - CI/CD, code reviews, colleagues, varying languages and frameworks. NB: I took a significant pay-cut for this and do not regret it one bit, although I appreciate not everyone has the luxury to do that - I don't yet have a family.
I've been there 2 years now, pay already increased to where I was when I took the cut, and am at the point where I could apply for general dev jobs again. (And finally make that country move!)
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Diving into a 'lone wolf' project which propelled me into bad practices, a tonne of stress, and a narrow specialism.
Around 5 - 6 years ago I was the only developer within a finance team - I just did ad hoc developments around the finance system, few integrations - basically it was a stop gap job as I was going to be moving countries in 6 months time, it was pretty chilled and a good location.
When the time came to leave and move - I was encouraged to stay, to embark on a big project to build a completely custom Purchasing system. Big pay uplift, complete freedom to design and develop, it sounded great. It was not great.
No colleagues, no support, no proper processes... essentially I was a one-man Product owner, Developer, Lead Developer, QA... the project lasted almost 2 years. I worked 90 hour weeks and developed stress induced alopecia. It was never going to succeed but I didn't see that at the time. The system did go live. But by that time I was super specialised being tied in to the Finance/ERP package that the system was built on. I tried applying for general dev jobs but I was too out of touch.
I did get out - I was able to join a consultancy that specialised in the Finance/ERP package, and joined a project working within a large development department that was implementing that package into their event driven architecture. They offered me a full time role as a developer and in exchange for my specialised knowledge on the package, I was able to enjoy a huge learning curve, getting back into 'normal' development practices - CI/CD, code reviews, colleagues, varying languages and frameworks. NB: I took a significant pay-cut for this and do not regret it one bit, although I appreciate not everyone has the luxury to do that - I don't yet have a family.
I've been there 2 years now, pay already increased to where I was when I took the cut, and am at the point where I could apply for general dev jobs again. (And finally make that country move!)