A few weeks ago, a friend at work asked me what I want to be when I grow up (yes, we're both adults). I've been in the industry for 4 years and have been reasonably successful. But this time that question really got me thinking... What do I want to be 5, 10, 20 years down the road? What's my path to get there? What do I need to do now to put me on that path?
As a software engineer, it's relatively easy to get by without much of a plan or an end game. There are more jobs than we can possibly fill and more exciting projects than you can shake a stick at. If something's not working out, you can find a new job pretty easily. But isn't a plan valuable even with the plethora of opportunities before us?
As I've been reflecting on this, I've grown curious what other software engineers' career plans are. So, what's your career plan? What are your short and long term goals? Why do you want to do what you want to do? What advice do you have for others as they look ahead and wrestle with their dreams?
Latest comments (39)
This is one of my favorite questions I always enjoy asking myself and whoever related to tech I happen to speak with.
If I was asked before I quit my last job in February of this year I would be absolutely unsure. I had an intention to quit for about 2 years after I’d finally paid off all my debts and started saving money instead of wasting it. The reason to quit was that the job was well-paid, but not fulfilling. I felt bad because there was a lot of stress but no growth. And most importantly, after I first got my paid developer job more than 10 years ago I had never really been sure anymore if I was still passionate about it and if it was a “right” thing to do with my life. It took me 2 years to finally make the decision to quit and take a half-year vacation to calm down and find out what I want.
I guess it has worked out and I’ve come up with a few conclusions. First off, feeling fulfilled and useful is more about how you approach problems than what problems you solve. Both are crucial but I don’t actually believe in anything like destiny unless you’re the one who creates it. So while you’re dealing with arbitrary problems you happened to face, you still want to be enthusiastic, learn and develop your skills and communicate with others in a meaningful way. Here’s a potential growth point: change your attitude and see what happens to your job. Maybe it will become much more attractive than before.
On top of it, I often confused dissatisfaction and disappointment related to the people I dealt with and my responsibilities. In my experience, the right people nearby bring much more satisfaction than the “right” things you do. Apparently it’s much more important to work with people you like and be part of a helpful and encouraging community. Exactly like dev.to. Thanks a lot for being around, folks!
The next crucial thing is learning. I enjoy it even though it took me a long time to figure out how to handle frustration because of inevitable mistakes one makes while dealing with something new and start enjoying the process of learning and its results. Now I’m going to continue my formal computer science/math education to acquire knowledge and skills I need to solve more complex problems. While doing that, I will obviously need some freelance/remote job in order to pay my bills but this thing must stay in the background in order not to substitute a meaningful learning progress with a routine job. At this point, the path I’ve chosen becomes really tough but there’s no other one I could come up with. I’ll just have to manage it.
All that being said, I’ve finally come to the point when I can answer the original question. The career goal for the next 5-10 years is to make (or at least participate in) a profitable software company that ships a useful product that I have affection for. I’ve already planned out building prototypes/MVPs for different ideas I have and throwing them into the wild to find out if people like them or not. I love the idea of meritocratic entrepreneurship in tech!
However, I try to stay realistic and keep my feet on the ground. All these ideas I have might fail. Even if it happens, as long as I manage to stay passionate and curious about the development, keep learning and acquiring new useful skills, make something meaningful and spend time with nice and smart people I will be fine - whatever I’ll happen to do.
To not be a manager :)
This question sparked my interest, as I have never taken the time to actually answer this for myself. So unfortunately my answer to this, is I'm not sure. I've always loved computers, I have been a software developer for 5 years now, and I love it. The joy I get when I solve a complicated bug, or the feeling I get when I write an algorithm and it works the first time. These are the small, but very rewarding, aspects of my job that I love. A lot of drive comes from compensation, but if I'm not helping a company grow by providing powerful technology solutions, then I feel my work is meaningless. This is the key for me right now, is wanting to make a difference. I know in the future, I want to be making a difference and helping people in some shape or form!
I never planned anything, and ended up an enterprise architect. It was either that or senior manager. I never had the risk appetite for running my own company, so I just bubbled up to the level of my comfort (or incompetence).
Career goals? I just want to keep growing as a person and as a techie. I want to continue to build cool things that help people in their daily life and never find myself too "grown up" to get super excited and giddy about new tech and tools. And as I do so, maybe more people see what I do and want to get involved in tech. :)
As I am relatively fresh in the industry, I would love to work remote for a smaller company with big ideas. I want to be able to have enough time to do freelance, my own projects, but still have the stability of a company. I'd love to know as many languages as possible and get away from project management! It's definitely not for me.
I want to change the world for the better... that might sound very presumptuous (and given recent world developments, in vain), but change for the better can come in many small ways. I'm a data scientist developing open source analysis tools in my spare time. If I can make one tool that is used on one occasion to make a tangible positive change I will be thrilled. If this happens twice I will be thrilled twice etc. Rinse and repeat and have fun on the journey...
I really don't know. I love my job and I enjoy being challenged. One of the things that attracted me to development was the scope for increasing my breadth of knowledge and advancing my career but not having to become a manager in a traditional career advancement hierarchy. Growing horizontally rather than vertically, if that makes sense. I love learning above all else.
However, I love learning outside the scope of IT as well. My dad has had a couple of different careers, attending university in his 40s so he could get out from behind a desk and that really inspires me. I think eventually, in 20 years (when I'll be 50) I'll want to do something else entirely. Retrain, educate myself and move on. I was pretty late to the development game (late 20s) and while that does irk me slightly, it also proves that I can repurpose myself and that's really important to me.
When I grow up I want to retired and do nothing :-)
An advice to young once, try to focus and specialize on early stage of your career. Focus on one thing and be an expert on it. The world/Tech is changing so fast, getting complex, and it is hard to know everything. The recognition and value($$$$$$) is in specializing and consulting.
Even if you are an entrepreneur at heart, get the knowledge and experience first in order to increase your impact and success.
As you can probably tell from my asking this question, my career plan is still forming. I don't know everything I'd like to do or exactly the path I'd like to go, but I do know a few things. My short-term goal is to graduate from Georgia Tech with my Master's. Mid-term goal is up in the air. Possibly management, but we'll see. For my long-term goal, I see myself as a CTO or SVP or something along those lines working for a company that actually impacts people's lives.
I'm fortunate enough to work for an outstanding company. The company really cares about each of its employees and the software we make actually makes a difference and has helped save lives. As a result, I have opportunities to explore different aspects of software engineering: from coding to architecture to database to devops to leadership and beyond. If there's something I'm interested in, I can usually find a way to be exposed to it at work. That's been really beneficial as I've been learning and growing in my career.
As for advice for others, I'd say find your passion and pursue it. Oftentimes the only thing holding us back is ourselves. Be bold and go for it. Don't settle for a sub-par job. Find a good employer (or be a good employer) and learn all you can. Do your best and everything will work out. If you do, doors will open for you, in time, and you'll have fewer regrets.
Also, thanks to all who have participated in this discussion! It's great to see others paths and learn from them. If you're just reading this now and haven't shared yet, feel free to add your goals and plans for your career! We'd love to hear them!
A tough but critical question indeed. I personally have always had an interest in software architecture and how system and components interact. In my current job have had more of an opportunity to work with our software architect and had really enjoyed it. At the same time, at least currently, I don't know if I ever want to stop coding so a strictly architecture role I don't think is for me.
This is such a fascinating discussion to have!
I got my first job 5 months ago, and realised recently that I was just cruising along without some sort of a mid or long-term plan. Like the OP said, it's so easy to just think about the work you have to do now and forget the future you want.
I honestly don't know what my career goals are right now. Maybe because my programming career is so young that I do not clearly know what is available. I also don't have enough experience with different things to know which would be good for me. So far, there are two things I know for sure I want:
-Work remotely. No debate, I just love having this freedom.
-Be involved in open source. This one is more abstract right now. But, as a self-taught, the open source community gave me so much. The tools, the librairies, the people... I try and will keep trying to be more involved in the open source community. I believe it will take the form of writing code and helpful tools and librairies for others. But we'll see.
As of now, I'm really focusing on just becoming a better developer. I work with Javascript as my day job. I'm learning Elm outside of it.
I'll just leave to the Academic world, I think.
That's the question I've been asking myself lately. I've been a developer for more than 8 years, and I love it, and there's still so much to learn, and so many great things to build.
But what's next?
Ultimately, I think, I'd be happy to grow into a CTO. In my dreams I picture an ideal further career path as coming to a small starting company and with my skills and commitment making it grow into a big and successful one.
Of course, if I can't find such a company, I'll have to start it myself. That'll be my backup plan. :)
I want to become a high school teacher. During high school, I took several technology related classes, but the "teacher" never taught the class, it was always "read out of the book and take a quiz". There wasn't ever teaching from the teacher. I want to change that because I know there are other schools out there that have the same thing going on. The number of people who took high school classes, but don't understand basic programming concepts by college, is quite large. I really want to educate students.
Once I become a teacher, the first step I'd really like to take is teaching a discrete math class in High School, and make it prerequisite to any programming class. This makes sure that students have a logical mindset before getting into programming, making the material they learn in a programming class easier to understand.
I just finished my freshman year of college. I have a job with the university next year as a lab assistant, meaning I will already be sort-of accomplishing my goal of becoming a teacher! I've helped many of my friends understand some of the programming concepts that they need to know (Objects vs Classes, loops, etc) and I can't wait until next year, when I can teach many more people (and be paid to do it!)