Working in Norway as a programmer is a very strange thing. The industry in Norway is plagued by the fact that people running companies have no knowledge of the nature of software development or knowledge they once has is long gone. They may have had this knowledge at some point, but spending too much time in meetings and boardrooms seems to have a damaging effect on the ability to reason.
In Norway there are very few companies who allow a programmer to choose a carer path where you continue to produce code even after having worked for more than 10 years as a programmer. You are expected to be a project manager or some other kind of middle management. It is only the result of no thinking or group thinking which makes people think this is a good idea.
Why would you want you best people to stop doing what they know and take on a different career path? Why would somebody who creates great software automatically become a good PM or manager?
By continuing to push all good programmers up in the hierarchy and removing them from code you get an industry led by people who are out of touch with real issues related to the development process and developers who are young and un-experienced. This makes for overrun projects and continuous failure to deliver working software on time.
Having worked in the industry for almost 10 years I have only once worked with somebody older than 45, and he was of course a database administrator. What he lacked in ability to put in 90 hour work weeks he made up in knowledge and experience. He didn’t have to pull off overtime heroics because he knew what he was doing.
It’s funny to look at this continued practice here in Norway, I guess this is common other places too but I think that if this industry is to become more mature this is one of the things we need to resolve. How to give extraordinary programmers a way of continuing to do what they love without having to take an unwanted career path and do a bad job and continue the circle of amateurism.
September 30th, 2007 | work
I think one of the reasons is that there simply aren’t enough exciting and varied developer positions in this country. It may seem like a bit of a cop-out reason, but everyone’s careers have to go somewhere, and when there are no higher-up, more prestigious positions, to strive for, it becomes a natural transition to go towards project management - where you start sharing your knowledge instead of actually practicing it. I agree with you that this is a shame.
At some point this somehow became the “correct” path to take for developers. In interviews, it seems the answer that people want to hear when they ask you where you see your career in ten years, is you saying that you want to take more administration responsibilities and start managing projects. I’ve heard it so many times, and it’s total fucking bullshit. The hierarchy is even made that way. Junior. Senior. Manager. Project Leader.
What I think would help is if there were more interesting and innovative projects going on in Norway. It’s pretty common-place for developers to work in financial services/banking or the governmental sector, which (even though they might love what they do), doesn’t really provide enough variation or personal growth in itself. We seriously have less than 5 entertainment sites built in this country. Probably less than 3. It’s pretty sad when “www.yr.no” is one of the closest sites we get to Web 2.0.
I can’t wait till people realize there’s a whole other side to development and people start getting fun and entertaining projects even after 10-20-30 years in the service. Unless we start having fun and stop constantly worrying about maximizing profit (profit always sorts itself out if you do a good enough job, which you will if you are having fun), it’s never going to happen. I want entertainment, god damn it!
Comment by Shah — October 17, 2007 @ 12:45 am