No longer a dev

Starting tomorrow morning (9 hours from now), I will no longer be a developer in any professional way. I'm starting a new role at my company as a Product Architect, which means I meet with the clients, collect requirements, and design the products that development then creates.

So anyway, I had a bit of an existential crisis the other day because I realized this will be my first non-developer role since I worked at a deli in early high school. I've been doing websites since I was 15. What am I going to do with all these spare brain cycles now that I'm a product guy? It's ridiculous! I'm not even a dev manager (the job was offered to me but I decided to move to Product), I just moved out of the dev department entirely.

Anyway, discuss. Have any of you ever made the move from dev to non-dev? How did you handle the transition?

Probably a good choice; I moved from dev to dev management, although I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. I'm hoping to get into product development eventually though.

The part I like least is being responsible for the work other people do. You will probably have less of that in product development I imagine.

I was a really effective programmer, so I feel like I get a lot less done in day now. I still do coding from time to time though, but only when I'm bailing out one of my developers at the last minute.

On the up side, doing less actual development work at work gives me more energy to do development work as a hobby.

See, the problem I'm having is that my degree is actually in IT management. I never actually utilized it in an official capacity, though as a senior dev and being "in charge of projects" I got to do all the responsibilities without any of the benefits.


This is what I'm hoping will happen. I haven't coded at home in years.

Once a dev, always a dev, you can't unlearn sh!t ...

But it's all useless now! All this ridiculous PHP knowledge and I'm not doing anything with it. And the worst part is, I'm going to be obsolete in another year if I don't keep up. I'm hoping my time in the forums will keep me on my toes. Maybe I'll learn another language. I've been meaning to learn Python for years.

coding @ home ... or for nixers

I've been in upper engineering management three times, as well as some mid-level stuff. I was effective at it, so there was always something available if I looked.

I'd get so tired of it after two or three years that I'd quit and contract for hardware or software design for a few years. Then I'd get tired of that and look for a management job.

I was always happy with my career, whichever part I happened to be pursuing.

I haven't coded for a living in almost a decade. Same transition that you're at the beginning of - coder to architect, architect to consulting, consulting to director, director to CTO, CTO to VP... anyhow.

I code on nights & weekends to keep my chops up. Architecture is an awesome pursuit though - make sure to brush up on your GoF Design Patterns book (which still blows my mind to this day) and get really good at UML (knowing which types of diagrams matter helps... not all of them are useful), writing Use Cases / User Stories, etc. You'll have a blast, trust me.

That's all BS, Dr. Groove. Two golf games a week fixes everything.

So it turns out, as many of you have said, that I actually enjoy pulling my face away from the computer screen on occasion. I've been doing about 40% dev work and 60% product architecture for the last month now, and I like product architecture much more. High level design work, data relationship diagrams, laying out new application structure, and making integration plans with our partners is far more entertaining than writing regular expressions for 12 hours.

Programming is very enjoyable to me as a one-off thing. 15 minutes writing a recursive script to spell large numbers out as english words is fun. Writing a regex to parse the magnetic strip on a credit card was a pleasure. Trying to debug a drag-and-drop custom javascript library in IE8 is not at all enjoyable. There's far less useless, frustrating bull in my new job.

Good luck man. Its been great hearing your input on these forums and hope you will remain active here. I know i will never be at risk for moving away from dev and put in front of a customer(no body wants me to talk to customers because i would probably tell them how stupid their requests are and get fired).

Depends what level of customer and what function you are doing. First level help-desk, I am 100% on board with you. Trying to fix clueless user's problems over the phone for crappy pay, no thanks. Now sitting down and actually architecting solutions with higher level managers could be interesting.

It is. In the last month I've worked with Intel, Oracle, and Verizon. The guy I'm working with at Oracle, I read his book in college.

I could see that being fun. I think if I do pursue an MBA, I might go down that route. I know you need a lot of business sense when it comes to architecting a solution (at least in a large environment). ROI is everything.

That's awesome, Dan, it sounds like it was a good move for you. Really jealous that you're working with Oracle too.

I moved from dev to tech support and did that for about a year before going back to dev. That was pretty unpleasant, but it sounds like your move has you learning new things and trying new things. I'm sure there'll be plenty on the forum to keep your brain active too