I suspect that I am a good few years later than most people in arriving at this point, but I hope that I’m not the only one who has struggled to make the decision: admin or dev? Do I turn my geekery talents to being a system administrator (or a variant, like network admins) or do I try and progress as a developer.
So – Dear Lazyweb…… what helped you make your decision?
Admin?
I’ve always enjoyed working with computers, and, like most geeks, find myself doing, and enjoying, a bit of both. I love working, in particular, in a *nix environment, and I’ve done some support work. I continue to do some of the maintenance on the church office systems. However, there are 2 major drawbacks. Firstly, getting a *nix job is hard, and I’m much more likely to find myself working in a Windows environment. Secondly, I am aware of the vast amount of knowledge I don’t have, and I worry that I wouldn’t be able to handle all the new stuff.
Dev?
I began programming with my Dad’s Amstrad CPC464 22 years ago. I’ve continued the passion through the years, and I continue to write, and contribute to, bits of software, particularly in Python. I’ve got my name in the credits of one bit of software (Jokosher, although I feel a bit of a fraud, given the amount of code I actually contributed) and I’ve got a new piece of software due out in a couple of months. Part of my actual job involves developing in various languages. However, the majority of dev jobs are in Java, which I don’t really want to learn if I don’t have to, and I am worried that I wouldn’t be able to cope with projects other than basic scripting. (And basic scripting skills tend to lend themselves nicely to admin jobs, rather than dev jobs…..)
Pearls of wisdom gratefully received.
mrBen
David never managed to make that choice. He loves both too much. One of the motivations for starting out on our own was that he could do both without damaging his career.
Working in a small development company (particularly a web development company) would probably give you the opportunity to do both. I think lots of people have trouble making an exclusive choice (not me
)
Unfortunately, unless you want to be extremely choosy about employers, you’ll probably need to be willing to work on Windows at least some of the time; as a dev, its quite likely you’d be developing for windows — even if you developed for the web, it would need to be tested in IE… And as an admin… well, it’s just one of those things you have to do.
Both career-paths have some interesting avenues. You didn’t mention DBA, or maybe you were grouping that as a sub-type of admin, but that could be interesting. Devs are not necessarily always building, either… you could go into development and spend all your time maintaining bad code from five years ago, which is probably not what you (or any programmer) has in mind as a Great Career.
That being said… heck, I don’t know. The right role for the right employer could be great in either path. Kat’s point is a good one; if you’re willing to freelance, you may be able to get the best (um, and/or the worst) of both worlds…
So, in summary; I’m no help whatsoever!