I was working as .NET developer in one of India’s top 5 MNCs. There, my manager used to say that if you are coding for more than three years, you are not growing. Well, at that time, I felt that was totally wrong. The company should encourage technical talent since that is the only way we can move up the value chain.
Well, it took me some time to understand that most people are comfortable with that saying (or we can say that they are uncomfortable doing technical work). They want to handle teams, projects, client interaction, and stuff like that. The bosses don’t also have any technical expertise all the time. They just have a high-level understanding of how the technology works. They know the bigger picture and they are able to handle the projects in that respective technology with their deep knowledge. However, I didn’t get that opportunity. Also, I don’t have any problem sticking to the technical part. I love reading about and learning new technology and I am a natural persistent learner.
Now, even with my 12+ year experience, I still like to do coding. Most of the times, I do job hopping and get a hike. Nowadays, when I apply for an interview, I can easily impress the interviewer; I even get multiple job offers. Well, in today’s world, to every business, software is the backbone and so, there is a high demand for good developers in the market. Well, I believe experienced technical people earn more than managers today. Also, the supply of experienced developers is short since most of the developers tend to move to the management domain beyond a point.
So, I feel like there is always scope and jobs for experienced coders. Still, I would like to add that getting a job is the easy part; the real challenge starts after that. I still face a lot of challenges working on new projects. Sometimes, it is hard to get support from the management people and sometimes, I am unable to make full use of my experience and skill-set.
In my early days of IT, I was worried that I am a technical person, and how would I survive in the IT field. But now, looking back at those days, I feel it all turned out to be OK.