Practicing Your Craft

With the rate of change in the software engineering field, practicing your craft will keep you relevant and in touch. Do you want to become a dinosaur as your career matures or do you want to continue to hone your skills and be a software engineering practitioner? Doctors and musicians must continue to practice in order to stay on top of their skills and continue to be relevant. I just read an excellent article concerning a technical career, "Avoiding Oblivion in Your Tech Career", that you should read if you want to stay relevant and effective as your career progresses.

I remember reading the book "Becoming A Technical Leader" by Gerald Weinberg in early 1990s when I was contemplating taking my first technical leadership/management job. This book and a few others like it helped me make a difficult career decision. I wanted to remain technical however, my boss was offering me the opportunity to get into the technical leadership and management ranks. The recent article posted at O'Reilly Net above reminded me of what I went through in that time period and the reading I did about remaining 'in touch' with technology.

The fundamental problem with making the transition from technical to management is staying in tune. It becomes more and more difficult to stay in touch due to your increasing non-technical responsibilities and eventually you lose touch with the fast paced technology world.

The following excerpt from the web article stands out:

"The reason technologists fade so quickly is that they stop practicing their craft. They stop writing source code, they stop modeling systems in detail, they miss the paradigm shifts and use dated jargon, they brag about the old days, and (I have observed) they break their ties with the young development community. They fly at 30,000 feet, as you will hear them say often, alongside executive stakeholders.

Technology is unique in this regard. The senior surgeon performs landmark surgeries, the conductor plays brilliant piano, and the building contractor runs out to grab the toolbox from the back of his truck. In medicine, music, and construction, senior contributors are practitioners, who never part with their instruments. And they aren't reluctant to use jargon. Surgeons, for example, never tone down their medical talk unless the patient asks them to."


Based on the research I did over 10-years ago, it was quite refreshing to see this same message reiterated in today's faster paced 21st century software engineering universe. It's good to know that I made some half way decent decisions in the early 1990s. Somehow I have managed to remain 'in tune' even though my non-technical responsibilities continued to increase over the past decade.