You made the smart choice when you went to college and majored in IT or a general technological field. Why is this a smart choice? Well, the tech industry is growing at a phenomenal rate, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. This means that if you find the right company you could have a solid career making a lot of money. For other industry workers, that’s never going to be a guarantee. Tech is an industry that will just become more important as we grow into the future. If you saw this trend coming and jumped on the opportunity, you made the right decision.
So, what careers await you in the world of technology? Well, there are lots of options with everything from IT support to Tech management available. Particularly, if you have additional qualifications that will help you thrive in a business environment. But, if you want to work for yourself without the worry of others always looking over your shoulder, you might want to think about being a tech developer.
Working as a tech or software developer, you will be able to build your own software or work on other people’s. It’s a very hands on job, and it can require a certain degree of creativity too. But before you jump on this exciting and well-paid career path, you might want to consider some of the issues that you could face. You’re going to face a lot of different challenges working as a tech developer, and you need to be prepared for them.
You’re Speaking Double Dutch
Even if you are working independently, you will still have to interact with clients, customers, business owners and perhaps even investors. The problem here is that most of the time these individuals won’t be on your wavelength. You’ll be talking about the CPU or the user interface, and they will be staring at you blankly wondering what on earth you’re talking about. The best tech developers speak two languages. They know how to use the tech jargon but they can also dumb it down for the technophobes, and there are a lot of them. You might be hired to create a new app for a company. There’s no guarantee that the person at the head of the business understands issues with computer memory server problems or any other trouble that you might have through design.
That brings us to another important issue you’ll face in tech development. People won’t always understand just how complex your job could be. For instance, coding a new piece of software sounds quite simple if you don’t get into the gritty details which you won’t because they won’t understand them. But if they think the job seems simple, they might have unrealistic expectations of how long it will take. As such, you need to be very clear about what your job is and how long it could take. Explain to them what the challenges are in the second language we mentioned and hopefully you won’t get five hundred emails asking if the project is complete.
So, whether it’s someone being unable to log into their account or a processing issue you’ll be able to fix them all. That’s just one of the reasons why keeping up to date is so crucial.
All Work, No Play
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Of course, like doctors, the lack of downtime for developers can be an issue. Since they are constantly looking at new tech and keeping up with new techniques, they find it very difficult to make time for personal issues. That’s according to a survey run by Application Developers Alliance in 2015. Now, while that survey is two years old, it’s unlikely that the situation has changed that much for tech developers. As such, it is important that developers do make time for themselves rather than just the business. Perhaps the best way to do this if you’re working from home would be to make sure that you are following the working day. A lot of freelance tech developers don’t work from the office, but you should still abide by the 9-hour rule. Working more than nine hours each day simply means that you’re not taking enough time for yourself.
Staying Current
You might think that once you have finished your college degree, training time is over, but that’s not the case. Being a tech developer is a lot like being doctor. When you’re a doctor, you have to understand that medicine is changing every day. So, you have to keep up with these changes as much as possible. That’s why when doctors have free time they are actually typically studying up on new case material, completing research and running their own studies.
Well, tech developers are the same. In your spare time, you’re going to need to keep up with the latest issues in coding and advancements in tech and software. Otherwise, you won’t be hirable for that much longer. Now, the question is, are you even using the right tech. To find out, let’s think about logging. Logging is arguably one of the best ways to keep on top of issues in your software during the development stage. Sure, you can get notifications, but logging will give you the detail you need to fix the problem. You’ll probably be using Java logging to do this, and if you’re not, you should be. With Java logging, you can ensure that all the details during the coding phase of development are recorded. That way, you can fix any and all issues with the app if and when they arrive. Why? You’ll know what went wrong.
Underutilized
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Of course, there is one other issue that tech developers will experience in business, and that’s feeling underutilized. You might have spent years getting your tech skill and ensuring that you can design new software from scratch. Unfortunately, most of your days are spent debugging simple, small pieces of code. This is why it’s important you do find a position where you utilize all your abilities. Otherwise, you might find that staring at basic numbers and codes all day becomes very boring indeed.
We hope this helps you decide whether tech development is the right career path for you.