Ask the .Org

Thres no harm in going for an interview mate, see what they,ve got to say for themselves and see whats on offer, go for it mate, good luck.

[Mr Speirs]

If you are reasonably happy in your job now then you need to make it worthwhile for you to take the development role. Id go to the interview with a firm set of conditions (i.e. salary, completely cut ties from support role etc) that if they would be prepared to meet you would take the job and if not you don't.
You don't have to make any sacrifices then. You would only take the job knowing and happy with what to expect.

if its something you would enjoy doing without the crap you experienced in the previous similar role then why not?

if they pay more money, and you enjoy doing it then double bonus.

and if developers are one of the last lots to go in case of financial meltdown then you have a bit more security which at the moment aint a bad thing!

suck it and see i reckon.

[BillyC]

I've worked as a software developer for 10 years, and that has also brought a natural role of 3rd line support. These days I have a management feather in my cap, which brings extra stresses of planning and overseeing projects, and managing staff.

My advice for you is that you're going nowhere very fast in a pure support role - these roles are almost always only good as a stepping stone to other more technical roles, or the dead-end of service desk manager.

So I absolutely think that you should make the move to development. Now this isn't for everyone, so please consider a few points: Do you have the mind for it? You must be logical and procedural, seeing the natural process in everything. That's what programming is about - the language is just how you express that. Are you creative? Ultimately writing code and designing applications, whatever they are, is a purely creative activity, and sometimes your imagination is the most useful tool in the box, or outside of it if you know what I mean.

Finally, as a programmer, always be open and upfront... it takes some experience to know how long things take, and to be clear about the risks that can be involved - project managers will always want to know about this, and that is a two-way relationship. Only you manage and set your deadlines, the project manager just has to plan around them.

And one last thought - be mindful of the development technologies you'd be working with - .Net is in, most other things are out. Keeping "current" is one of the hardest things in development, but fortunately the big changes only happen every 5-10 years or so.

Good luck.

Thanks for the replies folks, you're echoing mostly what my thoughts were (take the interview, then reject it if I don't like the offer on the table).


Re the financial risks on the company, I don't see that happening any time soon. The company recently cut one of it's arms off (literally) as it was making a loss of £400,000 per month. When they were making that loss in the LBO sector, the entire company had an overall profit just shy of 9 figures!

Billy, as you appear (from the posts in this thread) to have the most relevant experience...

Originally Posted by BillyC

My advice for you is that you're going nowhere very fast in a pure support role - these roles are almost always only good as a stepping stone to other more technical roles, or the dead-end of service desk manager.

From my previous employer, I walked out under my own terms & took 4 months off work thanks to the "redundancy" package I enforced. I took this job as the money was starting to run low, and basically just as something to pay the bills until something better came along.

It's an OK job I suppose, most of the time I'm paid for doing next to nothing. But the boredom is sometimes a killer, and I'd prefer to be busy (just not stressed all the time). The main reason for walking from the old company was (as posted before) that the dev team were getting the blame for not meeting impossible deadlines set by sales.

Originally Posted by BillyC

So I absolutely think that you should make the move to development. Now this isn't for everyone, so please consider a few points: Do you have the mind for it? You must be logical and procedural, seeing the natural process in everything. That's what programming is about - the language is just how you express that. Are you creative? Ultimately writing code and designing applications, whatever they are, is a purely creative activity, and sometimes your imagination is the most useful tool in the box, or outside of it if you know what I mean.

Finally, as a programmer, always be open and upfront... it takes some experience to know how long things take, and to be clear about the risks that can be involved - project managers will always want to know about this, and that is a two-way relationship. Only you manage and set your deadlines, the project manager just has to plan around them.

I've worked as what I refer to as a "code monkey" (ok, so programmer, but code monkey gets more funny looks when talking to someone you've just met) in various different companies, covering various different languages. I'm also working on a couple of code projects outside the office, so the mindset thing isn't really a problem.

As for managing deadlines, these would unfortunately be out of my hands, it would be a case of "this is the work that needs doing, you have this long to complete it."

Originally Posted by BillyC

And one last thought - be mindful of the development technologies you'd be working with - .Net is in, most other things are out. Keeping "current" is one of the hardest things in development, but fortunately the big changes only happen every 5-10 years or so.

Everything in this company is in Java, running on win32, specifically XPEmbedded. Usual stuff like Tomcat, RDBMS, UML, JSP, RCP, SVN/CVS, and the best part for me, is that it's all done with Eclipse (since Eclipse is my IDE of choice for Java). I don't see that changing ever, but I'm able to bring things like Ant to the table, which could see the company migrating away from MicroSoft & ditching the cost of licences etc.

Time will tell I suppose, but I reckon I'll have the interview, and go from there.

Thanks for the sounding board .Org.

Why do companies that we already work for ask us for a CV to switch roles on offer? they already know everything about us!

And why should current employees be asked to APPLY for new higher/better positions.
Surely if the `management` feel we are suitable they should OFFER the job outright in the first place.

rant over

Originally Posted by SV-net

Why do companies that we already work for ask us for a CV to switch roles on offer? they already know everything about us!

And why should current employees be asked to APPLY for new higher/better positions.
Surely if the `management` feel we are suitable they should OFFER the job outright in the first place.

rant over

For small companies I agree. However, I work for a company that's far from small.

In this case, the manager of the department hasn't got a clue who I am from Adam, and a CV is a pretty good introduction for a business. Then he can always chat to my boss about me.

Though I will have to have an interview as well, but I suppose that's just a formalised chat between me & the relevant manager to find out if we're both happy about it.

(It was actually the development manager's boss who told me about the up coming vacancy as I've helped him out with UAT etc in the past).