Hi Marco, Wanted to let you know I was in a similar position for the past couple of years prior to this one. A year ago I stumbled across a blog post that addressed my frustrations at the time:
http://blog.developwithpassion.com/2010/12/strategies-for-becoming-a-better-programmer In short it talks about not letting your blog reading and desire to keep up to date cloud your perspective on what the world is actually practising and doing. It also advocates approaching a role with a fresh set of eyes to see the merits of why decisions were made at the time. As I've changed jobs over the years and networked with many more experienced people at conferences, I've come to realise that every company has different levels of maturity in different areas. Some companies may embrace agile but have some legacy tech that forces their hand, others like to try new things but only because it complements their own tech interests rather than helping business efficiency. Blogs generally only talk about new happenings. Hardly ever do you see a blog talking about using an old technology in a new way. The second thing is appreciating the tech thats already there for what it is and how it came about. There may be better ways to do things now, but if there was a significant investment at the time that a legacy tech was created, there is mindshare from devs/sponsors involved in getting that product up and going. They would understand its shortfalls but were proud enough to know they got something across the line to serve a need. Lets say tomorrow you were given the opportunity to do a project in NoSQL and it was successful. Eventually it will become old hat too. I think a lot of projects start with these good intensions and they do address needs at the time with known short-comings. There's an opportunity in that though. If you can really appreciate what someone was trying to achieve, then you can align yourself and your desired solutions with those goals that still haven't been realised, introducing viable relevant incremental change using the tools and techniques you like - or at least understand why they couldn't implement it themselves. Its significantly easier than advocating a new project that may not have a strong business case behind it. Like coding itself, small incremental change works best. For me, the changing point was stratching my itch. Working for companies that used the tech I wanted or doing good Agile for a little while helped. But once that itch was scratched I learnt that it wasnt the only thing that was important to be a successful software dev. I'm currently working for a company with a lot of legacy, but thats ok because its in the industry I enjoy. They do embrace sensible ideas and I do have the freedom that comes with 'ask permission later' so I can introduce new things. A new persistence mechanism probably not, but a javascript library that allows devs to write less code that works across all browsers with far less regressions, and at the same time the nice side effect that makes older browsers compatible with html5 - well that serves my itch and reduces our regressions. Eventually there will be a new itch, that needs to be scratched more than what a conference, code retreat and outside of work coding can satisfy, and so my parameters may change and I'll want to move again. But I'm a little wiser and know what to look for & understanding where I can make change. After all that long talk, it all just depends on you. If you can see a path in your current situation, drive out that change where you are now. If you think that will take too long, then go find a company that does and get the flow you've been yearning (make sure they don't hate photoshop layers and hex colours). Both things are equally ok. Regards and Good Luck Kon On Friday, 2 December 2011, Marco F. wrote: > this may sound yet-another venting kind of post, and if it does sound like > that to you, please stop reading. sorry to waste time. > > if you're still here, good… i'll try not to wast too much of your time. > > i'm a java developer at a big international digital marketing firm. > i've been working here for 14 months now. > > before this, i was a java developer at another big and international > digital marketing firm. > worked there for 2 and half here. > > (before that, i worked for accenture for a short while. it was my first > job ever after university). > > i grew a lot (professionally) working for these 2 firms mostly from > "passing-by" mentor-workmates (was never enrolled a single course or > workshop or anything). > but i've always been the youngest (31) and so I was always on the > developer side rather than the architect one. fine. > > both companies seriously look the same when it comes to the > non-creative-fluffy-marketing work. > > i feel like i've been working on the same project! > it was either: > - the same old CMS (i dare you name one that's sleek, light and has a > great UI), > - soap-ws to allow third party to use our services and do stuff, > - (recently) a very nice RESTful application (it basically replace the > previous one). > > i tend to be a very active professional, so during these years, i've been > the one saying "hey let's try nosql!" or even "let's switch to logback" and > so on. > > success rate? zero. > > so lately i've been feeling very frustrated. > looks to me like tech dpt. of companies like these does not want to focus > on being innovative and one step ahead of the usual system integrators. > > i told my boss we should be focusing on doing cutting-edge stuff like > tweet-monitoring and social stuff integration or HTML5 craziness but what > did i get? "yeah sure…. now update those two users emails on production db > and check on that tomcat… we'll talk about that later". > > recently, i've been studying a lot on many different areas (tdd, agile, > responsive web design and so on). > all of this was done at home or stealing time from stupid (yes, i mean it) > tasks that could be automated but no one has ever asked my team to do. (we > seriously manually update users' emails) > > so i'm asking, is this a common situation in companies like these? > feels like when technology is not core-business (which is very arguably > the case, if you ask me) tech dpt. lack its necessary push to go forward. > > what's even worse is that tech guys dry out an die inside and so newcomers > only "normally interested" in what's going on like me end up like the only > luke skywalker at a star wars themed party. > > i have been contacted by so many consulting firms, but i do like hanging > around creative guys, producing stuff for the web and seeing the whole > structure. i'm sure these firms would push the pedal more on what i might > be doing (four letter: java) but i'm afraid i'll miss the photoshop layers > and hexadecimal colors. > > sorry to have bothered you. > > -m > > ps: the posse's always an inspiring thing. thank you guys. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. 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