I am a software professional having 16+ years of experience in software development. Earlier I was working as a senior director of engineering. I struggled a lot from starting when I started my career no one was there to help me. As I grew up I found that on each and every stage there are different kinds of challenges.
An associate software engineer or junior software engineer has different types of challenges compared to a senior software engineer, a technical lead or an engineering manager. I went through various challenges during my career journey.
When I started my career as a junior software engineer I was faced with the challenges of learning new technologies and how to implement those. I struggled with problems or issues for many hours and sometimes in days to figure out the solutions. There was a fear of losing a job these days. When I started working independently I started finding solutions and if not exactly something alternate around it accordingly.
When I was promoted as technical lead the new types of problems started coming. In this stage I have to look after my own work along with team members. I have to give solutions to them. Many times I didn’t get a chance to work on my own stuff so at the end of the day I have to finish my own stuff, sometimes I have to stay late in the office to finish my own work.
Because if you are working as a responsible person and you have your own responsibilities then you have to complete your own task on time. Otherwise there would be a bad impression on your team. If their lead is not completing their task on time then how the team members will complete their work on time.
Isn’t it?
This stage there would be different types of challenges. As we grow up the types of challenges vary. When I was promoted as engineering manager and senior engineering manager the types of challenges were different. This time the size of the team increased and now the task handled by me earlier now started handled by a technical lead. But now my responsibilities have increased. Now I have to think about system performance, optimization, system design, database design and about new technologies. This time I have to spend more time with stakeholder and product managers to understand the requirements and design the system architecture and its database.
After becoming a senior director of engineering I started facing different types of challenges. Now more responsibilities were given to me. I have to look after multiple products end to end with different teams. I have to start my day with different scrum meetings with different teams and try to understand what types of challenges they are facing. Apart from that I have to interact with different internal stakeholders as well as outside stakeholders. I have spent more time with stakeholders and product managers.
As a senior leader now I have to involve each and everything within the organization. Helping HR to set up new processes, hiring new talent, conducting campus hirings, taking interviews and appraisal cycles and retaining the candidates.
In this stage we have to face totally different types of challenges. Handling people is not an easy task. Resolving conflicts between teams and reading the psychology of people is really difficult. If you are working with different people you have to understand the psychology of each and every person otherwise it’s very hard to handle. To handle people you have to understand their personal and professional pains. You have to keep in touch very closely with them. If you are not close to the people they won’t share with you anything and you can’t understand their psychology. Like
What are they thinking?
What’s going on in their mind?
Who is not satisfied with appraisals?
Who can resign?
Who can be retained?
Who is happy and who is not happy?
These all are the problems related to the people and their psychologies. To get answers to all these questions leadership skills are required.
All these different stages I found different challenges and their solutions. Each and every person faces these challenges during their career journey. But no one thinks about the solutions around.
But don’t worry, there is good news for you. I am thinking about all the challenges and its solutions around for the software professionals. If one person has already faced the challenges then why should each and every person face those challenges, right?
Yes, each and every person has to face some different challenges based on their career journey but I mean to say we can make it easy for everyone. The psychological problems and many other problems or challenges which we just talked about above remain the same for each and everyone.
Isn’t it?
But the question is how we can make this easy for everyone software professionals?
By creating a strong community. Yes, by creating a strong community for software professionals we can make it easy for everyone and for which I have started working on. It’s one of my dreams. Last couple of years I have been thinking about this community. But now I have started the same. I need the same thinking kind of people who can think the same way as I am thinking to build this community for software professionals.
In my dream community of software professionals, everyone will grow together by helping each other. Anyone can discuss their problems without hesitation, share knowledge and find solutions around it so that the challenges I faced during my career journey, no one face again and again.
And why should everyone face these challenges again and again. If someone is already faced with these challenges other can learn from his/her.
Isn’t it?
I do believe that If I can think of this kind of community or society for software professionals, I can make this happen definitely. I already started working on this. I will make this happen for sure. I have seen people struggling with their careers badly in offices and no one takes care of them. People behave very rudely with them but they have to listen to their seniors as they need a job. There are few people who find some good seniors are luckiest but not everyone.
I have a very broad plan in my mind about how we can grow together by helping each other in that community. From starting a career of freshers to senior level. This community would be for everyone. The primary objective would be how freshers get jobs quickly and find solutions to their problems easily. Then each and every stage based on the types of challenges there would be solutions for each and every problem and everyone can benefit from it.
Everyone will be treated as a family member in this community and each and every one will get respect for each other. We together will help each and everyone on every single step.
Think about these days lay off situations. Thousands or lacs of people lost their jobs including me. Many of them feel helpless. This community will help each and everyone in every situation no matter what the situation is.
I don’t think you will not agree with my idea or thinking. If you like it don’t forget to clap it, comment on it and share it with your other software professionals. I am working on it and if you want to be part of it do let me know. We can discuss it separately.
Conclusion
Everyone faces different challenges in their career journey in different stages but no one is thinking about its solutions. I do believe if anyone else has already faced the similar challenges then why should others suffer? I think by creating a strong community we can get rid of this problem. We have to create a strong community with the same kind of people who are ready to help others. Where people can discuss their problems without hesitation and find solutions around easily.
That would be a new world for software professionals to live a happy, healthy, joyful and a meaningful life. Everyone has a right to live a fulfilled and a dream life.
Isn’t it?