A couple of years ago, my employer jumped on the Personal Career Development band wagon. They hired a consultant, setup training for everyone, and encouraged everyone to set career goals and make plans to achieve these goals.
But most of the training focused on the typical 'soft' skills of career development, such as communication, project management, organization, etc. While this may be the typical career development tasks for business people, for those in IT, and especially software development, these tasks will likely be on the periphery. The bulk of a Software Development training will center around the technical knowledge, software development processes (which are unique and ever evolving), software design, and project estimation. The consulting company Construx has a very good Professional Developer Handbook that I'd recommend checking out.
Soft skills, such as communication, are important, but present a unique challenge. While conversing with other developers, the technical terms and jargon can be used to quickly explain an issue. But, when conversing with business people, this needs to be kept to a minimum, even if it requires explaining the situation in a verbose manner.
There is another matter to discuss regarding career development: job promotion. There are two typical routes a developer will take. The first route takes a developer from a Junior Software Developer to a Senior Software Developer. Eventually, this developer learns a great deal about the processes and management of a software project and becomes a project manager.
The second route sees a developer progress further until they become a Software Architect or a DBA, or a specialist in some particular technical field. Or perhaps they continue to be a Senior Software Developer. Whatever the title, the second route arrives anywhere but management.
As for me, I can't predict the future, and its hard to say where I'd like to end up. I've always liked the idea of becoming an Architect, but my experience with them has not always been a pleasant one. My current plan is to continue coding until the pace of change is faster then the pace at which I can keep up. At that point, I think a management role will suit me better.
Do you have an overall career plan that will lead you to one of these two routes, or do you have another destination in mind?
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