My experience is primarily not in the hands-on coding which in my business software world tends to be really primitive (read data, verify it, sum it up, write it somewhere, it is essentially primitive scripting), I don’t think I have even seen an algorithm since school that was as complex as a quicksort which is first year exam material, as it is simply not done. In fact we constantly try to make frameworks where no coding is needed, just configuration, and employ non-programmer domain expert consultants as implementation specialists, but it always fails because people don’t understand that properly that once your configuration gets that advanced that it loops over a set of data and makes if-then decisions, then it is coding again: just usually a poor coding framework. Example
Anyway it is more of a being a general troubleshooter. It is sort of difficult to explain (but actually this is the aspect that is likable about it, which is kind of balances the less likable aspects) that I lack a job description. A manager wants a certain kind of information in a regular report. To provide it, there needs to be software, bought or developed or both (customized), users trained, processes defined, and a bunch of potential other things and nobody really tells how to do it, nobody really tells what to do, it is just the need to achieve a result, an informational output just anyhow, with any sort of combination of technology, people and process. This is the good part of it, how open-ended it is but clearly far more than coding, and the coding part is usually primitive.
The bad part is coding the same bloody report the 100th time only slightly different… or answering the same stupid support call the 100th time because people keep making the same mistakes or forget the previous call. Of course both could be improved by reusable frameworks (often not supported by primitive technologies used), knowledge bases, or writing user manuals but that unfortunately does not depend on one guy, the obstacles to that tend to be organizational, usually short-sightedness.
BTW do you have any clue where to go on with this kind of skillset if I ever want to change things or what could be a good Plan B to get a foot in the door in? There are some professions that are really isolated and have little overlaps with anything else, such as doctors and lawyers and I have this impression all this business information management is like that, too. Outsiders know next to nothing about it and insiders tend to not know much about anything else, professionally at least. Ever knew a succesful SAP, Oracle, NAV, CRM, Baan or whatever consultant who is now good at doing something else? I know one guy who held out only for three years and, I sh.t you not, threw it all away and became an undocumented (illegal) snowboarding trainer in the US in the Rockies :) But that is probably not the typical trajectory esp. not after a dozen years.
Wouldn’t that mean focusing less on the reliable parts of the thing (software, process) and far more on the people? I would have to motivate people and suchlike and basically simulate someone who is an extrovert and likes to a talk and this type of normal personality?
That very much depends on the particulars of a managing job and on the company’s culture. Your skills as you described them aren’t really about programming—they are about making shit happen. Management is basically about that, except that the higher you go in ranks, the less you do yourself and the more you have other people do for you. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager without being a pep-rally style extrovert.
My experience is primarily not in the hands-on coding which in my business software world tends to be really primitive (read data, verify it, sum it up, write it somewhere, it is essentially primitive scripting), I don’t think I have even seen an algorithm since school that was as complex as a quicksort which is first year exam material, as it is simply not done. In fact we constantly try to make frameworks where no coding is needed, just configuration, and employ non-programmer domain expert consultants as implementation specialists, but it always fails because people don’t understand that properly that once your configuration gets that advanced that it loops over a set of data and makes if-then decisions, then it is coding again: just usually a poor coding framework. Example
Anyway it is more of a being a general troubleshooter. It is sort of difficult to explain (but actually this is the aspect that is likable about it, which is kind of balances the less likable aspects) that I lack a job description. A manager wants a certain kind of information in a regular report. To provide it, there needs to be software, bought or developed or both (customized), users trained, processes defined, and a bunch of potential other things and nobody really tells how to do it, nobody really tells what to do, it is just the need to achieve a result, an informational output just anyhow, with any sort of combination of technology, people and process. This is the good part of it, how open-ended it is but clearly far more than coding, and the coding part is usually primitive.
The bad part is coding the same bloody report the 100th time only slightly different… or answering the same stupid support call the 100th time because people keep making the same mistakes or forget the previous call. Of course both could be improved by reusable frameworks (often not supported by primitive technologies used), knowledge bases, or writing user manuals but that unfortunately does not depend on one guy, the obstacles to that tend to be organizational, usually short-sightedness.
Okay, then I likely underrated the skill difference between what you are currently doing and the work that exists in a startup like that.
BTW do you have any clue where to go on with this kind of skillset if I ever want to change things or what could be a good Plan B to get a foot in the door in? There are some professions that are really isolated and have little overlaps with anything else, such as doctors and lawyers and I have this impression all this business information management is like that, too. Outsiders know next to nothing about it and insiders tend to not know much about anything else, professionally at least. Ever knew a succesful SAP, Oracle, NAV, CRM, Baan or whatever consultant who is now good at doing something else? I know one guy who held out only for three years and, I sh.t you not, threw it all away and became an undocumented (illegal) snowboarding trainer in the US in the Rockies :) But that is probably not the typical trajectory esp. not after a dozen years.
You might want to think about moving into management.
Wouldn’t that mean focusing less on the reliable parts of the thing (software, process) and far more on the people? I would have to motivate people and suchlike and basically simulate someone who is an extrovert and likes to a talk and this type of normal personality?
That very much depends on the particulars of a managing job and on the company’s culture. Your skills as you described them aren’t really about programming—they are about making shit happen. Management is basically about that, except that the higher you go in ranks, the less you do yourself and the more you have other people do for you. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager without being a pep-rally style extrovert.