If you are an software developer by profession or have hobby to develop in some languages, I guess you spend most of your time working on different technologies and updating your skills either by attending conferences, books and other sources. There are many things to learn and by the time we learn some of them, we again have lots of other new things in queue, that never ends! It is sometimes very difficult to how to work in such environment and keep learning and updating your skills. Everyone has this issue but very few talk about this! Geeks can talk a lot about comparing different technologies or the competition going on between Microsoft, Google or any other organisation. But wait, is this all a software developer can think of or should do? No, we are not taking care of many important factors that I am going to talk about here.

There are some points that really means to be a software developer. There are many things that no one teaches us in school or university. Here are some challenges that a software developer has to face, but very few talk about:

• Technical - is about keeping up with the rapid change in our field and to choose wisely which one to go for…!
• Professional - related with the politics going in the company or dealing with managers or struggling to become an manager of which you don’t have any knowledge or experience.
• Financial - Interpreting the job offer or should we invest only in our company’s stock.

I don’t know about you how you introduce yourself as a software developer or a programmer who codes but I introduce myself as I ship production/release code. Yeah, it is different then yours but in a good way because it says that you are just not writing codes as part of your side projects or while working on a open-source project, it just says that do something that people use in real life on their computers. And yeah, to find a solution for a problem, a solution that makes life easy for an end user. 

Hey! Will you stop writing code in future or will you change your field? Think again, as there are many reason for which someone may go into the software development field. Reason can be programming is fun, you like challenges, doing something creative or it tends to pay well or may be we are sometimes better with machines than with people, etc. I hope you have you reason with you as this is very important whether its love towards learning, technology or money or you don’t like to deal with people (against managerial role) or anything else. You need to be clear with yourself as this will help you to move towards success.

How do you measure Success? 

For some, its

• Money…?
• Friends and Family…?
• Recognition…?
• Fame…?
• Making a difference…?
• Anything else…????

Find yours wisely so that your priority drives your career path.

Goals - 

Now, you have a priority to climb the ladder of succes but will you be able to do it without defining a Goal? No way! If you are not aware what you want, you won’t get it. If you don’t have any idea at the starting, atleast try to define a generic goal for you. Another question that someone might ask   to himself is how technical I want to be? Software development can be a path to many related careers. 

Somehow, your work will take the priority of more number of hours from the 24 hours and you will get  very less time to spend only for you! So, you would not choose something as your goal that you don’t enjoy or that is boring! Choose something, that you love and enjoy and even getting paid for that enjoyment. If you are doing this, then someone is not stealing your life! Instead they are paying you to do something that you would be doing if you don’t had a job. Also, everyone one has financial needs, so choose wisely if money is your main reason for success. 

Try to answer the above questions taking your case in your mind. Write it down and keep reading. I will be coming with the next part - Some facts about all the Programmers or Software Developers.