Have to disagree here. And at least one guy backs me up: A Scrum Master Is Not a Project Manager by Another Name
Ah yes I can see how:
“doesn’t manage the team that produces the work”
and
“coaches the team”
are totally different
Sounds like more Agile evangelism to make it seem more like some kind of “special thing”. While the “scrum master” and “product owner” have specific definitions in the Agile method, I think it’s fine to consider them “project managers” under a larger definition of the role…
Disagree. Some of the best scrum masters I’ve worked with have focused more on the assistant side of the role: how can I solve the problems that are hindering the team?
It’s very misleading to think of them as essentially team leaders.
Either way, I’d be careful with the Agile path. Agile is effectively a renaming of a bunch of longstanding dev techniques combined with the worst characteristics of religion and pseudoscience (note in particular the lack of falsifiability: if agile’s not working for your team–and it often doesn’t–it’s always because “you’re doing it wrong” and you need a “consultant.”). It’s very trendy right now (virtually all tech jobs ask for “agile” skills), but the data is accumulating that the only folks its consistently successful for are agile consultants: almost all of it’s “success” stories are confirmation bias, survivor bias, or just agile getting the credit for a good team’s results.
Right now you can’t fight the fad (see also: Git, which is so infamously hard to use correctly that xkcd has a comic for it, and thus is incredibly widely adopted). But historically these developer fads don’t last, and I strongly suspect that in a few years “Agile” job holders are going to find themselves in the same boat as HTML designers in 2001. Unless your career will be ending in the next half decade or so, I wouldn’t hitch my cart to that particular train.
For the OP, I think it’s important to be clear on why you feel you have burned out.
Because some of the grumbles in the OP are likely to also be true in other roles.
But if it’s just a matter of missing customer interaction then sure something like Sales Engineer could be ideal.
Other opinions are available.
I’m not an agile consultant, just a bog standard engineer who has seen a few methodologies come and go.
But Agile is already old enough that it seems weird to me for anyone to even consider it a fad.
Two essential principles of agile are unlikely to go away any time soon and are likely to be absorbed into the mix even if the name Agile disappears:
- Self-organizing as opposed to hierarchical.
- Regularly produce functioning products, to minimize risk.
The obvious retort is “But those principles are not new!”. And that would be correct. But Agile happens to be the paradigm that finally gained traction. While plenty of good ways for organizing teams have existed in the past, it was still as likely as not that a given software project would be waterfall, with few ways of managing / mitigating risk and no significant deliverable until you hit alpha.
There is a lot of Agile that will survive because it’s not new and was always useful. The problem will be in the future when people don’t want to put stupid titles like ScrumMaster on their resumes. If you don’t have something more valuable to put on your resume than ScrumMaster then you won’t sound like a good prospect. Call it technical management and describe what you learned and accomplished in the job. Titles don’t describe your abilities and knowledge.
I agree that parts of the article don’t do the best job at explaining the difference he means, but at least in this case it’s clear that “coaching” is referring to adhering to agile principles, while “managing” refers to the traditional PM duties (scheduling, resource allocation, deliverables, etc).
That’s fine, but if you post a req for what you think of as a normal PM role but call it Scrum Master just to sound Agile-y, then that suggests you’re doing it just to appear fashionable and not because you take Agile tenets very seriously. So why bother? Just advertise a PM position. Even if you’re using a loose definition of the term, running scrums (which is more than likely just a daily status meeting) is just a small part of what this type of PM would do anyway.
As you’ve been doing, look at what is good in the job, and what is soul-sucking. Requirements, Design, Documentation, Coding, Testing, QA, Implementation, Maintenance, Support - and look at where each involves people or lets you work alone - and what you like doing.
I started working on a BSEE (and got it 35+ years ago) but ended up in school doing programming and continuing into the workforce doing programming. It seems as though the jobs more left me than the other way around. The company was sold and we moved to a different section. That sold and moved to another city. The next small company had infighting, etc.
All through it I programmed in different languages and ran QA or did Sys. Admin, etc. and always had a hand in programming and loved it. Programming can be just taking orders, to designing software, to QA, to managing the Help Desk, but I always kept programming in there.
At one point, I was told - hey, you are great at this but you should branch out and try to manage. How about managing a system? So I did that for 7 years. That was the least enjoyable job. I still got actual work done, but I did more Change Requests, escalating Firewall Requests, etc., and being made to hurry others to get work done. I liked doing the soup-to-nuts work myself.
So after the 5th or more reorganization, I was {ahem} let go. I was then incredibly fortunate enough to get to go back to work as a Sr. Software Analyst and get back to programming (as well as design, documentation, requirements, etc.) which I love.
So now I work for a IT company A that contracts me to company B, who uses IT company C. And IT company C was from where I was let go :D, and that also subcontracts IT company A alot. So now I’ve literally sat on the customer side of the table opposite the guys on whose team I used to work. It’s all quite incestuous.
I think it’s due to the fact that the eng team is always the one pressured to deliver. Everyone makes commitments on engineering’s behalf, and then it’s up to us to work and deliver (the saying that “shit rolls downhill” comes to mind.) That’s not so bad, I guess this is how the business world works. But what gets to me is that there is no half mesure in software; it’s binary, it either does what you said it would, or it doesn’t. There is no fluffing or bullshitting. And so you have to keep plowing under pressure until it does what the sticker says.
It’s been the case even when I worked at places that are recognized for their agileness (I’m sure that’s a word), and for having a healthier process to software.
That ruined software for me. I still enjoy doing for myself, at my own pace, with no arbitrary deadlines. But I don’t think it’s realistic in the real world. I still have to make a living and I don’t want to throw away the last 5 years of tears, blood, and sweat I put in; I just don’t want to keep burning out for 3 months every 6 months, it’s not sustainable.
You’re absolutely right. I hit my limit after 22 years as a software developer when my boss called me while I was at a dinner party, out of town, on vacation, and demanded that I fix a bug that night. I quit a few months later.
I joined the army, but that might not be for everybody. After the army I went to grad school and now I work as a researcher. So is grad school a possibility for you?
I only have a bachelor’s (I think you need a masters for a PhD?)
I don’t think it’s my thing either, I didn’t enjoy going to university very much.
You go to grad school to get the masters and PhD, but yes the vast majority of the time you need a masters before doing a PhD.
If you didn’t enjoy university you’re not likely to enjoy grad school.
I guess the thing is to maybe consider a complete change of career and think about what you might enjoy.
I see. I’m not sure I’m ready to spend another 5-6 years in university, nevermind the huge cost associated.
I’m considering a career change, part of my creating this thread was to get ideas and hear from people who reached the same conclusion before transitioning to something else.
So, the question becomes, what motivates you? Or how about… ignoring qualifications, if you could have any job what job would you want to have? Now, answering that might be unrealistic but it might identify an area that is passionate for you. For example, if you said professional NBA player… well, ok… being a pro-basketball player isn’t something everybody can do, but maybe consider something in sports. Does that make sense? Maybe consider taking a work aptitude test? I’m sure there are some online that are free, but I’m not sure if they are of good quality, but you can take professionally administered test that should give you a good idea of good jobs.
For example, when I left the army, Veteran’s Affairs let me take such a test. The jobs that came up were:
#1 - Military officer. Ok so that was out since I could no longer be in the military.
#2 - Research professor.
#3 - Lawyer. Interestingly, I wanted to be a lawyer growing up.
#4 - Economist. Oh god no. LOL
So I went to grad school to pursue a career in research and hopefully a professorship, although I did consider applying to law school.
Not at all in Computer Science. Almost all PhD students start directly after their Bachelors. You might get a Masters along the way. (I could have gotten one during my PhD studies after I passed the qualifying exams. But it would have cost a $50 application fee and back then that was real money.)
It’s in fact a waste of time to go thru a Masters program first since it might not give you the right background when you start a PhD somewhere else.
Once you have a PhD the Masters doesn’t mean anything. So if you go for a PhD the Masters isn’t interesting if you do finish and usually you can get a consolation Masters if you don’t finish.
Going straight for a terminal Masters is a good idea if you’re going into big time programming. A PhD actually looks bad on a resume (trust me, been there).
While I was a Computer Science faculty member and not a Real Programmer. I did a lot of it when young but less and less over time. It just got less fun and more tedious. So now that I have free time I could do some serious programming but just do an occasional little script or something once in a while.
Burnout happens.
I didn’t enjoy my bachelor’s because it felt more like gaming the system than anything else. Half of my instructors sucked either because they didn’t give a f*** or because they never had a real job and had no idea how to teach valuable skills.
It felt more like going through the motions: they have to give X hours of lectures a semester, and have at least 80% of the class to pass so they don’t get scrutinized. And as a student, I realized I wasn’t going to learn much so it was just a matter of doing just enough so I get a pass and move on to the next class.
Considering how much education costs (tuition + lost opportunity), I’m very hesitant to consider it as an option.
Besides, I am aiming for FI within 10 years or less (on track for 7 years if nothing changes.) In these circumstances, I wonder if the time + money investment in a masters or PhD even makes any sense.
Not in STEM fields.
I’m an IT consultant; a lot of my coworkers are former programmers, and about any project manager is a former consultant. Haven’t met any who jumped straight from programmer or technical analyst to project manager, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
This made me smile. I work for a software vendor that produces enterprise level security software. Yesterday I was editing a bit of C++ code that had a copyright date of 1998.
Jobs in IT I’ve had other than programmer are DBA and tech support for a software vendor. It’s usually seen as a step down to go from developer to support but lots of software vendors need support folk who can also code.