Is it a good idea to move from hobbyist to professional development?
August 26, 2024 11:21 PM   Subscribe

I'm considering becoming a professional developer, but worry I won't like it at all. Also, I wouldn't know how to start getting gigs.

I'm a 50-year old Belgian, and have always worked in consulting. For the last 15 years, I worked as a strategy consultant in a digital agency, helping clients define the technical and marketing roadmaps for their websites, apps or other online tools.

I have a preference for B2B businesses, and am very adamant on understanding the end-customer's context to help decide what the valuable things to do are.

I have also been developing as a hobby (mostly web stuff, using Django or Flask and a variety of frontend frameworks). I've been programming since I was 15 (assembler on the Amiga), and according to my wife, every day.

Currently, I'm writing the MVP for a bootstrapped startup I founded with a friend. It's an idea we just wanted to execute on to see if it gets any traction.

I'd like to think I'm good at this. I'm not a software engineer, but I get things done in a structurally sound way.

I recently went freelance as a strategy consultant and I wonder whether I should and could take on freelance development work too.

I don't know whether I have the right credentials and how to market myself, but most importantly, I wonder whether doing professional development wouldn't just burn me down.

My questions are therefore:
- Where can I find small gigs to work on and see whether this is something I'd like to do more of?
- Has anyone been in a similar situation and how did they fare?
posted by Captain Fetid to Work & Money (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
MeMail sent!
posted by jpziller at 2:53 AM on August 27 [1 favorite]


I’m a retired software engineer who now programs mostly for fun. Last year I took a consulting gig and briefly stepped back into the world of production software. It was every bit as tedious and annoying as I remember it being.

Not the first 90%. That was fun as it always is. It was the second 90% of the project, testing every little edge case and making the product immune to user stupidity. That step from “this works well enough for my purposes“ to releasing into the wild is large and not particularly interesting.

I won’t say that I didn’t get some satisfaction out of the process, but it’s not something I intend to repeat.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:30 AM on August 27 [4 favorites]


« Older Paying the price for being a Gmail early adopter   |   Music in public places Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments