Impact of technology in our daily life will increase with accelerating speed. Software developers are in good position for the coming future as it looks right now. Skills are global and do not have borders, in the sense that same skills are valid all around the globe. Developing the coding skills will open the borders, and it will make possible to settle up living on a location where you want to. Increased workload caused by every day increasing demand will keep developers so busy, that they are not having time to think and plan the own future. Anyway it would be so important to reserve time for thinking, and set the direction for your own career. Just as a thought, without destination there is never tail wind either.
The main career paths for developers are:
- The Coding Expert, professional who chooses to be specialist
- The Entrepreneur (coding)
- Managerial position
The principal career options in technical field are rather straight forward. Even so, it is not easy to decide what you want to do. Culture and social pressure in some countries can force to select an option, that may not be optimal, or is something you do not enjoy of doing. The existing culture in some work places may influence to the way you see the different career options. As per my experience from Finnish culture, the coding chameleon and Entrepreneur are very highly valuated career options in Finnish society. To make good decision related your career you have to have different experiences to form culturally unbiased view of things.
To be a coding expert you need to be ready to increase your skills in relevant technologies and maintain and adjust the skills portfolio according the market development. The same is valid as well for the Entrepreneur in coding. Anyway even with all this pressure to learn, it seems that the coding is rather satisfactory career choice according the stack overflow survey. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/
The managerial position will require to learn people skills as future organizations will be more like “Teal” organizations that are more and more self managed. The soft skills in future managerial jobs are more important more higher you are on a ladder. On top positions people skills are even more important than technical skills.
Interesting times ahead for all developers. It is important to know yourself, know what fits for you, and what kind of work will give you a satisfaction, and then, set the target.