5 types of software developers

The following text describes the possible evolution of the skills and awareness level of a software developer through his career. Instead of thinking in a linear fashion and taking into consideration only years of experience and past roles, I prefer to focus the level of awareness gained and see each step as a little quantum leap forward. First your awareness only reaches to the end of your limbs, then jumps to concepts, then to business, and eventually it jumps entirely outside of you to reality, and then.. I can’t describe the last step you’ll have to read it for yourself.

The steps are

  1. Tool Oriented
  2. Conceptual Mind
  3. The big picture
  4. The realist
  5. The visionary

I encourage everybody to read this text till they reach the level they idenfity with most and read the step after that to get an idea of where they could go next. But don’t read many steps beyond, it would be a waste of time really. Not that you can’t reach it, just that trying to go too fast will sabotage your evolution as a developer. Each step has to be lived through thoroughly so that you are RIPE to move to the next one.

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