Moving on from dev advice

[hgllgh]

After 20 odd years as a developer I have made a decision to move on from it.
In short, I don't want to spend the rest of my working career chasing the latest javascript framework and the technical churn of dev tech.

I am planning on moving to BA a type role, even if it means going back to perm (blasphemous on here I know )

Anyone else made this kind of move out of dev?

Is it worth me doing something like the ISEB/BCS foundation course in BA?
If I do that is it possible I could land a contract as opposed to defecting to permiedom?

[northernladuk]

Is it worth me doing something like the ISEB/BCS foundation course in BA?
If I do that is it possible I could land a contract as opposed to defecting to permiedom?

You should know as a contractor a couple of certs with no experience isn't going to cut it. What are you selling? What are you bringing to them for a couple of hundred quid a day?

[l35kee]

You should know as a contractor a couple of certs with no experience isn't going to cut it. What are you selling? What are you bringing to them for a couple of hundred quid a day?

Thinking back to my hiring days. I'm looking on a cv for experience. If you don't have any I'm gonna pass you by. Tbh we passed on CVs if they didn't have any relevant BA experience in the project we are looking to hire for, never mind how much general BA experience they had.

BCS foundation course is a tick box, but honestly, it's an easy pass. I paid little to no attention to it other than it told me the person was an actual BA, and not an business stakeholder who happened to work with a BA once.

[hgllgh]

You should know as a contractor a couple of certs with no experience isn't going to cut it. What are you selling? What are you bringing to them for a couple of hundred quid a day?

20+ Years experience understanding and implementing requirements. Some of that was spent defining requirements too (although more recent years mostly dev tech as a contractor).
With that comes an understanding of what developers need. I would be a BA who knows what it is to be on the receiving end of requirements.
Good experience with Agile/ etc

[MyUserName]

20+ Years experience understanding and implementing requirements. Some of that was spent defining requirements too (although more recent years mostly dev tech as a contractor).
With that comes an understanding of what developers need. I would be a BA who knows what it is to be on the receiving end of requirements.
Good experience with Agile/ etc

The issue would be that you do not have any BA experience. Regardless of how you dress up your previous roles your competitors are likely to have that experience and send your cv to the bin.

[Hapax]

http://forums.contractoruk.com/busin...ml#post2188638

[SimonMac]

After 20 odd years as a developer I have made a decision to move on from it.
In short, I don't want to spend the rest of my working career chasing the latest javascript framework and the technical churn of dev tech.

I am planning on moving to BA a type role, even if it means going back to perm (blasphemous on here I know )

Anyone else made this kind of move out of dev?

Is it worth me doing something like the ISEB/BCS foundation course in BA?
If I do that is it possible I could land a contract as opposed to defecting to permiedom?

I made the switch from a ops techie role to a service management role, some tips I have is that firstly it is possible, but you need to be flexible in the roles you take, go for smaller projects where people where many hats, certs might help but real world experience is the key. Rather than going "sidewards" from Dev to BA, why not think about going up? Dev to Architect, less hands on techie, more analysis of where technology is going, proactive rather than reacting to changes in tech that has already been made.

PS. Nothing wrong with saying RIP to your contracting career (Re-skill In Permiedom) it's possible, I didn't take to it when I was offered a permie gig, so went back to contracting and tried to reskill in the way I mentioned above, took a few extra years but I got there in the end

[hgllgh]

Rather than going "sidewards" from Dev to BA, why not think about going up? Dev to Architect, less hands on techie, more analysis of where technology is going, proactive rather than reacting to changes in tech that has already been made.

I thought about that, but the TA's I have worked with recently were mostly working on API design and figuring how to use an existing API. So not sure I want that, but also my networking/infrastructure design experience isn't that strong. A lot of my roles have been straight dev as opposed to tech design. However as you say it may still be a good sidewards stopgap.
Thanks for the advice

[Hobosapien]

Have a look back through those 20 years of experience and see which dev tech you enjoyed using. Then position yourself in that niche where there is fewer resource available each year (as they retire/die/move on to newer 'better' tech). The rates may even go up if it's a critical enough system not easily replaced due to how complex they've integrated all their systems.

That's my plan rather than keep running around the hamster wheel of tech churn with all the newbies.

Or stick with the current tech and get ahead of the curve by seeing what's coming and get in on the beta pre-releases.

[TomK]

I'd think long and hard before you make the move. I moved from dev to BA for similar reasons. I loved coding, but lost interest in keeping up with the latest technologies.

After almost 2 years as a BA I'm trying to get back into dev.

I find myself constantly attending pointless meetings, writing pointless documents, getting far more involved in project politics than I care to and generally having a pretty miserable time. BAs don't seem to get any respect, most devs won't give you the time of day and there's very little job satisfaction.

This won't be the case everywhere, but has certainly been the case in the 3 BA contracts I've undertaken.