I have the luck to work in a software development company where you can work on cross-projects and teams. This is awesome!. However, it also might not be such a good thing when you are assigned to a project slightly or completely out of your career path. In other words, a project you don’t like at all.
On a certain day at the office, I had a short conversation with a coworker. We were talking about the current project we were working on. Both of us had the same feeling and thoughts about it.
Throughout the project, many times we felt lost and stuck on it. The reason was that the project’s stack was a little “old” and that is not such an inducement thing for us. On the contrary, it makes us lose our passion and the ambition to grow.
That is neither a random nor a deliberate fact, the truth is that we are React Developers so work on a stack completely different and even old is not so easy. Sometimes it’s frustrating.
So at some point in our conversation, we discussed the idea to tell our boss our desire to work on another project more aligned with our profile.
Just a few months later, he had the fearlessness to tell his boss and he just was assigned to another project. A new exciting project!. This fact made me think about it and it influenced me to start to write this post.
I know it, my friend. There are many reasons why you are working on that kind of project. Probably you need the money anyway, your job, bring food supply to your family or any other reason.
Despite all of that, I would like to discuss a few facts that are happening under the hood and you are not probably aware of it. I am trying to enlighten a little bit why you shouldn’t work on a project out of your career path.
Time is limited — You must master your craft
Not everyone has the luxury to waste his time on a project which does not add valuable experience to his career path. Even if you have the time you shouldn’t waste it on that kind of project.
When you have clarity about what your path is, you know exactly how important it is to keep the focus on mastering your craft. Your desire to become an expert in your field or area is your most precious treasure. You are aware of having to protect it from everything.
The fast-paced of the software development field is another point you should care about. Because as long as we spend our time on the right projects, they will be a big player for our favor. This way they will play a big role in your success.
You are developing other skills set
You are learning. However, it is not in the direction and stuffs that really matter for your path
I dare to say that more than one will probably say. “Give it a try and you will learn”. Certainly, you have the opportunity to learn a lot from new projects. However, that works perfectly fine when you don’t know where you want to go and who you want to become.
In addition, it will not work fine if your goal is to become an expert in a specific field. What you are doing with that decision is losing valuable time and any single chance to sharpen your desired skills and master your craft.
Working on a project out of your path is to develop new skill sets. This means forget part of what you’ve already learned until that time as well as lose your coding speeding.
Keep in mind that our coding skills work the same as when you play soccer every day. If you don’t practice frequently or even worse deduce to start practicing another sport you will lose the speed and ability you had already gained before. Somehow you “rust” yourself.
You will get stuck several times
Getting stuck is really frustrating. Even more frustrating when you don’t find light anywhere, neither StackOverflow, nor your coworkers, nor forums.
Want it or not you will get stuck for the simple fact you don’t know so much about those stacks. You are playing against yourself.
You shouldn’t work on a project out of your career path. Don’t spend your full potential and time on it. There are high chances you will regret later.
As a matter of fact, on all projects, there are always difficult problems, really dark moments. However, the difference between a project on your path and one out of it is that in the first one you will learn new lessons and those will add value to your experience, on the contrary, the second one won’t. It’s just a waste of time.
In other words, working on a project on your path doesn’t mean everything will be “peasy”. Nevertheless, the burden will be slight and you will have enough reasons to overcome any obstacle along the way.
Closing Thoughts
Not always you will work on exciting projects or on such projects that fit perfectly with your profile. That’s fine. However, if you are now completely aware of where you want to go in your career I think it is the perfect time to make a stop and think a little bit about what we have discussed throughout this post.
Try as much as possible to spend every single minute adding valuable experience to your dreamed-career.
In addition to that, sometimes it is really hard to express that to our bosses. In the end, we get the paycheck based on what we do. Though, that doesn’t mean to not start thinking deeper about this kind of thing.
Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it!
