Under: Career, Programmers/By: Will Veic

Look around the office – you don’t see many “old” faces, do you? And there is a reason for that. Software developers have a very short expiry date.

I should know since I was one of them.

Luckily, I managed to change career from software engineer to something completely different.

And I became just another burnout statistic.

Planning For A Short Career

There are always exceptions to the rule, but most developers should plan around having a relatively short career.

Yes, the earning potential is great, but it doesn’t last.

Or, more precisely – you won’t last.

So instead of completely burning out, plan ahead and have an exit strategy. Because, most likely, you’ll need one.

Exit Strategy

That is why having a side project is important.

But at the same time, this side project has to be flexible enough not to interfere with your coding career.

In essence, you don’t want your software development career to suffer because of your side project, AND you don’t want your side project to suffer because of your career.

And the only thing I found so far that can provide such flexibility is blogging:

  • You can do it on the go
  • Don’t need any equipment
  • Traffic can grow regardless of your publishing schedule (something that cannot be said about any social media platform)

The only thing you need to make this work is to learn how to drive traffic to your blog.

And you can read more about it in this article about SEO.