Question for professional developers/designers

[Augmented]

For those of you who do web/programming work as an occupation, and work within a company, how is your company structured?

The reason I ask is that I work in a pretty loose role as an in-house "web developer" - I frequently jump between back-end to graphics to front-end and so on - and, well, the novelty starting to wear a little thin. One of the things I'm interested to know is how widespread it is that people do work in well-defined roles e.g. solely as a graphic designer, a front-end developer, programmer, database etc., and if so, how do you find it?

Hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to pimp out a workforce - I'm not. Just interested to know how other people live .

 

[Ladforce]

Same as you mate I do mostly c++ but also scripting in linux, general maintenance of hardware + setting up networks/servers as well as programming in python,ruby,html, xml, xsl etc pretty much everything but mostly c++. Suits me perfectly as I like to program in c++ the best but its useful to gain a good understanding of many languages.

 

[Gman]

Well in the company I work for were in a team of about 20 or so and each of use makes updates/additions to the companies main product. So each of use depending on what where doing has to manage the front end html and css as well as the backend coding be is vb or c# and then onto stored procedures in the sql database.

Then on top of that there's documentation and source control on what we add/change.

But then there's the other side of things as at the moment most the the current versions change have been implemented and were in the process of bug testing to ensure it can be delivered in a stable condition in the next few weeks.

I think if I was forced to concentrate on one specific thing i.e. html, or the backend coding i'd get bored quite quickly.

 

[arty]

Up until recently, disparate teams working on front end, middle-tier website, middle-tier in-situ, back-end, database development, database operations, infrastructure etc. etc.

My role is basically middle-tier in-situ, and yes, other than some prototyping I'm pretty much exclusively that.

arty

 

[Augmented]

Cheers for the replies, interesting to read .

Suits me perfectly as I like to program in c++ the best but its useful to gain a good understanding of many languages.

True, I can appreciate that. I've learnt a lot from having the freedom to work on lots of different skills and I'm grateful for that. But in the same respect, there's a danger of becoming jack of all trades, master of none in doing so. Not as a blanket rule, just that in not being able to devote yourself to one role, you can perhaps lose out against your peers who do.

I think if I was forced to concentrate on one specific thing i.e. html, or the backend coding i'd get bored quite quickly.

This is a question I've been asking myself that I can't decide my feelings for. I know I get the biggest kick out of doing front-end work, but then having the chance to bum about in Photoshop for a couple of hours making pretty pictures does help the day go along.

 

[Ladforce]

You could argue though that by learning many languages you stop yourself getting into bad habits with one language wheras if only one language is focussed on too heavily then you become set in your ways when there may be better solutions to a particular problem. Using other languages gives different angles on things as they all have different ways of achieving the same thing which could be related back to the one major language. I have only been programming a few years so I could be wrong though hehe

 

[JIMA]

Hi,

At the current time I'm involved in pretty much all aspects of our work from front-end to back-end e.g HTML, Javascript, XML, Java, DB stuff, 4GL, Perl etc. It makes for an interesting though sometimes distracting time, constantly switching from one thing to another. Gives you the opportunity to learn a lot very quickly and means you rarely get bored.

I used to work in an n-tier application where the front-end team was split from the back-end team, each writing in a different language. This wasn't so good as neither team really knew how to do the other's job and didn't have time to learn. And the longer the divide continues the steeper the learning curve becomes to learn the other team's job.

Another bad side to getting too fixed in one area/language is if what you've learnt starts getting "old" and less people start using it that means less opportunities for you until your skill becomes much less useful. Been there, done that, and it can be a major worry. Spreading your skills around means this isn't an issue.

I find it's not often necessary to be a master-coder in any particular language in order to get a neat job done (C/C++ being a possible exception).

Jim

 

[~J~]

Won't go into the company too much, but it's structured as follows:

Me : Backend engine of main products, researching ways to improve the products, general programming of all aspects of the products; accounting, stock, SOP, POP, nominals, etc.

Colleague 1 : Sole SQL Administrator, in charge of optimisations, triggers, stored procedures, indexes and general day-to-day running.

Colleague 2 : Specialises with the programming of the hardware. We supply a 'piece of hardware' that requires communications via the net/telephone lines, BACS, AUDDIS and other lines of communication between customer, supplier and ourselves.

Colleague 3 : General programming of all aspects of software; accounting, stock, SOP, POP, nominals, etc.

That's the main software team. Whilst we each have our own 'forte' we are actively encouraged to learn others 'fortes' in case one person is off. We all take it in turn to have a full-day on telephone support (mine is tomorrow) while someone else is on 'backup'. This way we each get to build rapport with the customers and learn how they use the software, get feedback from them and pool them into fortnightly review meetings.

We also have a web-side to the company comprising of:

1 Sole graphic artist (who also doubles as designer)
1 PHP/SQL Developer (but only deals with simple record handling)
1 HTML/CSS guy who handles templates and designs (also doubles as a PHP/SQL developer as a backup)
1 Overall designer to liase with client needs.

As a general rule, the Windows development and Web-development work as seperate companies and very rarely work together.

Each department is encouraged to learn their colleagues specialist area and the boss is absolutely fantastic when it comes to learning new things (one lad is doing an accountancy course and I'm doing a course in mobile programming for on-truck computing).

For the Windows development team we also have our own specialist group of customers (I'm North of England for obvious reasons), so again I can liase with 'my' clients to see what they want to benefit the company.

It's a great company, we all share knowledge, all share experience and have a fixed role in terms of what we do (in that we're developers), but the range is varied on a regular basis in that one day it could be programming a stock system and the next day something for to count gallons of oil in a north sea oil rig.

 

[robmiller]

I too get shoehorned into the doing-everything type role. It's mainly the result of working for a company whose main concern is design: the main distinction is between design and code, not between front and back-end work.

My main role is still back-end work, but with the occasional delving into presentational HTML and CSS and often server admin stuff too. I really don't mind, though, and I think I'd probably resent some bureaucratic layer where I had to ask someone else to make the changes I wanted. I rather value the freedom I get with it: not sure if that's just the novelty yet to wear off, though!

Essentially though I get paid to work with the various facets of WordPress all day, which is pretty awesome since that's what I used to do all day anyway, heh.