As a software developer, is it bad if I just want to stay average, get the pay cheque and enjoy my life after work?

I’ll tell you a story. This story is about a developer I worked with a long time ago. Let’s call him Peter.

Peter and I used to be developers of this specific Database and Language system called “FileMaker”. We weren’t true software developers, in the Comp Sci sense, but we had a lot of similar skills.

Peter has a wife, kids (quite a few), and a happy little job with me up in Chicago. It was a good life for us both. The whole company ran off this system, and while it had its stressful moments, it was a pretty sweet gig. We could clock out and go home, and we each had our own lives.

One day the company we worked for decided to try something truly innovative in the industry. Unfortunately, our skills weren’t a good match for that. So they brought in a VB6 guy (this was before .NET) and asked if we could help.

I jumped at the chance, especially as I heard there was this cool framework called .NET coming out shortly that we should try to migrate the project to. Peter sat in the same meeting as me, and said the words that have stuck with me my whole life at this point:

“I’m a FileMaker guy. You want some databases in FileMaker? I’m your guy. I’m not a programmer.”

Nobody minded the comment. The CEO, CTO, and everyone involved just smiled and said “No worries Peter, we have a lot of FileMaker things to do here still!”

Two years went by. I worked my ass off, learning OO, .NET, SQL Server, NHibernate, and all the skills that have given me a solid foundation today.

Peter, meanwhile, was sidelined. All the new projects were in .NET, SQL, and all the cool new stuff came our way. We could do so much more. We could solve so many larger, more complicated problems. So we kept getting the work. He just got the mundane, boring, day-to-day repetitive tasks. Eventually, he left the company because he felt marginalized.

My team grew, I added a good friend who had the same passions as me, and together we spent a lot of nights and weekends teaching ourselves advanced programming concepts, new frameworks, new technologies, new solutions.

We hired front end developers, a back-end developer, and grew our team to a real dev team. We had a real product, making real money, and we spun off a lot of our guys into a consulting firm for a few years before we each went our separate ways.

Today, Peter is still a FileMaker dev, finding it difficult to get jobs. The jobs he gets are marginalized by the Software Dev world we live in today. He’s been let go several times, and he is stuck in the same skillset he had 15+ years ago. I’ve seen his facebook posts, and I feel for the guy. He’s not making nearly as much money as he would if he took the chance to grow his skills and challenge himself every day. He’s struggling to find jobs, and got involved in an MLM (Multi-level-marketing) company to try and hustle some easy cash on the side. He has limited movement within the industry (Not many people need Sr. FileMaker Devs anymore) and he’s stuck in a loop.

That’s what punching in, and punching out gets you in this industry. You can do it, but the consequences long term are severe. The world will pass you by. The industry will move on without you.

It’s an industry that pays lucratively for a reason.
Only you can make the call on what kind of career you want.