In the past I've tended to follow up one big life change with another. In 2007 I got married and then got a new job. In 2010 I had a baby, and now I've gotten a new job again.
So beginning on July 1, I will be a Lead Web Developer within the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Information Systems Division. This marks a pretty fundamental change in my career, as I will be moving from an internet (public) website focus to an intranet (internal, private) website and web application focus. In addition, my current position with the public web group is Senior Web Developer. My new position will be Lead Web Developer.
If that sounds like a big step forward, it is. But it’s not just in terms of compensation. As much as I love working on the public site, the team’s responsibilities are so varied that any kind of working structure is really not possible. There may be senior and lead members on the team, but the developers do not interact with one another in the way that those titles typically dictate—instead, each developer is typically assigned as sole resource on a project, and the lead/senior designation simply acts as a guideline towards the scope of projects one is likely to get. In short, everyone is a generalist, but some are more general than others.
This is contrary to the team structure one usually finds in a development group. But web development by its nature is much more difficult to stratify, and more so within a support group in a very large organization. However it can be done, provided there are very clear objectives about what the team is expected to accomplish, and for whom it is meant to be delivering. The public web world is, alas, far too contentious of an arena for there to be any real success there. It’s simply the nature of the beast in a decentralized organization like a medical center.
And so I move on to the internal website/application world. The team structure on that group is a work in progress, but that’s something! I’m really looking forward to being a part of a team that’s learning its strengths and how best to harness them. It is an exciting opportunity to say the least!
Plus, there are additional benefits in terms of project work—I’ve heard a little bit about the types of things that group will be working on, and some of them sound very cool, with some opportunities to utilize newer technologies and methods. I think having smaller, more precise projects will mean greater opportunity to identify the right platforms and designs for each situation, rather than trying to have everything at once.
All that, and the pay’s pretty good too. After all, I have a family to support!
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