We need a Developer's Pride Day

Every time I am looking for a senior developer is the same.

Is as if you have been a developer for four years you can't be a developer any more. Now you have to be a team manager, a lead developer, or a presales consultant and anything less than that is a shame for you and your career. Why a developer is less than a team manager? Can anyone explain that to me?

How come anyone with four years of experience can claim they are so experienced that they don't want to code any more?

I remember once I was hiring for a developer role in Madrid and a guy looking for his first job after the university told me he wouldn't code because he was an engineer. I was puzzled... I went to the university to learn how to code properly...

To me is as if a footballers didn't care about playing football because he just wanted to be a coach.

How do you think you are going to be able to tell people what to do and how to do it if you don't know yourself because you never cared?

Managers are necessary but it looks to me like people think a developer is the byproduct of a manager.

Let me tell you something, a developer is not a guy who wasn't good at anything else and he had to settle for being ignored in a corner of an remote office. Being a developer takes more than most people think.

In my case I have been a developer for seven years, that's professionally only. I have been developing for the sheer pleasure of doing it since I was 9 and I got my MSX HB-20P and after all this time I feel like I have just scratched the surface of what development is.

I have seen good developers working and they really make a difference. The amount of knowledge they amass is impressive as well as clarity on their thoughts and the elegance of the code they deliver.

They are artists, and a very impressive kind of artists. They can deliver every day, they manage the pressure they overcome an infinite number of issues learning from them and improving their code and their environments to make sure they won't have those issues again (nor any of their team mates)

Great developers are generous with their knowledge, ask them about what they do and you'll be probably overwhelmed about the amount of details and insights they'll provide. They don't hide what they know from anyone, they love sharing. There's so much to learn and so little time.

You don't get that kind of expertise in a couple of years, it takes a whole life of effort to become a real expert in this field. And if we don't change our mindset about what a coder is the amount of good developers we are going to have in the future is going to be ridiculous.

If you are a developer take pride in what you do. An engineer with an infinite number of pieces to choose from. A general with an infinite number of soldiers doing exactly what you tell them to do.You are the maker.

We, developers, need to improve the way we think about ourselves, we need to improve the way companies look at us.

We need a Developer's Pride Day.

If you love learning new tricks, if you love it when a class does exactly what you want and how beautiful is the way you made it do it. If you love to improve the code in every iteration or if you manage to change a method, improve it by an order of complexity and feel the happiest guy. If you love coding... Don't change.

We need you to be a developer. The world needs you to become a great developer. The world needs you to improve it.

And that takes time.