Risks in career of a software engineer

Introduction
Any commercial organization has many share and stake holders. Each one has its own expectation from it. In attempt to meet those expectations organization faces many risks. Many organizations have disappointed the various stake holders and even failed because they mismanaged the risk.

An individual career has many similarities with an organization. Similar to an organization it has many stake holders. Each one has its own expectation. AND, like any organization, career of an individual faces many risk which if mismanaged can lead to dissatisfaction among its stake holders. In many cases those dissatisfaction easily get transferred to the individual. In fact individual himself can be thought as one of the share holders and which will get dissatisfied if he perceives the return or gain is not sufficient.

Out of many risks (sources of risk) of individual career few are not under the control of individual. Still those can be managed to minimize the possible impact. In this article I will try to identify the various risks involved in the career of a software engineer.

First step toward managing risk will be to identify them. Many of the risk involved in a software career very general which can be found in any career. But few are unique or present in very few other careers.

There are thee main categories of the risk, a typical software engineer faces.

1. Market Risk,

2. Organizational Risk,

3. Operational Risk.

Market Risk
These are the risks which are not under the control of a software engineer. Only way to manage such risks is to align with them. Let’s try to identify key market risk a typical software engineer likely to face.

Technological shift – In days of fast technological change, no technology get time to mature. Most of technologies expire in its teen. Given such scenario a software engineer has no choice but to keep learning the new technologies or let the career expire with the technology.

Technology Upgrade – Risk can also come from just mere major upgrade of the existing technology. Here again you have to learn few new things. But the amount of learning required is much less than when there is a technological shift. Even though it is easier to manage, it is important.

Technological saturation – In the previous section I mentioned that no technology get time to mature. Then how come a technology can saturate. What I meant by technological saturation is that technology is not out of use, but no or very minimal new development is happening. Take the example of COBOL. This technology exists but very little development happens (with respect to other language) happens in COBOL. Because huge investment had already been made in this technology, it will take some amount of time before it disappears completely from the technology horizon. Till such time there will be some activities on those front, but mostly maintenance or minor enhancement. Hence if you don’t mind doing maintenance or minor upgrade, you can live with such technology.

Geographical shift – Every enterprise look to maximize the profit and minimize the cost. So no wonder that lots of activities happening on the outsourcing front. Here one thing is important to keep in mind is that they don’t outsource their identities. They only outsource some of their task with clear objective of do the task in better way while continue to maintain their identity or brand. Here better way could be doing a task in less cost or with higher quality. All enterprise will always strive for the same. Hence if today certain task is outsourced to India, tomorrow it will be outsourced to China. Company will remain same. So what is the solution? Give reason to enterprise to have the task done in you region by providing marginal advantage in terms of quality or cost or some other thing which are important for the enterprise.

Political & Regulatory shift – What if you read in today’s morning new paper that Government has announced to use Linux in all the government sponsored projects. Also it will encourage others to the use of Linux vis-à-vis Windows. In many economies major IT spending comes from Government. It can also influence the private industries to use Linux. What will happen? Over night the requirement for Linux expert will zoom and you might have to run for training institute.

Organizational Risk
Many of the risk faced by a software engineer emanate from the organization he works for. Again it could have different type. Even though a software engineer can not control many of them, but he or she can certainly influence. As in the previous section of Market Risk let’s try to identify some of the risk emanating from organization.

Failure of Product or service– This is very extreme scenario but nevertheless possible. It could be because of many reasons some of them could be beyond the organizations control. Many organizations survive the failure of few of its product or services but some has to down the shutter. You might think why I should I bother about business model of the product or services offered by my organization. This is nothing but trying to be ostrich. In order to mitigate this risk you must understand and discuss the product or service offerings of your organization. Why does your organization think that his product or services will sell? What alternatives are there? How they add values to his customers? Because a customer is not going to buy unless he perceive some value in the product or service.

New competitor of product or service appears – Once you understand the business model of your organization, next step is to know about the competitor of your organization. When you are looking for the competitor first find those who are direct competitor. Then look for potential competitor. Direct competitor is easier to know. Most of the times, clients of your organization will compare product or services offered by your organization with them. Finding the potential competitor is little tough but not impossible. For this you need to understand the niche in which organization operates. Company operating in the same niche but offering different product either vertically or horizontally can potentially see lucrative opportunity in becoming direct competitor. This might not jeopardize your career but can certainly squeeze the profit margin of you organization. This can result in slow or no growth for you in terms of money.

Market for product or service saturates – Many a time for certain product new customer is not there or very difficult to find. It could be possible that product or service has failed. But if product is there for long time then it your product or services are bitten by competition or market has saturated for this. Key attributes of the saturated market is more maintenance work and less new client. If this continues for the quite some time then it means market has saturated.

Shift in organization objective - This could happen when there is major restructuring at the top. Restructuring could be induced by many reasons. It could be merger or takeover or market can induce the organization to enter in to a new market segment with or without remaining into current segment.

Currency fluctuation – This factor become important if major part of your organization’s revenue come from export. Basically your end customer is not in the country of the organization. This is important even if your immediate customer is in the home country. Change in currency conversion rate can reduce the profit margin substantially. Appreciation of home currency can slow down the growth of salary. Not much can be done about it. But appreciation of home currency vis-à-vis customer’s home currency mean that economy of his not doing good enough with respect to your economy. Hence you need to be in look out for reason of change in currency conversion rate.

Operational Risk
Such risks emanates from the fact that all individuals are different from other. Every one has it own style. Role for certain position might not change over period of time. But person who will be playing those roles can keep changing. This can have impact the way role is carried out. If look around you will find that some company are known for its innovation, some for its marketing. Why they are different? Almost every company has more or less similar organizational structure and roles. Every company has a CEO. But outlook of every company differs substantially because people or group of people playing various roles is different. A person can be more aggressive and ambitious or could be moderate. I am calling this operational risk because its affect day to day working of software engineer. Let’s see what are major operational risks?

Cultural shift – This normally happens when top management change. But this could potentially strain you emotionally. Although it is preached to be professional but at the end of day every one is an individual who has certain likes and dislike. In most of the scenarios it is possible to re-adjust your expectation towards your life at work. But if emotional strain remains too high for long time then its time to look for other organization which can provide you the environment you looking for.

Expectation shift – Time to time expectation of an organization from its resources changes. In time when competitor is at neck of your organization, pressure to deliver something which can provide edge will increase. Organization may decide to provide 24x7 services or expect results very fast to beat the competition. Such change in expectation can also strain a software engineer emotionally if he or she is not used to it. Here a software engineer should evaluate overall scenario keeping industry trend in mind.

Change in Boss – Effect of such change is not across organization. It normally remains localized to the team or group. On the surface, role played by new Boss may remain same but style or personality will dictate the day to day life. It is not always possible that style of new Boss matches with every individual in the team or group. In certain case just having a frank talk can resolve the irritations. In Some case just developing slightly different model of interaction can be helpful. But in some extreme case your style can be totally out of phase. Software engineer faced with such a scenario should think of changing the team or organization. People are meat to be different. So there is nothing wrong in not being in resonance with his Boss.

Conclusion
Every individual faces different risk in his or her career typical to is circumstances and there could not be single solution for any of the risk. But in the direction of managing it in a better way, each professional must identify the risk he or she faces. Some of them are discussed above but it is not exhaustive. Best way is to remain attentive to your environment.