Who would you work for ?

So recently this question has been posed to me quite a few times, but in a more generalized way. The question being would you prefer to work for a software development company or any other company that has a IT department as a software developer.

From the start to some people it might seem like a pretty easy question. For one i think it depends mostly on your end game , do you want to be the ultimate software developer or do you want to specialize in a certain business field. Also are you looking to build up experience or are you looking for the best payout.

While its almost always better to work for a Software development Company as they understand the needs of a developer and can usually provide most of the tools without much of a fuss. It sometimes makes better sense to work for a normal company that has a IT department if you don’t have much experience and want to learn how things are done. You will also find that most of the time normal companies are not able to judge developers very accurately and as such you can end up getting over paid or as in most cases underpaid.

The other service that development companies can provide that normal companies usually don’t is training. Any development company knows how to plan in advance for developer training so that they don’t fall behind in their respective fields. To them this makes good business sense since a better equipped developer is a more productive developer. On the other hand normal companies dont always see the need for this , to them its just a extra expense they can save on , because surely if you can program now they you should be able to program in the future as well. Some time you may get lucky in that the budget given to your department is so big that it would allow for training anyway, in this case the developer benefits a lot since they can choose what they want to study.

The obvious advantage to working for a normal company is that you get experience building applications for the field that they work in and you also gain a greater understanding into how the business works. Using this information you can start up your own company and develop applications that would benefit that specific sector.

As always it usually depends on where you see yourself in the future , do you want to have your own business or are you content working for a salary each month. Also if you prefer working for a salary ,do you work because you like it or because you heard its where the money is.

I personally love what i do and the earning of money is just there to pay of bills and not a carrot that i need to keep on chasing.

~stalkerh