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by smatija 561 days ago
I think this experience is true if you work in software companies.

I work for a factory maintaining it's existing custom ERP and building new software for it (basically imagine a programmer consultant for 1 costumer just with regular contract). Mix of maintaining legacy code, writing new one and servicing hardware is dynamic enough not to be bored and I have a lot of independence in the job. It's comfy af.
1 comments
masijo 561 days ago
How did you get a job like that? Sounds pretty good
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smatija 561 days ago
Word of mouth.

The point is to realize that almost every non-IT company of certain size (lets say 50-100 employees+) that started before SAP&similiar became popular in your country has large body of custom software and that the guy who built it is probably thinking about retiring.

Minus is of course that most custom software is pretty horrible from code quality standpoint, so you need to have a high tolerance for debuging and that you need to have a little knowledge of everything (specialisation is not possible).

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KeplerBoy 561 days ago
Even if the company has been sold on some SAP or Oracle solution, they always need someone how can customize and take ownership of that stuff.
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MezzoDelCammin 561 days ago
You'd be surprised how many such jobs are there. Mostly not listed though. If my experience is any guide, one generally starts as a temp / consultant and you slowly expand the role from there. There's generally a point some years later where you're almost "too big to fail". Too many small odd jobs that are needed maybe once a year, but when they happen, they are pretty important.
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smatija 561 days ago
Important to note that this too big to fail point occurs very quickly in some cases. Non-IT companies are generally very risk/change averse in regards to their IT infrastucture (and for very good reason, see e.g. [1] and [2]). So if you are capable enough to learn their legacy codebase you will be very quickly the only person worldwide capable of maintaining it.

[1] - https://www.cio.com/article/274138/enterprise-resource-plann...

[2] - https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/06/birmingham_erp_budget...

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