Career development in software companies

[Gremlin]

Hi,

I'm currently working in outsourcing IT company as a J2EE developer for 3 years already and looking for your advice.

I went through several projects in developer’s role, it was a good experience, but of course I’m thinking about professional growth: to learn new technologies and one day become a team leader.
Now the problem is that of course I have project managers interested in project result, but they don’t care too much about long-term development of employees as they may not see them again after project end. And I have a resource manager who is a kind of responsible for professional growth of resources, but he is not involved into the projects I’m working on and doesn’t know too much about my work results. Project feedbacks doesn’t help him much apparently – I don’t see real input into my professional development from him in any way. So in the end of the day I see a situation when many people including myself works on more or less the same tasks for years and there is no real support in professional growth from the company.

Can you please share your experience on how this work in your companies? I wonder if my company is the only one who works this way or this is a general problem when there is no possibility to keep permanent teams and each project team is created on the fly.

Thank you in advance!

[KevinWorkman]

Every company is different, and oftentimes what you get out of a job depends on you. Sure, if a person shows little progress or interest in other stuff, s/he is less likely to be put on bigger and better, or even just different projects.

What have you done outside of work to advance your knowledge and skill level? What have you done inside work to become more knowledgeable of different projects? You seem to be looking to your manager for advancement, when my advice would be to look to yourself instead.

Or maybe I'm just grouchy.

[Gremlin]

Well, I do several things. Read technical books and papers, do research of new technologies, and I'm always ready to get more complex task in the project. But the problem is that if the next project I get I have to do the same simple things I did on the previous one - some simple gui and trivial business logic, how can I use all the new khowledges without overengineering of simple stuff?
In the end the question is not what I can do to improve - of course the simple is always "do it yourself", but there are other people who could do much better, if they have mechanism supporting their growth. So do you know any career programs like this in the real companies?

[KevinWorkman]

Well, every company is different. What exactly do you want to do? Try putting together a portfolio (like a website with real programs that you wrote), so that you can show your employer (or other employers) what you're capable of. Have you brought any of this up to your supervisors?

[Gremlin]

I did, it helped a little bit, but didn't change the system. Again, I'm not asking about what I can do for my development :) The question is do you know any IT companies where there is a well-defined mechanism working on employees development?