Performance Engineering Vs Java Developer

[Sudhanshu Mishra]

Hi All,
I am currently working in an MNC and I am being offered a choice between two roles: performance engineer and java developer.
My goal is to become a technical architect.I have done a little bit of searching for performance engineering and I have come to know that this role requires in-depth knowledge of Java concepts and frameworks(spring etc.) to do code reviews and performance tuning.
Is this information correct?
Considering I take performance engineering, will I still be able to switch to development later if I wish to , i.e will the knowledge and experience of performance engineering help me later in case I wish to switch to development?

Help highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sudhanshu

[Bear Bibeault]

This may not apply to your environment, but my experience is that once someone gets out of development, even into management, it can be hard to get back in.

[Roger Sterling]

+1 Bear's post. Stay in development and specialize in performance.

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

"Performance Engineer" could mean anything. It could mean that you are setting up the infrastructure.. or it could mean that you are doing QA testing the performance. It's more or less a blown up title made to fill a job that is not being filled. Really, you shouldn't have a seperate performance Engineer. If Performance is one of the key concerns in the application, the entire team has to be geared to focus on performance. You cannot have one person dedicated to performance, and expect the application to perform well.

[Deepak Bala]

Considering I take performance engineering, will I still be able to switch to development later if I wish to , i.e will the knowledge and experience of performance engineering help me later in case I wish to switch to development?

It depends on what that term entails. I've worked on improving performance as part of a normal dev cycle, so from my perspective performance engineering involves development (once you narrow down the problem someone usually needs to write code to fix it). Narrowing down the problem also takes some skill and tools.

[Sudhanshu Mishra]

Thanks all for the replies.
Just one last question.
I also need to decide on terms of market value of these two roles, in other words, the more paying job?
This is not the most important factor for me, but still one of the factors to go by .

Thanks,
Sudhanshu

[Roger Sterling]

The higher paying job is the one in higher demand. Pay is relative and sometimes your negotiating skills determine the final outcome. In US, you can expect $60k as a Systems Analyst I, whether you code in PHP or ASP is irrelevant. After you get three years of experience, you might find yourself +20% more.

[Sudhanshu Mishra]

Thanks Roger,
However , your reply is a bit generic
Performance engineering is sort of uncharted water for me .
I would like to ask that among a developer and performance engineer, which one has more weight?

Thanks,
Sudhanshu

[Roger Sterling]

Sudhanshu Mishra wrote:Thanks Roger,
However , your reply is a bit generic
Performance engineering is sort of uncharted water for me .
I would like to ask that among a developer and performance engineer, which one has more weight?

Thanks,
Sudhanshu

Whether one pays more than the other will not be relevant to you until you get experience, at least three years. Until then, both will pay the same since you have no experience in either field. So if one pays $59k and another employer pays $60k, thats only 88 dollars per month more. Does it really make that much of a difference when we're talking hypotheticals anyway ? Have you got an interview yet ?

[Sudhanshu Mishra]

Thanks Roger.
That makes sense.