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Resisting the Management Career Path?
RenQuanta asks: "Last August I graduated with my Masters and entered the work force with a very sweet technology job. Since then I've had great success in the projects I've been assigned too and as a consequence, my manager is pushing me into a project leadership role. That's fine, I enjoy the challenge and opportunity, but as time has gone on, I find myself doing more and more "management stuff" and less coding and hacking. That is, I'm spending too much time managing people, planning projects, dealing with customers and vendors. I don't want to spend my career as a manager, but as a technologist. Yet after only nine months in the industry, I realize that anyone with significant technological skill will end up as (at least) a project leader, with people under his/her authority. How do I keep from sliding too far down the path which will lead me to endless administration, financials, monthly letters, and too little technology in my day?"
At the last place I worked for, we got a new slew of management when they realigned the technology departments. One of the questions asked was if Technical people could still expect to get raises when they were making quite a bit of money, had been there for quite a few years, but did not want to move into management. The response was yes, and that if people wouldn't be comfortable in amangement, even if it was thought they would be good management material, they wouldn't be pushed in because they would perform better in a job they liked than a job they didn't.
Mention this to your manaager the next time you talk with him or that he brings up the possibility. Explain that you enjoy working as a Techie, and fel you contribute more from a technical standpoint than from a managerial one. If he's a good manager he'll understand you're better off where you're happy than where the company PHB's think you'd be happy.
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1: Make him extremeley angry at you and not even think of promoting you
2: Keep him in the can, so he won't be able to find the time to promote you.
"It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to be destroyed" --William S. Bourroughs
Okay, so that subject sounds circular.
A project actually has three aspects:
1. the vision/core part of the project (what it does)
2. the peripheral stuff that has to get done (documentation, testing, sub-subfunctions)
3. management tedium (gant charts, whipping the slaves, banging the drum, holding people hostage/accountable)
The key to staying sane is to get yourself into the position of #1 above. You're the one with the talent. Management needs to find you a flunky, who's technically in charge, but whom it is clear you are senior to. Their task will be to do all the stuff that detracts from you being brilliant, and keeping the feel of the project going.
I'm not blowing smoke here. Take game development. Management deals with the tedium, and leaves the core 2-3 people alone to deal with everything. Then there are other people who do the sub-subfunctions. (animate the guns, do enemy AI, create textures, edit sounds.)
Other industries, such as architecture and art, understand that it's the core people (like you) who give the product soul, and turn it into something desireable.
Just grab your manager, and find out if they can get someone to help you with the stuff that takes away from what's most productive for you. Every interruption detracts from the quality of the product, and extends the timeline.
I got this little tidbit of wisdom from one of my professors: The key to never being management is to never explain anything clearly. If you do the technical aspect well but do not explain it clearly to managers and customers they will never promote you. It works.
No offence intended, but this sounds very much like the age old theory of promotion to the level of incompetence. You are currently very good at what you do (technical stuff) therefore you get a promotion. This keeps happening up to the point that you are no longer good at what you do (management), so you no longer get promotions.
:-P
:)
I guess an adjustment on the theory is promotion to the level of insanity - you get promoted up to the point where you go insane because you work is nothing like what you want to do
A while ago, I was working in a very technical, hands-on kind of role. I was head-hunted for a "Technical Manager" role. I jumped at the chance due to a considerable pay rise and the promise of more cool stuff to play with. It started out well, but after about a year, I ended up going through the "we would like you to get more involved with the management" downward spiral. I tried to do it, but ended up snapping and left to go back to the hands-on technical stuff. Much more fun
My copy of The Mythical Man-Month is unfortunately not available, but I remember that Brooks mentioned the system that was in place at IBM when he was there.
The general idea was that you could advance as a manager, or as a technologist. There were equivalent parallel positions at each level, with similarly impressive-sounding names. If someone was transferred from the technology track to the same level on the management track, it was with no increase in salary; but the reverse move did get a raise. The idea was to offset the "management mystique" and remind everyone that the "technologists" were just as important as the "managers".
It may be that some companies are using a similar system today. IBM may still be using it, for that matter, if you want to work for them. This would seem to be a solution to your dilemma. HTH.
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You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
Having been in exactly the position you're in, I sympathise. What I did was to hand in my notice, buy an off-the-shelf company and ring a dozen agaencies saying "I'm available for contract work, here are my skills, this is my rate, I'll mail you a CV". I've never looked back.
Disadvantages: having to look after yourself (if you don't work, you don't get paid), loss of all of those big-company benefits (pension schemes, private health care, company car, paid holidays, sick pay, free training)
Advantages: no office politics, no brown-nosing, significantly better pay, no unpaid overtime (if I work 70 hours a week, I get paid for every one of those seventy hours), no dull jobs (don't fancy a job? don't take it - there'll be another three along before you can blink), long holidays.
It's a little unnerving jumping out of a well-paid job into being a freelancer but there's no shortage of jobs: I've never had to spend more than a week before finding one I fancied. And, since I'm hired as a developer, that's all I do: I go to design meetings, then develop and test code before handing it over to the QA boys. Since I've been hired (at some expense) to do a job, the companies hiring me tend to both resource me well and listen to what I have to say. IMHO, it beats having a career path into a cocked hat.
(Note: I'm based in the UK, YMMV. State and National taxes may apply. Don't give to children under 36 months)
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Cheers
Cheers
Jon
Might I suggest the latest Freshmeat editorial on this subject?
h tml
http://freshmeat.net/news/2000/06/14/960993071.
We need more developers as managers, so the two can relate....
I worked for a year at a company--then I (naively) applied for the "team leader" position. Two years later, I couldn't STAND my job, so I quit (I also couldn't stand some of my coworkers, the benefits had gone downhill, the company was getting stupider by the minute).
I've been where I am now for 6 months and I love it. But people have already called me the "project leader"--the former project leader was laid off (for other reasons) and I'm the only one who is "coming up with ideas". With any luck I'll be able to dodge that bullet by coming up with some boneheaded plans.
I agree with others' assessment that the Peter Principle is at work here (you get promoted to your level of incompetence), but I think there's more than that for technologist positions: buffers.
Most non-technical managers HATE managing technical people (let's not speculate why for now). So they figure "I'll promote one of those programmers to be a 'team leader'--that'll turn him to the dark side just enough we'll be able to talk AND I won't have to deal with the rest of them."
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kwsNI
IBM just seems to do shit right. I ask myself how can a company be that huge and still be able to provide a replacement part for an old PS/2 computer ??? Mind you they might want a million dollars for it, but in general, they seem to be a very well run company. I'm impressed at this type of a solution at IBM. Obviously the two tracks won't peer up to the CEO level, but I think this is a very cool move for a company. I guess a company of IBMs size can afford to do nifty things with it's large workforce as well. -Pete
And make sure you like it. If you do, you should be a consultant or work for a company with a strong technology track.
Otherwise look at management as an opportunity to grow and have a larger impact on things. A great manager can have a massive impact on the work and lives of the people around him/her.
Keep in mind too that you may be sick of staying up to date with technology ten years from now, when Perl will be a distant memory like Forth and Token Ring.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
This is a common problem, and part of the reason for the depressing statistic that the average programmer only programs for 5 years, before they
1)Move up to management, or
2)Quit the field!
There are some companies that do have a technical track, where project managers and technical leads are different, and there are some departments where this happens on an un-offical way. You have to look for one of these jobs. I'm in the later. My Team lead describes me to anyone as "Sr Designer and Development DBA"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
There a theory about this exact thing:
(I don't remember the name of the inventor)
It says that as long as you are good at the level at which you work, you are going to climb in your enterprise.
But as soon as you are less efficient, you won't climb anymore and stay at this level for a long time.
So most business end up with management staff just being one level too high for their abilities, completely wasting human resources...
If someone remember who said this, please give the author the credits he deserves...
one guy I worked with was rpomoted to manager like you say. At the time he was going back to school for is MBA. He soon discovered that while he wasn't a bad manage (at least not worse then others) he didn't like that work. He had to quit, and work for a diferent company for a year. Now that he is back (the other company went belly up) he is continually fighting moves to management. His personality makes him an obvious choice for management to those above him so they always offer him any management jobs. He won't take them, but his personality leads him to being a technical lead on some difficult issues that we would prefer to ignore as long as possibal if noone was pushing them.
So really all you can do is tell your boss that you want a technical position. Then the next time a position opens up, transfer to it quickly. Make it clear that your goal is to do that transfer though.
My current boss has made the transition technical->management and back several times as the need arises.
In the lower managemetn levels pay is about the same. If your goal is to get more pay then a technical worker you should take the management track, and then figgure out how to get a title like "director of", "vice president of", or something else fancy sounding. You won't get the big bucks though until your position is several levels removed from the technical side. My boss sees through me technical problems all the time. his boss should never see technical problems.
I can relate to many of the stories posted in this thread. At my last job (with a large company), I witnissed a good friend in his transformation from technical to management roles. I then realized that I, too, was being pushed more and more into managerial roles ... weeks went by where I would get nothing accomplished but senseless meetings, reports, and e-mail trails. I looked forward to digging into C code at every opportunity during those days.
One day another job opportunity with a SMALL company (and a solely technical track) landed in my lap and I jumped on it. Since then, I'm proud to say, I've coded every day and made a difference to the bottom line of my new company. When I look back, I'm glad I made the jump.
As to the benefits of being in the management track, my previous experience leads me to believe that even the lowest grade management is financially rewarded far beyond most career technical track employees, with advancements in management grade leading only to absurd levels of financial compensation... but then again, my previous company was nothing more than a glorified old-boys club where 'who' was significantly more important then 'what' you knew.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
Have you told the manager that while you appreciate the "promotion" you really just want to stay a techie? Besides if he's giving you the power to manage the projects, take one of the team members and make them the project manager and just work on the project
...it must be working.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)