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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?"
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.
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
kwsNI
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.