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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.
kwsNI