Slashdot Mirror
Saying No To Promotions Away From Tech?
lunchlady55 writes "I have been happily working for my current employer for five years. After moving up the ranks within my department from Intern to Technical Lead, a new manager essentially told me that I have to move into a different role, oriented toward 'administrative duties and management.' We are a 24x7 shop, and will now be required to work five 8-hour days rather than four 10-hour days and be on call during the other two days of the week. Every week. Including holidays. My question is: have any Slashdotters been forced into a non-technical role, and how did it work out? Has anyone said 'No thanks' to this kind of promotion and managed to keep their jobs?"
Unfortunately parent is correct, your chances of turning this down and keeping your current job are very slim. Did your boss give a reason you "have to" move into an administrative role? That sounds a bit fishy to me, and if I were you I might take it up with my 2nd line manager to verify the reasoning behind it.
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
Eventually all things become a "job", so take the most cash you can get and rest peacefully at night knowing you will only be woken up 20 times a year at 3am instead of 100.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Your the only person who can answer one simple question about this "Will this advance a career path that I wish to go down?". If this won't help advance a career path you want, than you should look for an alternative. Perhaps they want to groom you for management, and feel this is a good lead into it? Ask your manager how they see this with regards to your career path and go from there.
Say no thanks, explain to them that you can best serve the company with your interests in the position you are already in for the moment. If they let you go this will demonstrate lack of wisdom on their part and you would be better served by someone new. Although, of course, the transition is never pleasant.
Shh.
Some companies are doing this because they are either planning to do additional offshoring or outsourcing.
An annual review, besides being a great opportunity to get a raise or some additional PTO, is when you should be discussing your plans and goals with your manager. Get this straight, you are not being "forced" to move into management. You can always leave. Your manager values your contribution, and possibly they are in a bind for some management help. If that's the case, offer to take on some management tasks while they interview for a new supervisor. Particularly if this is your first five years of employment, there's nothing wrong with wanting to stay technical, and they should be open to that.
My dad managed to hang on at the top of the engineering ladder at a major oil/chemicals company for about 20 years after the first attempt to promote him, resisting an attempted promotion into the managerial ranks about every 2-4 years. A lot of companies, especially old-style companies, are set up with the assumption that everyone wants to climb out of the "working" ranks into the "management" ranks if they can, perhaps because that was more true when the working ranks involved more physical labor. It got a little easier to "stick" at his desired place when someone managed to dig up some sort of super-senior-engineer ranking that was rarely used, which let them give him a promotion without the usual promotion to management.
If the lower levels of management is okay with it, it can work, and they might even like it. Engineers who "should" be in management are essentially experienced enough to manage themselves, and maybe even de-facto manage a few of othe other team members, which can make the manager look good by making it easier for them to pretend they know what's going on--- at large companies, the lower level of management right above the engineers are often people who rotate in/out of jobs every 5 years or so, usually on a quest to move up the ranks to VP, so they honestly rarely have much idea what's going on or any historical perspective/experience.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Sounds like a nice example of the Peter Principle in action.
Can't you persuade management that (which i assume is part of your problem, apart from the working hours thing) you simply won't be the right person for this job, and that you'd rather keep doing something that you are good at?
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
Wow, the future was never like this in my dreams! ;)
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If you care that Joe came in at 9:05 then you are a wanker manager! Seriously these are IT people, knowledge workers. They can work from basically anywhere, are not necessarily fully productive every hour of every day, and are basically never off work because their mind continues to work on problems (REM sleep is when a ton of creative ideas come up because that's basically when your brain does housecleaning on everything you were doing during the day) when they are not "at work". I came into work late a total of almost 3 hours last week but I also did about 40 hours of reading on a new technology we are implementing from home and my boss knows it. I'm a technical lead/manager and I don't give a toss if my reports ask to work from home a couple days one week because their kid is off from school as long as they get their work done.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Honestly, I'd rather get paid less than be on call.
The unemployment rate of people who have graduated college is still in the low single digits (3 or 4% last I checked) - still well above normal, but hardly devastatingly so. It's the non-college-educated crowd that's well into the double-digits of unemployment, something like 25%... crunch.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Check that it's not an optional move, if it is, then smile, accept and start using those can't-really-sleep-can't-really-go-anywhere-can't-drink hours to look for another job where they hopefully won't do this to you. They should have explained already if they have any respect for you and what you do.
The step to management is barbed, it's very hard to go back once you've stepped out of the firing line for very long.
She clearly doesn't want the management job, which is why she's asking the question. The question is, "Will she be fired" if she turns down the promotion.
First - where are you? In the US, in an at-will state? They can let you go pretty easily. In Canada, with nothing but great reviews (ie no reason to fire you)? Well, you'd get a month of severance for every year you worked at the company, maybe more if you can show you would have a hard time finding an equivalent job, or you are getting on in years. Somewhere in between? YMMV. If it will cost the company 6 months of salary, they will give careful consideration about letting you go.
Have you moved up because you are indispensable? You're a unique snowflake of competence? Well, I doubt they'll let you walk out the door. Are there 10 people in your company that can do what you do? A cog in the machine? They can easily let you go.
If you don't want to take the job (and it sounds like you don't), then review how vital you are to the company, and what it would cost them to lose you (in severance and lost expertise). If you aren't vital, and they can replace you, then you have to be prepared to be let go.
If it will cost them a large severance package, and you are valued and needed, you won't be.
It's due to management believing that if you make X amount of
money, you are supposed to be in management.
Which tells you that the management is bad, and you should
not be working for the losers anyway.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
That's been my experience. They offer promotions up to line management (the lowest level) of people they want to keep, then move to a contract/outsource/offshore model and let the rest go. The 24/7 including holidays on call requirement sounds like something a company would do when they are expecting to have a lot of folk in India doing the technical work.
If that's the company's direction, then I would expect the OP to be let go at some point if he doesn't take the promotion. The company is expecting to be able to replace his technical role with someone cheaper.
As for the managerial side, this is nothing new. If you show a) competence, and b) any signs you don't have a serious attitude problem, it's expected.
I'm fairly sure you have this backwards.
My question is, have any Slashdotters been forced into a non-technical role, and how did it work out?
Badly. I got pushed from the technical lead into a VP position managing that whole end of the business in a mid-cap company. In that role I got pulled into budget battles, which are normal, relationship management with partners, also normal and locked into the quarterly numbers game, which means a lot of meetings with the auditors. Too keep the technical aspects on track we had to bring in a new technical guy. You can see where this is going. I could have fired the new tech guy so I had a job to go back to when we streamlined after the initial development phase but it just didn't seem fair. I got a nice bonus and severance, plus my options were golden, but I essentially worked myself out of a job and was penalized for hiring competent people.
In that scenario you'll be unhappy if you do a bad job or if you do a really, really good job. You'll put in a lot of extra hours, do a lot of extra traveling. There were some perks I miss. The secretary, the expense account, the $1,800 bar tabs, meetings on the golf course, the membership at the club and the options I cashed in. Those eased the pain a bit. But it doesn't sound like you get any of those perks.
Has anyone said 'No thanks' to this kind of promotion and managed to keep their jobs?"
After getting burned the first time, the next gig I went back to being a head down developer and stayed in my office, only coming out for coffee, to urinate and to feed. I built three critical systems and was the only person the client wanted to work with. I was that guy in Office Space. I turned down promotions, turned in paperwork late, stood up mandatory meetings, re-wrote my performance eval when I didn't like it and just generally made the people dumb enough to accept the supervisor positions miserable. Sometimes because I genuinely didn't like them, other times out of a perverse sense of tradition and once because I was being a royal dick. Wish I had that one to do over. But I got away with it.
So all you have to decide is which job would you rather have? As a manager, at some point you're going to be in a position where you either have to dick someone or take a bullet. If you're okay with that decision, then go for it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I second this - it is exactly what happened to me. I was moved so that they could retain me post outsourcing. The wanted to keep senior technical knowledge, but the only slots they were allowed to keep on the org chart were managerial ones. It took 6 months for me to realize that I hated every second of my day in management and leave. I am back to a technical role in another company and loving it. You may be safest to accept the new role and start looking... After going up the ranks like that in one company you are probably comparitively underpaid anyway. Movement between companies, even in this market, is too often needed for equitable compensation increases.
Or, avoid being unemployed by telling them that you _strongly_ prefer your current job, but that you care about the company and want to do what is best for the company, even if it means doing another job.
If they decide to make you a manager anyway, at least you will be drawing a paycheck, instead of unemployment, while you look for a new job.
I'll add...
Good luck with all the shit the indians will be throwing your way...
then, in 5 to 10 years, they'll count again, and figure out that they've been had, and that they spent more repairing all the crap than would have cost them doing the work in house
That's very short-sighted. Maybe his current manager is a complete jerk and deserves it. Even so, the manager isn't the one who will take the pain while they scramble to find somebody to fill his spot. It will be one of the guys he worked with taking on two people's jobs for at least a couple of weeks. And lord help him if he does well at it. He may get stuck at the workload for a long time, since management will have no incentive to hire--they're getting the same work for less money. Then in a few years, when he's looking into a new job, that same guy he screwed over may be in a position to affect whether or not he's hired. A simple "I don't know if we should hire him, he bailed on his last job by quitting with no notice because he was offered a promotion" would be enough to sabotage any chance he had. Quitting without notice would require VERY extenuating circumstances to be acceptable. Like if your manager was killing hookers and storing them in the break room freezer. I'd probably quit without notice then.
You'd be amazed at how many people I used to work with that I've since run into in other jobs, even across the country. I had a boss that I absolutely hated at one job. Even so, I worked hard for him, and gave him 2 weeks notice when it was time for me to move on. 7 years later, I was unemployed and he was able to find me another job.
Alienating anyone in the field is a very bad idea, because it WILL come back to bite you eventually, and you never know who might prove useful down the line.
Bingo. Cleaning up after shoddy Indian sub-contractors has been my bread & butter since May or so.
There is a war going on for your mind.
There's no reason to be immature when you leave a company, whether it's your choice or not. Behave with class even if you're truly pissed, and don't bitch about how pissed off you are/were when you're interviewing either - nobody wants a whiner.
If you leave on good terms, you may be able to use those folks as a reference beyond "Yes, Joe was employed here from 2005 to 2009." If you leave people dealing with a festering pile of crap because you were being pissy, that time range is the *best* you should expect to get, and you may get worse. Remember, just because you're jumping to a new job doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to last. Odds are fair that once you're established in an industry you're going to stay in that industry or a related one because that's where many of your networking contacts are and they'll help you find future jobs. That means you're going to run into people you've worked with in the past.
A friend has closed product development consulting contracts because he did a favor for someone 10 years ago and that now-senior-executive remembered him. Be that remembered person.
If you're being laid off, this is even more important. When a site I was at was closed years back (and I declined the opportunity to relocate), I got thanks for being professional and helpful with closing things down, documenting, etc. I had no problems at all with listing those folks as references, because *they were happy with me.*
Basically if the payoff for being pissy is to make you feel good for 15 minutes, just go have a beer with friends instead. You'll feel just as good, and it may cost you less in the long run.
fencepost
just a little off
My viewpoint is different, I suppose. I'm not independently wealthy, but if I were, you'd still be hard-pressed to get me not to touch a computer for longer than about a week. I *do* like my job, and if something came around that doubled my salary, I probably wouldn't take it unless it was substantially similar to what I'm doing now (IT Consulting...mainly software these days).
I don't work for myself, but my job is more to me than just a means to an end. I like doing it. It not only provides me with money, but it is (mostly) enjoyable and challenging. What does it matter? A lot.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
It only took our company 6 months to figure this out, and they ended up hiring back 400+ people that they had RIF'd. It took Accenture only that long to blow up a 4 month work backlog into a 2 year backlog.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
If you're really good at what you do and like your job, it's time to say no.
Tell them "no", and turn the job down. If they fire you, start your own consulting business.
"Management" is code for "You're responsible when things go wrong" and "On call" is code for "We own you and every molecule of your time." If this is a high profile job, you won't be able to go on vacation or leave town without arranging for coverage, which means that all the major holidays and nice weekends just vanished off your plate.
In fact, as long as I'm on a roll here, "No" is the most valuable word an employee has. Once they know you'll take a stand and won't be a doormat, they'll respect you and will think twice before trying to get you to clean up somebody else's mess. They may also fire you, but the job sucks anyway, so you haven't lost anything.
"We need you to work this weekend."
"No. I don't work weekends"
"We need you to take over this doomed project"
"Sorry, I don't accept projects with little chance of success."
Your life can only suck as much as you're willing to allow it to.
This is based on my limited experience, take it for what it's worth.
There are a lot of very good technical people in India. There's a horde of very cheap technical people in India. I, personally, have noticed no overlap.
It's really hard to judge the quality of subcontractors, particularly at intercontinental distances, until you've worked with them a while. Since the drive to outsource is usually to cut costs, there's a tendency to go low on prices, which pretty much guarantees getting low-end people. I don't know that good US people are any better than good Indian people, but there is a difference between low-end US and low-end Indian.
Of course, once the bad news comes in, managerial reputations are on the line, competent locals have been laid off, perhaps office space has been reallocated, and even if the absolute best thing to do would be to hire back the locals and dump the Indians it's not going to happen fast. Even moving to a better quality of Indian techie will be difficult.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes