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?"

Comments

Re:You can't say NO

[twilightzero]

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.

Only you can answer this

[onyxruby]

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.

Where I need to be.

[headkase]

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.

Re:You can't say NO

[tarius8105]

Some companies are doing this because they are either planning to do additional offshoring or outsourcing.

Re:Stay away from the dark side!!

[afidel]

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.

Re:Take it as long as they pay you an extra amount

[unformed]

Honestly, I'd rather get paid less than be on call.

Re:You can't say NO

[FooAtWFU]

Technical leads with good experience are employable even now (and probably more so than a few months ago). You might have to consider relocation, and/or a bit of a salary cut, but if the alternative is an unwelcome career shift it could be worth it. Go browse Monster/Dice/etc, see if anything seems to match your experience; don't assume you're trapped, even now.

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.

Re:You can't say NO

[mrrudge]

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.

Re:You can't say NO

[SpaceLifeForm]

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.

Re:Negotiate

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You can't say NO

[JJBird]

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

[assertation]

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.

Re:You can't say NO

[Alpha830RulZ]

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.