I've been in this exact situation four times. Each time I told them I just wanted to be the best techie/programmer/analyst/engineer possible and that although I possessed management skills, I'd done it before and would not do it again.
At three of the companies it was a bluff; they didn't want to lose me and all stayed fine.
At the fourth, they DID fire me. I had a job within a month that paid nearly twice as much and had better working conditions. I later found out (after the company folded six months later) the real reason they dumped me: they were planning some manifestly illegal activities and wanted me on the "inside" rather than in a position where I might ask difficult questions. Their firing me had NO adverse effect on my job hunt. One place wondered aloud why I'd stayed there so long. Evidently the company had gotten a reputation as being run by jerks and idiots. Interviewees were suspect if they'd stayed there more than a year or two, so getting dumped was actually in my favor.
I have never regretted turning down positions I didn't want, and I've been pushed toward them many more times than four. It's just those four that closely match your situation. In the case of the other three companies, I found that they respected me MORE after my refusals. Two of them gave me larger raises than usual immediately, all seemed to place more trust in my judgement afterwards.
There are five Santas: Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, O'Connor and Thomas.
For Republicans, anyway.
Gave away an election, thousands of patronage jobs, any notion of judicial impartiality or restraint, and the concepts of states' rights and every vote counting in a democracy.
...the Compaq Concerto! The best non-server computer Compaq ever made. Designed beautifully: use it a tablet, use it as a normal laptop, attach a monitor to it and you can make annotations on the screen using the laptop...It never found its niche. I still carry one with me when troubleshooting at some client's offices downtown, loaded with diag tools I'll need and many times I've walked into some VIP's office who has the up-to-the-second technological this-week's-wonder and he'll see me operating it with its RF-based pen and he'll say "Where can I get one of those?! Looks like something out of The Jetsons!" and sadly I'll tell him it got discontinued many years ago.
There's a fan club for the Concerto somewhere on the net which has tips for running Linux and Win95 on it. I think that if Compaq were to dust off the molds and fit it up with a color screen and a contemporary processor it would fly high.
And there's no better way to avoid wrist injuries and strain from repeated movements than use a pen on a screen that's responding to you directly.
I wish they were still available! or barring that, some similar design at a reasonable price.
Re:I'm on the march right this minute
on
Death March
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· Score: 2
It looks better on your job history if you jump off the train before it crashes.
I'm glad to say I've never been in a trainwreck and have always warned management what's looming long before jumping.
Loyalty counts, but after a certain point it looks more like foolishness.
Re:A good complement would be
on
Death March
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· Score: 2
Better let the Yanks know that petrol = gas by their lights.
And yes, I really do think they're that ignorant. Any country that would seriously consider voting a dunce like George W. Bush to a leadership position...?
You should vote if you're voting for Gore.
I don't like the guy but Bush will do more to give away what freedom we have left to his sponsors and will probably crash the economy if you believe Alan Greenspan. Bush's potential appointees to the Supreme Court should be enough to terrify anybody into doing everything possible to keep Bush out of office. All we need is a few more decades of bizzaro Supreme Court decisions like money = speech, innocence is no defense against being put to death and the like to ruin what's left of the U.S.
A vote for Nader is a wasted vote. Perot got a party built a few years back and where are the federal matching dollars going? Pat Buchanan? Does he really represent what Perot was pushing years ago? What makes you think Nader will still be alive or in control of his party four years from now? At present, Nader might as well be funded by the Republicans for all the good he's doing for them.
Why is the media going easy on Bush and hammering Gore for things that aren't even true? Take a look at who owns them and who they're supporting.
It's gotta be Gore. This country can't stand another run-up of the national debt for a tax cut for the wealthy and the Supreme Court needs balance, not 3 or 4 more wackos that will sell your rights to the highest bidder. I don't like Gore's policy on guns, but didn't his daddy break his promises about keeping his hands off? Isn't his son the one who said "There should be limits to freedom"? YOURS.
The reason the Star Wars films aren't out on DVD is because the attempts at mastering didn't look good enough to him. The reason he hasn't said that lately is because the sponsors of the DVD format didn't want their format killed by directors saying it didn't look good compared to laserdiscs.
What do you want to be? I'm way past middle-aged and have been in this since Hollerith cards. I'm a techie and I have been a manager and now do NOT put the latter on my resume because as soon as potential employers see it they start slobbering like they've found the Holy Grail. Which maybe they have because I have never never seen someone who is good at both tech and management. Oh, some think they are great at both but inevitably they give short shrift to one or the other and just don't see the problem in themselves. I'm convinced that the skillsets for tech and management are diametrically opposed.
If it's money you want and you're a good guy technically -- really good -- you will probably hurt yourself by going into management. I make more than my boss and his boss and because of the pay I get it's in their best interests not to bother me with trivialities. Good techs are replaced much less often than managers; if you know that you can exploit it to get the money, tools and assignments you want.
As I said, I did a stint as a manager and according to my boss and most people I managed, I wasn't bad. I could've been better, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. The guy who said in his comment that you should do the management job so you could do what you really wanted to do (code) in your off-hours is just silly. It's much nicer to do what you want to do and get paid for it.
One thing you say makes me suspect your bosses haven't got the best motives: that you'll only have to spend 20% of your time doing management tasks. Malarkey. What you describe will consume at least 75% - 95% of your time, probably with a median of 80% or so. Are they deluded or lying to you? Either way, something's wrong here.
We set up a test LAN with a PDC, BDC, and three workstations. After 50 days of testing, tweaking and reinstalling we decided to abandon any notions of W2K upgrades until Microsoft has some more time to work out the bugs.
If their products continue to deteriorate at the present rate, Microsoft will be removed from our business.
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I've been in this exact situation four times. Each time I told them I just wanted to be the best techie/programmer/analyst/engineer possible and that although I possessed management skills, I'd done it before and would not do it again.
At three of the companies it was a bluff; they didn't want to lose me and all stayed fine.
At the fourth, they DID fire me. I had a job within a month that paid nearly twice as much and had better working conditions. I later found out (after the company folded six months later) the real reason they dumped me: they were planning some manifestly illegal activities and wanted me on the "inside" rather than in a position where I might ask difficult questions. Their firing me had NO adverse effect on my job hunt. One place wondered aloud why I'd stayed there so long. Evidently the company had gotten a reputation as being run by jerks and idiots. Interviewees were suspect if they'd stayed there more than a year or two, so getting dumped was actually in my favor.
I have never regretted turning down positions I didn't want, and I've been pushed toward them many more times than four. It's just those four that closely match your situation. In the case of the other three companies, I found that they respected me MORE after my refusals. Two of them gave me larger raises than usual immediately, all seemed to place more trust in my judgement afterwards.
There are five Santas: Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, O'Connor and Thomas.
For Republicans, anyway.
Gave away an election, thousands of patronage jobs, any notion of judicial impartiality or restraint, and the concepts of states' rights and every vote counting in a democracy.
...the Compaq Concerto! The best non-server computer Compaq ever made. Designed beautifully: use it a tablet, use it as a normal laptop, attach a monitor to it and you can make annotations on the screen using the laptop...It never found its niche. I still carry one with me when troubleshooting at some client's offices downtown, loaded with diag tools I'll need and many times I've walked into some VIP's office who has the up-to-the-second technological this-week's-wonder and he'll see me operating it with its RF-based pen and he'll say "Where can I get one of those?! Looks like something out of The Jetsons!" and sadly I'll tell him it got discontinued many years ago.
There's a fan club for the Concerto somewhere on the net which has tips for running Linux and Win95 on it. I think that if Compaq were to dust off the molds and fit it up with a color screen and a contemporary processor it would fly high.
And there's no better way to avoid wrist injuries and strain from repeated movements than use a pen on a screen that's responding to you directly.
I wish they were still available! or barring that, some similar design at a reasonable price.
It looks better on your job history if you jump off the train before it crashes.
I'm glad to say I've never been in a trainwreck and have always warned management what's looming long before jumping.
Loyalty counts, but after a certain point it looks more like foolishness.
Better let the Yanks know that petrol = gas by their lights.
And yes, I really do think they're that ignorant. Any country that would seriously consider voting a dunce like George W. Bush to a leadership position...?
Having the best Directory Services in the industry didn't save Banyan. Why should NDS save Novell?
If quality of technology counted for much in this business, Windows wouldn't've made it past version 1.03b.
You should vote if you're voting for Gore.
I don't like the guy but Bush will do more to give away what freedom we have left to his sponsors and will probably crash the economy if you believe Alan Greenspan. Bush's potential appointees to the Supreme Court should be enough to terrify anybody into doing everything possible to keep Bush out of office. All we need is a few more decades of bizzaro Supreme Court decisions like money = speech, innocence is no defense against being put to death and the like to ruin what's left of the U.S.
A vote for Nader is a wasted vote. Perot got a party built a few years back and where are the federal matching dollars going? Pat Buchanan? Does he really represent what Perot was pushing years ago? What makes you think Nader will still be alive or in control of his party four years from now? At present, Nader might as well be funded by the Republicans for all the good he's doing for them.
Why is the media going easy on Bush and hammering Gore for things that aren't even true? Take a look at who owns them and who they're supporting.
It's gotta be Gore. This country can't stand another run-up of the national debt for a tax cut for the wealthy and the Supreme Court needs balance, not 3 or 4 more wackos that will sell your rights to the highest bidder. I don't like Gore's policy on guns, but didn't his daddy break his promises about keeping his hands off? Isn't his son the one who said "There should be limits to freedom"? YOURS.
The reason the Star Wars films aren't out on DVD is because the attempts at mastering didn't look good enough to him. The reason he hasn't said that lately is because the sponsors of the DVD format didn't want their format killed by directors saying it didn't look good compared to laserdiscs.
Should you do it?
What do you want to be? I'm way past middle-aged and have been in this since Hollerith cards. I'm a techie and I have been a manager and now do NOT put the latter on my resume because as soon as potential employers see it they start slobbering like they've found the Holy Grail. Which maybe they have because I have never never seen someone who is good at both tech and management. Oh, some think they are great at both but inevitably they give short shrift to one or the other and just don't see the problem in themselves. I'm convinced that the skillsets for tech and management are diametrically opposed.
If it's money you want and you're a good guy technically -- really good -- you will probably hurt yourself by going into management. I make more than my boss and his boss and because of the pay I get it's in their best interests not to bother me with trivialities. Good techs are replaced much less often than managers; if you know that you can exploit it to get the money, tools and assignments you want.
As I said, I did a stint as a manager and according to my boss and most people I managed, I wasn't bad. I could've been better, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. The guy who said in his comment that you should do the management job so you could do what you really wanted to do (code) in your off-hours is just silly. It's much nicer to do what you want to do and get paid for it.
One thing you say makes me suspect your bosses haven't got the best motives: that you'll only have to spend 20% of your time doing management tasks. Malarkey. What you describe will consume at least 75% - 95% of your time, probably with a median of 80% or so. Are they deluded or lying to you? Either way, something's wrong here.
We set up a test LAN with a PDC, BDC, and three workstations. After 50 days of testing, tweaking and reinstalling we decided to abandon any notions of W2K upgrades until Microsoft has some more time to work out the bugs.
If their products continue to deteriorate at the present rate, Microsoft will be removed from our business.