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Career Change - how and why?
- Thread starter RustyPrincess
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My manager develops software as well, not that he is any good at it but it kind of keeps him busy. Not a good manager (too soft, avoids conflict as much as possible so you can forget about career growth and promotions over here) or a good developer, nothing to stimulate him really, he is just waiting to retire in 2 years time.
jman
Expert Member
Nice, good luck!
Well... There is someone that went from putting PC's together, to sap consultant, to manager in less than 10 years and he didn't even have qualifications.
Mastering "Sweet talk" is a wonderful skill when working in a corp. Career growth is insane in comparison to people that actually studied and worked hard. This is at least what I've seen with where I'm at.
Messugga
Honorary Master
Agreed. About 10 years ago I came to the conclusion that I would need at least 2x the compensation to do management again.. I was able to move companies and move from management back to hands on, for a good increase to boot!.
I'm stupidly overpaid for what I do. Many management level people are, I think.
Would take a cut for telecommuting, better hours or just more free time in general, provided the work is mentally stimulating enough. It's tough to swing. May decide to stop the 9-5 thing and take up consulting independently.
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RedViking
Nord of the South
They usually pay you for time. Most managers I know are never home, and if they are they have to worry about the next day.... I guess that is why they pay so much. They kind of sell their families for they jobs, and convince themselves it is all for them.
This has happened to me, sort of. Sometimes a company makes the mistake of taking someone who is amazing at technical and promoting them above the point they are good at, I.E they get them to manage technical people.
I am not sure if i fall in that category, but I feel I am better hands on than managing.
I now have a career choice to become pure management and made technical decisions without any hands on work, and that scares me. You lose touch with what works in the real world, and management is easier to get rid of than the technical guys, but the pay and hours are just so much better
jman
Expert Member
I'm looking to do TOGAF certification this year. Currently a BA with an eye on possibly moving to solution architecture or something along those lines
Sinbad
Honorary Master
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I don't know about the pay being better... I was pretty well remunerated as a tech.
Lucky my company has given me a lot of support in the transition so the gaps in my abilities are being filled.
Tech for most of my peers only pays well if they are somewhere that pays overtime. I got paid pretty well in the technical field, but management usually includes extra's like proper bonus structures, shares etc which makes things much more lucrative.
Wut
Executive Member
Web Developer -> Teacher -> Pilot -> Teacher/Developer
I studied Computer Science and worked as a PHP developer for a few years before moving overseas to teach Computer Science. Came back to SA and sort of fell into flying by luck, qualified but found it would take forever to start earning a decent salary so I went back to teaching to pay the bills. Now I'm teaching full-time, but doing some PHP development work in my free time.
I studied Computer Science and worked as a PHP developer for a few years before moving overseas to teach Computer Science. Came back to SA and sort of fell into flying by luck, qualified but found it would take forever to start earning a decent salary so I went back to teaching to pay the bills. Now I'm teaching full-time, but doing some PHP development work in my free time.
dealing with other people's problems is not a career, its a chore
I've found it to be a mixed bag - very much a company culture thing. At my previous company, it was hard to progress outside of management, so I eventually became a manager. Where I am now, I am fairly sure I get paid more than the vast majority of managers.
Are you in SA? (I seem to recall that you may have been in Germany?). SA usually has more of a "management > hands-on" than most countries.
To anybody who feels that moving to management is their only option - perhaps try it, and if you don't like it, move - there are almost certainly other options out there. Even my previous company would allow managers to move back to hands-on work if they wanted, and they typically didn't take a cut to do so.
I find it interesting that this is the case in South Africa. You are right, managers are seen as more competent and valuable than developers. I have met people who became CAs and were senior managers by age 25. I'm like, how can you be a senior manager at age 25? It just doesn't make sense!
Google has something like 11 levels for engineers. I think they call them L1 to L11 or something? So, you can stay an engineer and progress pretty far into google, although arguably more of your time may be spent on management duties at higher levels. I am not sure. But you would be expected to have expert level technical knowledge at the higher levels. You don't get to Google Senior Fellow by getting a CS degree and then an MBA. You would need to have expert technical knowledge as well as managerial aptitude (I believe, could be wrong).
Here in South Africa, I never get the feeling like developers are really valued. Even while companies acknowledge their scarcity, they don't seem to either be proactive in hiring new developers or conscientious about retaining those already working for them. Very old fashioned mindset I think.
While managers may be seen as more competent and valuable than developers, I'm coming to the opposite conclusion.
In my previous company in europe a team lead would need the necessary training and qualifications. Like wise for a manager.
Here it seems you just grow into the position, whether you have the skill set or not. SOME people have the natural talent for it, but not everyone is cut out to be a leader.
In my previous company in europe a team lead would need the necessary training and qualifications. Like wise for a manager.
Here it seems you just grow into the position, whether you have the skill set or not. SOME people have the natural talent for it, but not everyone is cut out to be a leader.
I see it as, if someone remains in a team for a long team, looking after a specific system, they eventually becomes managers because of their wealth of knowledge of the system.
So at the end of the day, we have managers that are technically strong but not "Soft Skill" strong based on the soft skills that is required to be a manager.
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I always compare software development to the legal profession.
In the legal profession, you do get managers, but none of them are "just" managers. They all started as candidate attorneys and climbed the ranks to become associates and partners. You will never ever find a project manager at a law firm who does not have a law degree.
Compare that to software development - it is routine to have software developers be managed by people who are completely lacking in any technical qualification or experience. In fact, having technical ability in some cases prevents you from becoming a manager, because you are seen as valuable for your code output and not for your managerial skill or business acumen.
Anyway, regarding career changes.
I am busy doing two things, of which either one may become a career change.
I am studying data science and machine learning part time. I have chatted with my boss, and the plan is for me to study data science and machine learning a bit more and then see if we can come up with some ideas of how they might help our company. Then I will slowly transition away from development to more of a data science/machine learning role. I know that data science and machine learning are different - right now I aim to study both and then see which one I prefer.
And I am also writing a novel. I hope to publish that later this year. Chances are low that this first novel would be my breakout novel, but one needs to learn how to write somehow. Maybe my first novel will be a stinker, my second novel will stink a little less, and then perhaps eventually I can become a full time novelist.
In the legal profession, you do get managers, but none of them are "just" managers. They all started as candidate attorneys and climbed the ranks to become associates and partners. You will never ever find a project manager at a law firm who does not have a law degree.
Compare that to software development - it is routine to have software developers be managed by people who are completely lacking in any technical qualification or experience. In fact, having technical ability in some cases prevents you from becoming a manager, because you are seen as valuable for your code output and not for your managerial skill or business acumen.
Anyway, regarding career changes.
I am busy doing two things, of which either one may become a career change.
I am studying data science and machine learning part time. I have chatted with my boss, and the plan is for me to study data science and machine learning a bit more and then see if we can come up with some ideas of how they might help our company. Then I will slowly transition away from development to more of a data science/machine learning role. I know that data science and machine learning are different - right now I aim to study both and then see which one I prefer.
And I am also writing a novel. I hope to publish that later this year. Chances are low that this first novel would be my breakout novel, but one needs to learn how to write somehow. Maybe my first novel will be a stinker, my second novel will stink a little less, and then perhaps eventually I can become a full time novelist.
You may find this summary of the levels at a bunch of the big firms interesting:
https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Microsoft,Google&track=Software%20Engineer
At many of them you can do just fine as an engineer, and there are standard engineering categories that run parallel to director level management. Usually levels above principal or senior principal (when available) don't have set income bands, and engineers typically aren't hired in at those levels (e.g., a very high up engineer would typically come in as a principal engineer, and eventually become distinguished or a fellow). Usually the requirements for a fellow/senior-fellow are top engineering performance 20+ years, or being a lead engineer shortly after the company was founded (e.g., Jeff Dean at Google - L11). Senior Principal at Amazon has a cap of $800k (usually $600k-$800k), and a Principal Engineer at Google is ~$1M/y. (BTW, these are typically within the top 1% before anyone things it's common place
).Having this kind of opportunity as an engineer helps avoid the "I'm not a manager, but it's the only way to move my career forward" trap. In SA I never really got a sense that there was much room above Senior Software Engineer - even though in SA, an "Architect" tends to be a higher level, it often becomes way less technical than the higher level engineering roles elsewhere, and even then it is still often just short or on par with lower level management roles (where at Google, the typical engineering manager makes approximately a third of what a principal engineer would make).
You are right about managerial aptitude - at the high level engineers typically either lead a team, or are the core nexus or driving force between a large cross team collaboration. Most people at these levels spend most of their time coding or doing research, but for some there are often periods of months where they hardly code at all (during the planning phase of a project for example).