After certain amount of time in ones (computer science graduate) life there is a question:
Would you like to continue in Technical Ladder and become an Architect or would you rather like to get into project/people management?
This is a decision almost every Computer Science Graduate have to take in his life one or the other timeframe. As mentioned in profile I have about 15 yrs of Industry experience. Out of this I spent about 10 yrs in hard core technical coding and designing in various languages. I worked right from FORTAN, DBASE till Java/J2EE including Pascal/c/c++.
Ok, enough of giving resume coming to the point, after spending so much time in technical activities and getting bit flavor of people management as well, I felt that for every technical problem there is always (well, almost) a definitive solution i.e. every problem would have definitive steps (1..n) to reach to a solution.
However when it comes to people management, every individual is unique (every child is special), so even though you face similar issues with different individuals probably approach that has be taken to resolve will be different.
At times even though you would face same situation with the same individual but you would have to deal with it differently in different times. (imagine convincing wife in good mood Vs Bad mood).
So from my perspective I feel it becomes fun and challenging at the same time when one is into people management Vs technical ladder.
Thoughts/comments?
Nitin
Completely Agree. BTW, there is a third option of being a developer all your life. It really comes down to what gives you contentment. I know of some individuals who have been developers for the last 20 years or so and absolutely love it.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I hope you don't underestimate the challenges in technologies. Taking your analogy, one could write an application that would work fine on one machine but would refuse to work on another :)
-Tarun
http://tarunkohli.blogspot.com
Whatever one chooses, the idea should not be to run away from the other for lack of strength in that area. The choice should be based on what you want to do and not on what you are not good in doing.
ReplyDeleteTalking of people management, I find that a few techniology guys want to remain in tech because they can't manage people. But unknowingly, they are doing it all the time - managing expectations of their wife, parents, kids, the staff at home, etc. etc.
http://www.puneetgupt.com