Technical Ladder Vs Management ladder - Which one is for me? Part 1.

A fundamental question at 4 years of working life. Isn't it? Ok, you may be asking yourself this question at 2 years of job-age or 6 years of job-age. But like it or not, there is no escape. As so many people (mainly job consultants) say, "It's your career and if you don't control it, someone else will."

Am I here to tell you which one is for you? No. Am I going to give an objective comparision of the pros and cons and help you take a decision? No. I assure you that I won't leave you in any better position to decide than now. Hopefully, I would at most make you consider it an important decision with some interesting observations. Still, with me? Good, let's start.

No one can doubt (including myself) that there are n possibilites in which one's career can develop and take a tangible form. But let's not bother about the nitty-gritties and let's discard the rare cases when we are out to discuss the *most probable* career directions. As Joe Marasco says in 'Three Phases of Life':

A simple model that people can understand and apply and that works eighty percent of the time is more useful than a complex and hard to use model that works ninety-five percent of the time.

1. There are those students who get excited by anything and everything that can be called technology. Their career direction is clear right from the begining (even though the career path is to be laid out).

2. And then there are those who find technology unhappening/uninteresting/not-cool/not-my-cup-of-tea. Producing technology is no fun for them, but using and selling is. They go on to become MBAs and the likes.

3. Then there are remaining poor fellows who enter techie job because they have studied technology at college. They are 'out' to make a career in technology without knowing/understanding what career they can make out of it. Whether they are good at it or bad is beside the point. What matters is they are 'in' there without having a clear understanding of why and without a notion of what-next!

Ok. So, they jump into technology with great vigour. They learn a lot of things, produce some good things, shoot the stars off the sky and become valuable to the company and in general, like so many other people, do well in their job. They earn applauds and two ladders are thrown down from the heaven in appreciation of their good work. One is called Technical Ladder and the other Management Ladder.

This marks a turning point in one's career. In my experience, even though the process is gradual and you can see from far that these two ladders lie in your path, you don't notice them. And then one fine day, you suddenly realize that you have got to make a choice.

Before I proceed any further, let me dive into a little bit of economics. Why economics? Because economics is what takes you to office everyday even though you would have preferred sitting on that cozy chair in your living room and sipping beer whole day. You might be tempted to argue that you go to office for doing good work and not for drawing pay-cheque. But the fact is the only reason you go to office to do all the cool work rather than sitting at home and doing even cooler work is that you get paid for going to office. So, you go to office for money and work hard for more money.

That's your side of the story. Let's see from your companies' side. Why is your company paying you money and is willing to pay even more in future? Because for every $X you get from company, the company makes $Y. Let's say (just say) Y == $2X. It could be $1.1X or it could be $11X, but let's say for this particular case, it is $2X.

Now, when would your company be willing to increase X? There may be multiple reasons like fear of losing you (nobody knows/understands your code, your project is close to completion and the company can't afford losing you for some time, X is less than the market rate anyway), you have laid your hands on some trade secrets that the company can't afford going out etc etc. Irrespective of the total number of circumstances, there is one reason that always outshines all others and that is (hold your breath) ... you increase Y!

Hmmm. So, If you increase company's Y, company will increase your X (may not neccessarily be in same order but that's the rough calculation). Even though it sounds all too obvious and dumb, it is the most useful and often forgotten principle of career growth.

Let's take a close look at this principle now, If you were drawing $1 per month, the company was making $2. If you want to draw $2 now, you should help the company make $4. For $4, the company should make $8. So, there are two conclusions that can be drawn:

1. X will increase only if Y increases. Something that we have already established well enough. 2. The increase in Y will be always be a multiple of increase in X. It means if you want 1 more dollar, you'll have to earn 2 more dollars which is 1 more than what you want draw. But that is the case for every single dollar that you want to earn. So, if you want to earn 4 more dollars, the company has to earn 8 more dollars which is 4 more than what you are earning. This is called 'value addition' and is the most widely known and least utilized principle.

This is where the fundamentals of economic theory take back seat and we talk about how they apply in our day-to-day job.

Any techie would go through the typical evolution of Jackie Chan, Bruce Wills and James Bond. When you start working, you are Jackie Chan and are drawing $1. Soon, you learn how you can avoid being beaten up and easily overpower your enemy. You evolve to become Bruce Wills and start drawing $2. After fighting the enemy again and again, you become so adept at it that it becomes a cinch for you. You could kill scores of people just by turning the cap of your pen. All your work looks so perfect and you do it so effortlessly! This is you as James Bond of technology drawing $3 (or may be even $4).

Here you are as The James Bond of technology; perfect and effortless. The biggest challenge facing you now is how do you start drawing $5. You are already close to perfect at your work. So, you can't do it better than you do it now. You are already fast, so, you can't finish your job any faster. Basically, there doesn't seem to be a way for you to increase Y anymore and hence, your X has hit a glass ceiling!!

Fortunately, life is not so harsh. There are still ways to increase that Y but it would require you to take a fresh look at your job description. You can change broad job definition from 'going out in open to kill' to something like 'leading a team of other James Bonds in Making' OR 'developing new techniques of warfare' OR 'strategising a war' on and on.

Let me summarize all this economic sense and its impact on your career. You can't remain a programmer forever if you want to draw more and more money out of your company. You have to move up in the value chain and change your job definition almost as soon as you become good at it. It's a never ending cycle and it hits you for the first time at approximately 4 years of job life.

So, what is it I was talking about? Ah, the career directions for techies OR better still Crossroads at Year 4...

From here, your career can take three general directions (oh, it can take n directions but we'll consider only 3 to keep our model simple):

1. Technology Guru. These are the guys dev teams go to before they start the work on a complex project. They are also highly sought after by teams that completely mess up a project and are trying to figure out ways to fix the mess. All of us have read about them, heard about them, seen them and may be even worked with them. And believe me, not all of them are eccentric and very few of them have pony-tails.

2. Product Management. What if you were to tell James Bond, 'Mr. Bond, you have killed enough enemies. Why don't you now go around the world and meet country leaders/warlords to understand their pain areas. We can then do profitability analysis and develop new products. And you could take the responsibility of getting those products developed and selling them to different countries'? That's product management for techies.

3. Project Management. Much more often than not, it is an outcome of your indecisiveness. Very few people choose to be project manager. Most of them just become one. Why? Because it seems to you the 'natural evolution', though in fact, it is the path of 'least resistance'. You enter job and learn to write code. You get some experience, you learn to write good code. You get more experience, you write twice the code with half the bugs in same timeframe. Then? That's your saturation point. You can't justify increase in that hefty pay-cheque you are already drawing unless you beat your saturation point.

Nobody will ask you to become a technology guru in exchange of pay-rise. You become one out of your own choice (and hard/smart work). Nobody will ask you to get into product management. You get into it out of your own choice (and hard/smart work). So, your company says: Ok, now that you can't do it any better than you are already doing it, why don't you take this bunch of guys who can do it better than they are doing it now and help them out. So, you are given bigger work with some deadlines and you make use of your 'team' to get it done. Which means you listen to their complaints, answer their questions, clarify their doubts, teach them how to do it as good as you can do it, prevent them from leaving, press them for finishing, on and on and on...

I might have made 'Project Management' sound like a terrible thing to do but as a matter of fact it is not at all like that. And some people do choose to get into project management and it is as good a choice as the other two. The only sad aspect of this direction is that most of the people just get into it without realizing that they had a choice AND they could have done something else.

I am at the end of this blog entry now. I am sure (as I stated early on) that after reading this blog, you are in no better position to decide which ladder is for you. Well, that was not the goal and you won't know till you try it out anyway. However, I am sure you now understand that this is a decision you can't avoid unless you don't mind the path of natural evolution and become a project manager (which is, of course, not a bad thing at all).

Going forward, I hope to write some more interesting stuff on this topic. Again, not to help you make a decision but to help you understand what this decision might mean.