Going the technical route or the management route is a choice many programmers face. Is it a good idea to go technological? Is it better to go the management route? In fact, it’s hard to generalize based on your strengths, your past experience, and your current company.
Or most programmers technology route, each management position in the company, after all, not a lot, so people can on management route are limited, however, if you have the opportunity to go management route or traffic management way of thinking, you must have a clear understanding on management positions, to avoid once went up and found that is not the same as you think, It’s back to technology, back and forth.
Today, I will say a few of my personal feelings about the management post, I hope you have a clearer understanding of the management post after reading it, to help you make better decisions. But first, LET me tell you a story.
Xiao Liu is a BAT top student who has worked for three years. However, BAT is so busy with overtime work that he can’t bear it physically. He wants to work in a company that does not work so much overtime. At this time, there is a traditional IT small company to throw olive branch. He doubled his salary and was appointed “technical director” from engineer to lead more than 20 r&d projects. Xiao Liu, who had been squeezed at the bottom for a long time, suddenly became a leader with a high salary. He was so proud that he accepted the Offer happily.
For the first few months, Xiao Liu was very happy. You don’t have to be miserable every day. You just have to assign tasks, report back to work regularly, and have meetings. It feels good to be a leader. Of course, Liu is so preoccupied with communication and trivia that he hardly has time to research technology or write code. Nevertheless, to all the time helpless and painful work overtime to make technology for Xiao Liu, still be immersed in the stage that satisfies lead addiction now, of blind busyness get up.
Small companies, after all, are small companies with limited development and tight-fisted bosses. The boss didn’t give Liu a raise or a year-end bonus in the first year. Liu also did not say what, after all, his salary has just doubled. In the second year, the leader had had enough of the addiction, and Liu began to dislike all kinds of trifles, communication, meetings, and wanted to do technology. But there was no time. Moreover, the technology of small company is very low, also can’t accumulate what technology.
In the second year, the leader gave Liu a small salary increase. At this time, Liu’s salary was lower than that of the students who had been in BAT. At this time, Xiao Liu is a little unbalanced in mind, and intends to job-hopping. His current position is technical director, so the position he expected on his resume was also “technical director,” only to find that there were so many applications and no interviews. He changed his job description to “architect” or “senior developer,” and only got interviews with smaller companies.
The story of xiao Liu, the protagonist, may not be representative, but the problems it reflects are very common. Let’s see what we can learn from this.
Management positions in small companies are not recognized
If you’re in a small, unknown company, don’t lose your skills too early and move into a management position. Because, when you want to change jobs, you will find that management positions in small companies are not recognized by other companies. In fact, only BAT, TMD, a second line and other well-known Internet companies management posts, will be recognized by the outside company.
So, if you work in a management position in a small, anonymous company, then you can only jump from one small company to another. Of course, it’s not bad, but the ceiling is much lower. If you want to move to a bigger company, or a slightly better-known one, you’ll have to downgrade or pick up your skills again. These big companies don’t hire a “technology director” from a small company to run them.
If you’re in a management role, it’s hard to move into a technical role. In my past interviews, I’ve seen a lot of candidates become technical directors at little-known companies and then interview architects. This kind of person technology also lost almost, a lot of technical details are not clear, do not go deep, the probability of the surface is not big.
2. Moving into management means giving up skills
If you move into a management role, be prepared to give up skills. When you’re in management, there’s a lot of trivia. Meetings, project communication, email response, team communication, employee performance, and even reimbursement and group building.
You’re starting out in a management position, but once you get into leadership, you’ll find it fun. But if you’re a tech person, over time, you’ll find it annoying. These things take up all your working hours, leaving you no time to improve your skills. There is less control over the technical details of the project, and you get a sense of insecurity.
If you are a person who loves to research technology, you must be prepared to give up or give up most of your technology before you start management, otherwise, psychologically, it will be difficult.
However, this point is only for middle, senior management posts, in fact, grass-roots management posts rely on technology.
3. Grass-roots management depends on technology
If we make a rough division of management positions in the company, they can be divided into three categories: basic, middle and senior.
Senior positions can be understood as CTO or VP positions, who mainly communicate with THE CEO and formulate technical strategies according to business strategies. The middle level can be understood as the position of technical director, while the second-line management post mainly manages the first-line leader and plays a connecting role, communicating with the top level up and the grass-roots leader down.
Top and middle managers are bound to give up technical details. But the grassroots management post, as a leader of a small team, actually relies on technology. Only good technology can take the lead in “fighting”. If you are just an ordinary engineer now and want to go to the management post, you should first consolidate your skills, because the basic management post is not good in technology, even if you become a leader, it is difficult to convince the public.
If the management is broken down into business management, project management, team management and technical management, the middle and high level pay more attention to business management and team management. And the grass-roots management posts more emphasis on technical management, project management, and technical management is far more important than project management.
4. Most management positions are promoted by technical talent
Many people feel that the leader does not know anything, is to take the team’s results, write PPT, report. Of course, do not exclude some grey-market leaders are like this.
Some leaders do rise to the top in fast – growing companies by going to the dump. However, generally speaking, the leader of the more convinced, are the technology master step by step up, especially in the mature large companies, can sit on the leadership of how much have two brushes. Although I may not be able to pay attention to technical details after becoming a leader, my previous technical accumulation and technical vision are still stronger than ordinary engineers.
On the other hand, if you want to be a comfortable leader, you need to build up your skills to a certain level. If you throw away your skills too early and move into a lower-level management role, you’re going to get worse and worse.
5. The employment of management post is not as good as that of technical post
If you talk to headhunters, there is far more demand for technical positions than managerial ones. Why? You think, a company inside, the management post just how many pits ah, after all, not everyone to be a leader.
But isn’t the salary of managerial position necessarily higher than technical position?
Actually, not necessarily. In many companies, the salaries of technical specialists and architects are comparable to those of technical directors. In terms of job demands, technical experts and architects are much more in demand than technical directors.
Zheng Wang, a former Google engineer, is the author of “The Beauty of Data Structures and Algorithms” and “The Beauty of Design Patterns”. Wechat official account: Xiao Zhengge, follow wechat official account reply PDF, get 100+ pages of Google engineers’ algorithm learning and interview experience sharing.