[CLUE-Talk] Promote yourself...

[Jeffery Cann]

Grant

Have you talked with your boss about your unwillingness move into a manger 
slot?   Most managers do not want to train their replacement and then promote 
that person if the candidate is not interested.  The result will be an 
unhappy and unproductive new manager.  If the new manager is hard-core tech, 
they will often just leave the company because they want to remain technical. 
 So, then the old manager has to return to his previous job until a new 
candidate comes from outside, or he trains another replacement.  A savvy 
manager want to avoid any of this BS, so this is why it's important to 
communicate your career goals.

One of the problems we have at S&P is that few techies want to move into 
management.  At such a large company, the softer skills (aka people skills) 
are important and most techs want nothing to do with it.  In fact, I have 
seen two excellent engineers get promoted and then squashed because they 
could not deal with the politics.  They had little interest (or the people 
skills necessary for the job), became totally unhappy and then left the 
company.

Personally, I would rather have a few senior engineers on my team that I 
trust and that have a good track record and tenure with the company.  A 
manager is only as good as the talent of his team, so a smart manager will 
horde guys like you who are good techs and want to stay that way!  It will 
only keep your boss in the enviable position of having 'too much talent on 
the team'.

Later,
Jeff

On Monday 11 February 2002 12:30 pm, Grant Johnson wrote:
> But I don't want to be promoted, and I don't want to start doing a
> crappy job to avoid it.  I want to stay techie, and not go into middle
> management hell for more stress, more hours, and less money.  Any ideas?
>
> Kevin Cullis wrote:
> >Thought you all might like to see this.
> >
> >Kevin
> >
> >Promotability Index
> >
> >http://www.dauten.com/pi/
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