Do you enjoy coding? Would you want to do it until you retire?
Most of the people I met do not subscribe to the idea of Developer-for-life. They aspire to be 'managers' and it doesn't matter what type of manager as long as the title carrries the word 'manager'. Given the ratio of managers to workers in an organization, how many developers actually made it to be a manager?
Hence, for those who could not make it in the industry, they end up as Unit Managers for some MLM company *Hehe*.
I think it is our culture's perception that manager is where the money, power and respect is. Manager is usually associated with big house and big car, the authority to hire-and-fire and the ego-secured feeling of having mah-chais (subordinates).
In reality, it takes more than just old-age, big-salary and experience to be a manager. You need character, leadership and the charm in dealing with people which not many could master. Some managers become just managers for decades - with people under them to command and people above them to please.
Some managers build empires over the years with employees who trust them and would go the extra mile for them. So do you have what it takes to be a manager?
Honestly speaking, I share the idea with a small group of people who believe that developers who are good at what they are doing and would like to stay in their field, should be given the opportunity to grow in their respective field without being penalized with low respect and low salary.
It is an ego issue if a developer earns more than a manager but often people forgets that Directors direct, Managers manage and Developers are the ones doing the work. If a developer screws up, it affects the entire 'food-chain'.
Like all dicipline, a developer's skills gets better over the years. Experienced developers can diasect code faster than the newbies, produce better managed codes and well-architected systems that could benefit the company and customers. Being in the industry for almost a decade now, I can somehow appreciate the coding ability I have.
Most companies believe that once a developer achieve a certain salary range, they should be managing instead of developing. With the same amount of salary, the company can hire many freshies to do it. This is where they failed to see the value in experienced developer. Experienced developers have lower 'learning' and 'training' cost.
Have you observed how young developers start developing their skills. A simple piece of logic may take them 2 to 3 days or even weeks to complete whereas an experienced developer maybe able to do it in an hour - *How long does a manager takes ah?* This is because newbies spend time on learning and that is what the company is paying for.
If you ever inherited systems from other people, you can easily tell their level of skills when they designed it. As developers become more experienced, they are more mature in their design and places emphasis on other issues like maintenance and extensibility as opposed to just passing-up the homework.
But what happens today is that once you are about 5 years or more, it is time for you to be a manager. Your skills die with your journey to management and the industry is filled with mediocre-skilled workforce and failed projects.
Think about it: If every developer becomes a manager, there won't be C# or Java or Delphi today. And if you are a manager who have let go your software development skills, what can you do if you lost your job at the age of 40?
In our society, it does appear that anyone can be a manager. But to be a good manager, that is another story altogether.
6 comments:
Darling, if your boss ask you to come up with a full featured ERP in 1 month, how many years of coding experience you have also no use lah, the project will be mediocre as well.
The problem doesn't just lie with developer experience alone, as long as mister necktie underestimates the efforts required to deliver the project and thinks of your skills as a fast food commodity, everything also back to square one lah.
That is why nobody should call themselves a manager unless they practice something like MSF.
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/articlelink.asp?articleid=1749
That is why nobody should call themselves a manager unless they practice something like MSF.
What has a process framework got to do with 'management' in general? *Hmm...*
Personally, a developer to me is always on a lower rung of an organisation. This is because, there needs something to be developed to justify their existance. Its ok to be a developer for life. But thats all it will be. Nothing more nothing less.
It is also a fact, developer have to work for somebody. Of course, if they work for themselves, they are businessmen/women and no longer fit into the "developer for life".
Neither do contractors/consultants who inherently have to have well rounded knowledge for them to be a strategic value to the organisation.
So, a developer per se, its just a rung in the organisation. But is it wrong to aspire to be one ? No, absolutely not. To some, its not the money they make but the happiness they get out of their work.
Having said that, due to the nature of a developers position in the organisation. They are often expendable. Furthermore, with OUTSOURCING always in the horizion, being a developer alone makes it even less attractive and more of a high risk. One day you could be happily coding, next day some dude in India/China can have your job.
Perhaps this is one reason, why more people tend to look at climbing the corporate ladder as quickly as possible.
Most of my peers are senior managers in Malaysia. On the other hand, those who did stick to their developer jobs have been retrenched, replaced by younger, cheaper developers and more often report to younger managers.
This is also a problem many developers have. Once they reach a certain age in the industry and they dont move, they end up reporting to younger managers which bruises their egos.
If the point is, if you accept yourself as a developer for life type, these are the uncertainities that one needs to look into.
Some organisations value developers highly, most dont. If you happen to work for an organisation which pays a developer more than a manager, count yourself lucky. Then again, it is also a curse! Why ? If you try to leave, there is little chance that another organisation would want to pay as much for a developer. So its always a catch 22 situation.
My advice to developers is always look to evolve. Dont get stuck in bandwagons. Its only technology. At one point, even the stone and chisel was state-of-the-art technology. Evolution is the key to IT. If you dont believe me ask COBOL developers ;-)
Wah this I agree with the Pimp daddy. :-D
Either climb up if you wanna remain an employee or be your own boss if you wanna remain developer.
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