Why Companies Fail on Technical Careers

I cannot say how often I read in some company’s image brochure that management and expert career paths are treated equal. There must be companies on our planet where this is true, but I have yet to see it in practice. Why is that? (Unless mentioned otherwise this article is about the IT industry with a strong focus on consulting and software companies.)

In my experience the core reason is a fundamental lack of understanding from the non-technical folks that make the relevant decisions, i.e. management. They have a vague impression of techies that is often dominated by perceived social deficiencies (“They can’t look me in the eye”). While the latter is sometimes true, how can it be a measure of someone’s qualification to perform a complex technical task? And perhaps there is actually a good reason for averting my eyes. I cannot speak for others, but when I have a complicated discussion, it helps me focus all my mental capacity on the problem at hand when I look onto the table.

I would speculate that, as in so may other cases, the heart of the problem lies with mid-level management (where the details are determined) as opposed to the C-level. Taking into account the Peter principle, what does that say about middle management? Yes, this a strong simplification and it does many people injustice. I have personally met quite a few people on this level that I consider great at their job, particularly including leadership skills. But just as well did I encounter folks who cannot think out-of-the-box and blindly follow rules and processes. And it is this capability to see new ways, make realistic projections about what will (not) work, and lead by example “where no-one has gone before”.

A particularly interesting story for me was the encounter with an HR person where we talked about setting up an initiative to advance technical folks (what is often called a high-potential program). My idea was met with friendly resistance and the argument was made that contrary to management, the technical side is so much more diverse that it would be virtually impossible to have a single program. In fact this HR person seriously thought that every techie needed his or her completely individual program.

My counter argument then was that this would not be a technical program (learn programming language XYZ) but one for professional and personal development. So we talk about e.g. how to present a complex technical scenario to upper management for getting a budget approval. Or how to engage with a customer and instill confidence that a given product is the right choice to solve their business problem. And all this with being authentic and building upon the strong technical knowledge one has.

I don’t want to appear as simply bashing HR here. But the underlying problem was that assumptions had been made about what would be suitable for technical folks without ever having spoken with any of them. Would this happen the same way for management staff?

From a more abstract perspective it comes down to the fact that many decisions are made based on personal trust and relationships, rather than on processes and policies. So what is needed is that the relevant management and technical staff (on every hierarchical level) talk to each other in the spirit of equality. And here both sides fail miserably too often.

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