Ideal Job Qualifications
This was a writing prompt from the NaBloPoMo site, and it caught my attention.
It used to be simple; the ability to wear jeans, wear sandels and have a good sized cubicle.
When I joined IBM, I had all three(eventually), but I find myself wanting more these days.
I used to just want to be the worker bee, the guy happy enough to have a job that didn’t completly suck. I like tech support, I like helping people, but I don’t know if software support is where I’m at these days. I started at EDS during more deskside support, and I think I really liked that, but I’m not sure if that’s where my head is at these days either.
I’ve had the bug in my head about moving up to management. Not sure how long it’s been there, but being a husband, and now a father, have really driven this home to me. I know that some of it is wanting to make more money, but I really started to think of where my career was going. And it was just going to be support, and I think I’m over that.
Mind you, as usual, as soon as I really came to act on this move up, I kinda missed the boat in terms of classes and other stuff I had to do, but it’s not like it’s too late to get this done eventually. This will be the first thing I do once I come back from Christmas break. My current manager is more than happy to help me move up and out of support and into mangement, and she’s someone that I want to be like in terms of a manager.
Not saying that I’ve had a lot of bad managers, in fact it’s been the opposite for the most part. And I’d like to think that I’ve learned some good things from my past managers, things that I would like to move forward in my own management style.
I think I’m finally ready for this. I’d like to move away from day to day customer support, solving technical problems that I can’t really solve anyway as I have to hand most things off to the higher level devs anyway. I’d like to be able to sit in on meetings, and make decisions that will actually help whatever team I have. I’d like to be a mentor to my staff, and not be one of these micro managers, but trust my staff to do their own work.
So what’s the new qualifications for my ideal job?
A small, dedicated team. Higher wage. More regular hours. I see that it’s shifted more so that I can help my family out, and be with my family more.
We’ll see how this works out, and when.
Here are my thoughts on this, for what it’s worth:
1 – Management is not necessarily the route to go if more family time is what you’re looking for. Perhaps this is a public sector thing, but management gets you into working longer hours, often without compensation. I’ve been at the bottom level of the management chain, and I’ve worked closely with director level and above. You’re expected to dedicate more and more time to work without compensation as you move up.
2 – Higher wage. Sure you can get that, but how much more will you make for the additional headache? For me, the difference between top level technical and management is not that significant.
I’m sure you’d be a fine manager if that’s what you want to do, but I’d recommend thinking about whether management is what you really want – or the best way to get what you’re looking for. Be careful of the golden hand-cuffs.
Remember with great power comes great responsibility (an more insidiously accountability).