My story is aimed at those who are just starting to work in the industry. I hope it helps to assess the prospects and choose the right development vector, which will make it possible to personally achieve your goals.
However, you will not find ready-made answers here, only the look of a person with experience. I always thought that the text that leaves the bridgehead for independent search for answers is more useful.
What career growth in IT looks like today
I will not focus on specific posts - depending on the type of company and projects, the needs for roles differ. Let's talk about any leaders in the field of development - from linear to senior management.
Not any company, in principle, allows you to grow
There are only two sources of IT leaders for any company:
- from among the specialists already working in it;
- from the labor market (from the side).
We wish the first option for an employee with career ambitions, but difficult for a business. Anyone who gets into the company must first be checked by time for loyalty and only then try to raise a leader out of him. With the current staff turnover in the IT segment, an employee may simply not wait for the end of this first audit, because it can last several years. There is a saying that many leaders do not know or somehow forget: âDig your well before you are thirsty.â By the way, there is a good book on business networking with that name.
The next step is nurturing. It is possible only in those companies that consciously focus on this - they provide opportunities. Even about 10 years ago, there were almost none on the Russian market. As staff starvation in leadership positions increased, the idea of ââcultivating a reserve within the organization began to be promoted even at technology conferences. The process has begun. But a good developer does not always become a strong team lead, not everyone can go through the subsequent stages of growth towards management. Those. no matter how much resources the company invests in this development, with each step up, the personnel reserve will become less and less. Under these conditions, some companies generally focus on hiring a manager from the market - to take the second path (and regardless of level). And then the conversation about the further career growth of existing employees is withdrawn from consideration in principle.
There is always a ceiling. He is closer than it seems
Suppose you were lucky to work for a company that has a program for nurturing specialists within the team. You go up step by step, see yourself in the role of CIO or CTO. But is the company ready to put you in this position? Or do you expect that you will be invited to this position to a competitor?
Alas, with the increase in the level of the leader, the number of available vacancies is also decreasing. Itâs becoming more and more difficult to find work with each next level, even in cities with a population of over one million, not to mention the regions. Not every Russian city has large IT companies in which career growth is possible above the conditional project manager. The average company in cities with a population of 300-500 thousand people is 60 people, among whom only one will be the technical director. Simple mathematics shows how small the chances are of growing to this position (especially if the technical director doesnât leave anywhere).
It remains either to go to millionaires and participate in fierce competition with hundreds of their own kind, or to look for career growth on a distance, which, by the way, is also a complicated story (we will return to this topic in articles later). There is a third way - to increase your chances of career growth by finding a team that is just starting to scale. However, such a company still needs to be sought. And to the usual set of risks that are taken into account when hiring, here you have to add the instability of a young business.
For some, the foundation is the founding of their own company, but few will be able to live up to the three-year anniversary of business without leadership experience.
No matter how small the chances of career growth are, if you really need one, you should work on the attractiveness of your candidacy to make it easier to beat your competitors. Next, I will dwell on this.
So how do you grow up?
Develop in the direction of the manager yourself
You are unlikely to become a good leader if you spend all the time developing, reading about "refactoring", "design patterns", as well as the works of such great people as Knut, Deijkstra and others. Undoubtedly, every professional in our field should read all this (Until now, a leader who has not completed a good school as a developer is perceived rather painfully). But here we come to an interesting paradox: after each increase, we need fundamentally new knowledge that allows us to think on a larger scale. And the knowledge and skills due to which the increase was received cease to be in demand every day and are gradually forgotten.
All this does not mean that technical knowledge is useless for career growth. That general is better than the soldier. In general, at any level, this base allows you to better understand the work of the structural unit entrusted to the management, to dive into the technical details and motivation of individual employees. But you should not be limited only to technology.
In fact, career growth is a constant growth of the result. At each stage you must show some results and understand how to achieve higher performance. This understanding is just achieved by expanding their knowledge in the direction of fundamentally new areas, the same management.
There are several sources of such knowledge:
- basic set of manager books;
- articles about general management;
- experience and communication with colleagues;
- trainings;
- conferences.
Books, articles and reports at conferences talk about the same thing, but allow you to look at everything from different angles. Perhaps, conferences today provide almost the latest information about what is happening on the market and in companies (especially after highlighting conferences as separate events). But in order to learn from the reports, drawing out best practices from there, it is necessary to be able to cut off marketing and water, to distinguish fundamental ideas from the âlatest fashionâ trends. Articles in authoritative publications usually look deeper into the problem, although they appear with a longer delay than reports at conferences. Books are a source of more fundamental ideas.
Communication with colleagues and the experience gained cannot be overestimated, with one caveat: it is better to get experience in an environment that meets professional and personal goals.
Trainings are generally useful, but their choice should be taken very seriously. In recent years, additional education is actively developing. Content makers fill their wallets with great speed, but not all of them are worth your attention. If you are focused on the perception of lectures, not books, it is the training format that allows, firstly, to quickly look at the task from a new angle, and secondly, to participate in networking with people who have similar problems. Communication with such people often gives even more than the training itself, especially if they are stronger than you in the matter under discussion. But even passing the exam results does not mean having a deep understanding (those who will hire you will also realize this).
Use all of these sources. Together, they will gradually change the way of thinking in the right direction.
Do not expect someone to decide for you which book to read and which reports to visit. Mentoring occurs, but it is better to take your own initiative. Spend part of your time on self-education in management and only then go up.
Remove the language barrier
In my opinion, while a person believes that knowledge of a programming language is more important for him than knowledge of English, he will speak with a computer, not with a customer. To learn English at the proper level for many is more difficult than to master programming. But it seems to me that English is needed even at the stage of studying the programming language itself - most worthy books are written in English, it is more pleasant to read them in the original.
Learn in advance business communications, at least in Russian. At a minimum, learn to write letters that are correct in terms of style and rules of business communication. Communicating with the customer, you become a freelance PR employee of your team. Do not face the dirt: write in Russian, they will notice it and will certainly appreciate it.
Broaden your horizons
Only in the field of software development did I meet executives who did not understand the importance of erudition. While a person spends time on sites where they write about cats, âhellish afftarsâ and other âheroesâ of our time, he will not be allowed to leadership in a self-respecting company. It is much more useful to read Russian classics, books on psychology, sociology, history - all this will definitely help you in a new role. In its own way, this also changes thinking, develops what is called intuition.
When I was little, my father told me: "Read - understanding will come later." At first it seems that the time to get some additional knowledge was wasted. But often it is this âsecondaryâ knowledge that plays the main role in resolving certain issues and conflicts. It was my intuition that sometimes led me to situations that would have been impossible if I had acted purely rationally. She didnât let her go where she didnât need to.
Boost self-organization
Before you begin to lead people, it would be nice to learn how to manage yourself. Stephen Covey, in his book, calls this an âinside outâ approach.
I think that almost all managers will prefer to delegate leadership (when a task is set for a person, evaluation criteria for the result, resources are allocated, the consequences of success and failure are stipulated, as well as reporting). In my opinion, effective teams can only be built with those people to whom management can be delegated. But more often they delegate execution, when an unfortunate project manager must stand above the soul of his employees, âtighten the screwsâ in the processes so that the work somehow moves.
If you are working on a delegation of leadership scheme, the day is not far off when you yourself will be able to claim your career aspirations. And it is these personalities who most often become successful leaders.
Where to find this time?
Life is getting more expensive, the car is old, advertising encourages you to buy what you really do not need. All this requires additional income right now. And the IT market makes it possible to find a part-time job.
Someone manages to "hack" right at the workplace during working hours, but we will leave the issues of upbringing and morality beyond the scope of this article. Someone does this in the late evenings and on weekends, taking time from their personal development and relaxation. The first way can lead to a damaged reputation, which, by the way, is earned over the years, and is lost as a result of one short-sighted act. You have to work at work. The second way is fraught with exhaustion of the body, if you work in this mode for a long time. Until you are 25 years old, you will consider yourself ahead of the rest, not understanding why the rest of the "fools" do not do the same. They donât know how to work? Or do they not need money? But you wonât earn all the money, and you can undermine your health even at 25. If instead of constant overload you develop, then you will reach the tasks with greater responsibility, receiving completely different money for this. No need to run ahead of the engine.
And if you are so confident in your ability to make money on third-party projects, it would be more correct to quit and start working from home. So, less time will be spent on the road, it will be possible to better plan your working day in order to effectively carry out projects in less time, leaving part of the day to rest and chat with friends and relatives.
In many ways, career prospects in IT depend on the employer. In a healthy organization, there should be career ladders, both in terms of management and in terms of technology. Everyone decides which one to choose in accordance with their own ambitions. It is important not to forget that the path in the managerial line is not the only one.
And which way do you find most attractive?
Posted by Maxim Korotkov, CEO, Maxilekt.
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