Described here is one way to enable technologists to grow their careers in your organization while still allowing them to focus on the type of work they are best at and enjoy most.
The typical management career growth path does not suit some technical people. These information workers need to grow in their careers (gain greater compensation, responsibilities and influence) without having to become managers of other people. A good way to achieve that goal is to create a technical career growth track in your organization.
The following table shows management seniority positions alongside their equivalent technical seniority positions.
|
Management Track |
Technical Track |
|
|
manages team(s) of people and/or manages work assigned to others |
may lead people, but usually does not manage people from HR perspective |
|
|
Vice President |
Vice President & Fellow |
|
|
Director |
Fellow |
|
|
Manager |
Architect |
|
|
(A Project Manager or Business Analyst would be an equivalent role, but those are typically not in the Technology department) |
Engineer |
Technology Analyst |
In this model, for example, an architect role is at the same compensation and influence level as a manager role, assuming that the particular manager and architect being compared add similar value to the company. If the organization requires more layers, say, a senior architect would be at the same level as a senior manager.
If the organization prefers consistent titles for levels, the system could name them like this: the fellow role as director & fellow, the senior architect role as senior manager & architect, etc. In the case of a fellow who is at a VP or SVP level, they should always be named VP & fellow or SVP & fellow.
Here is a definition of the fellow role from WikiPedia:1
Large corporations in research and development-intensive industries 2 appoint a small number of senior scientists and engineers as Fellows. Fellow is the most senior rank or title one can achieve on a technical career, though some fellows also hold business titles such as vice president or chief technology officer.
Such a technical career growth plan brings many benefits to your organization.
- It helps retain good technologists who want to grow in their careers, but want to do keep doing the type of work they are best at and enjoy doing: technical work.
- It avoids brilliant technical people from being “pushed” (by themselves or their supervisors trying to “reward” them) into people-management responsibilities.
- It reduces situations of having too many people-managers but not enough people-management positions over time as people get promoted.
Care should be taken to recognize that some technical people do enjoy making the transition to people-management roles and the presence such a technical track should not discourage them. Having an alternate career growth track option is about presenting employees with more than one choice.
A similar system could also be applied to other departments with individual contributors. For example, creative design.
- Definition of Fellow at WikiPedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow and Wikitionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fellow [↩]
- IBM or Sun Microsystems in information technology, and Boston Scientific in Medical Devices for example [↩]
