What if you don't want to Manage?

Are you good at your job? Have you worked hard to get the expertise and experience that makes you an effective professional?

What's next? For many of us, just as we spend years building a career skills set, hopefully doing something we like, we end up getting that promotion to manager or team leader. We get separated from our peers, the job we like and put into a management environment we may not enjoy or really want.

I've seen this several times in software development where once you get 10 years experience, you are in danger of being drafted into management, there is no career path or pay scale other than that.

Many programmers don't ever want to be managers, they want to keep learning new technologies, languages, devices and professionally develop. Its why they do the job, not to be the boss. Ironically if you work your way up in one organisation, you may have to leave to avoid the management/team lead promotion net. You go to another company, start a few steps back (in effect applying for a demotion), but still doing the job you like.

This is not unusual or limited to any one job type, in an interesting article Anne Kreamer, former Executive Vice President, Worldwide Creative Director, for Nickelodeon discusses this phenomenon and her own experiences.

She cites research conducted by Office Team which found that 76% of employees did not want their boss's job. If employees are no longer driven by the old incentives (work hard and you could be the boss), it's time for companies to figure out new ways of rewarding and keeping talented workers.

Perhaps you can flag in your reviews that you want a career path that does not involve leaving your skills behind and becoming a manager. Maybe there is a halfway house where you could mentor junior staff  or projects, be responsible for their development, using that experience but still developing your own skills and doing a job you like. This type of innovative structure may tempt skilled staff to stay.

This is not all about protecting reluctant employees from being defaulted into management. Organisations that promote people into roles they really don't want but got landed with anyway, are probably not getting the best motivated people in key positions. We then get the worst of both worlds, we lose skilled happy people and also get weak management.

That is not any good for anyone.