IT skills (The pros of double degrees?)

[Ben Elliston]

Hi Frank,

> I agree. Seems to me that corporate culture generally in this country
> makes a virtue of ignorance and specifies nebulous items like 'managment
> skills' (which I think of as a contradiction in terms) as desirable
> whilst abjuring technical skills.

I have been working for an American company for the last year or so and
have made some observations I would like contribute.

In previous jobs that I held in Canberra, I witnessed a phenomenon whereby
the corporate ranking in high-tech companies is such that a technical
person will hit a wall and be unable to make any further career 
advancement.

I now work for a company in the Silicon Valley.  In the Valley, this is
not the case.  I know of people in the valley who are pushing fifty years
old who are still designing ICs and writing microcode and are more highly
ranked in their company than the manager that they work for.

It's a pity that, seemingly, in this country, career advancement requires
abandoning your technical roots (no matter how good you happen to be at
it, and no matter how much experience you have acrued in your field) and
moving into the realms of management (no matter how bad you might be as a
manager).  A friend of mine who works for a local company was recently
told that he ``has been programming for 10 years'' and that ``it's time he
started thinking about moving into management''. That's a pity, because
from where I sit, that company has a better chance of succeeding if he's
left to write the excellent software that he does.

Ben

---
Ben Elliston
bje@cygnus.com