Promotion and incompetence

Promotion and Incompetence

I would be nearly correct if I state that - The software industry in India is still in nascent stage.
As a result of which you would have seen people becoming Project Managers in 4-6 years time frame(I did not: fortunately or unfortunately).
A Software Engineer performing his role to perfection, is promoted to a Senior Software Engineer(SSE). A SSE performing good is promoted to a Team Lead/Tech Lead and then to a Project Lead and then eventually to a Project Manager.
Remember - at each level he/she is expected to play a different role. An extremely good performing Tech Lead, might not make a good manager material at all.

However, there is a need for the organization to recognize him/her, promote him/her. Hence he/she is promoted. The promoted employee is elated and happy at his/her new found designation, salary and hence probably status too. The employee and the organization, fails to see: whether his/her strengths, fit into the new role description(I am sure that the HR in every organization would have taken enough care to make sure that every role description, would be depicted in such a way that - At no point of time, you would confidentially say - I CAN DO IT ALL THE ROLES PERFECTLY!

If by chance you were able to - then either you are too brilliant, OR the HR has not spent enough time and effort in setting the roles and responsibilities, for that particular job profile

Take a case of a Project lead, promoted to a Project Manager(Few organizations, feel this designation is too naive and go ahead with other names like: Development Mgr or an Engineering Manager). Now this new Project Manager is in a dilemma: whether to get involved into the technical stuff OR not. The dilemma partially also crops out because of the fact that - he suddenly starts representing the Management. If the Manager is provided with sufficient resources, then probably, he would not bother to get into technicalities. He has a choice.
So slowly but steadily, he would start getting out of touch with technology. He would start reading about business, management and probably end up with an external MBA degree also(Nothing wrong or right with it).
Eventually, some day a Project Manager has to become a Program Manager, a Division/Unit Head, so on and so forth. Organizations eventually promotes an employee to a level of incompetency: And then states - You are not performing to the level expected, thus, forcing you to leave the organization and move on.

The point here is: There is an urgent need for employees/employers to identify what his strength's are. If a person is good at coding(Let me term it as a talent. You have seen extremely good programmers and you know, there is something extra ordinarily exceptional about them), I believe, he should continue to code, irrespective of the designation. However, every human needs: money, social recognition and hence decides: it does not look good, if he still performes the job that is described by his previous designation. Hence the employee, gets encouraged to get promoted to a role, where he would well in advance know: he might not be able to perform it well, since the joy is missing.
The employee too hence, subconsciously, encourages the organization to eventually promote him out to a level of incompetency.

The challenge each organization faces is: To recognize the strengths(talents and skills) and weaknesses in an individual. There are also organizations, who don't think it is an important activity at all! In areas like Sports, the strengths are apparent. E.g: Sachin Tendulkar came to the team as a batsmen. The key here is: The person has identified that his talent is batting - Unlike in the software industry, where every engineer is expected to be good in coding, irrespective of his strengths.

So, the industry sets a unachievable trend - expect engineers to be good at all the jobs that are to be done on a day-to-day basis. Result - A huge influx of engineers who says that they are good in Architecting, Designing, Coding, Managing and everything.Pick any resume - you would realize this(including mine!)

This further complicates the interviewer/organization's job difficult - to the extent that they are in a dilemma, how to use the resource. Hopefully, the organization, knows what kind of candidate they are looking for and the candidate what kind of job he is looking at. Unless the organizations are forthcoming in the nature of candidates they are looking for and more importantly the candidates are aware and tell their strengths/weaknesses, you would continue to see technical guys being made to manage and eventually - being promoted to a level of incompetency.