Developers, Do Not Get Promoted
During my first performance appraisal meeting (sometimes 18 years ago), I was asked by my manager: What are your next year’s goals?
Almost scratching my head, I asked for specifics. To which, he offered: “Would you like more responsibility, or would you like some more pieces of training this year…Like the one in COM/DCOM (Microsoft’s equivalent of React in those days) ?”
To me, there wasn’t a choice. After all, why would one prefer responsibility against training? I expressed my choice. With a frown, he acknowledged. I came out of the chamber.
When I asked my colleagues why he may have frowned, they laughed at my naivety.
“Who wants a sitting duck who wants to learn and not deliver?” They said. “You are getting a duck in this year’s pay-raise”
I defended my choice by weighing in the pay-range we were eligible for vs the benefits of learning a hot technology. Online learning wasn’t a thing in those days. In fact, Google was in the cradle.
I lost every argument, because in IT world, any rise upward, even if it was 1%, was more beneficial than being an expert. Learning could bring me to places, yes, but my current pay would always be the benchmark of my next one.
And who needed training? They always ask the same interview questions. Talk about money.
I kept making the same foolish decision for every year I was part of that rigid organization (even when training wasn’t on the offering). I actively prevented myself from getting promoted. I kept purchasing tech books to teach me things that trainings didn’t, and kept at the forefront of technology. I didn’t quite know if that was valuable. But becoming a lead or manager didn’t quite appeal me.
Meanwhile, my peers climbed the promotional ladder too quickly and started earning 1.5x within 3 years.
Their only problem was that they had to rely on me for many technical decisions they made for their projects. They did it while telling me I didn’t turn into that tech expert overnight attending those training sessions. I already had it in myself, and they always believed in my potential!
Long story short, 7 years into the same company, I got promoted against my choice. Within 15 days, I resigned. I took a 120% salary jump, now ahead of many of my peers.
When they called to congratulate me, their first question was: “So you got promoted finally. Knew it, you can’t swim against the tide”
“Nope, I decided to remain that underpaid developer. I still earn much less than my current managers. Happy?”
That was met with an uneasy silence. And I would hang up with a smile.
Software companies are world of contradictions. At one end, they democratize world economies disrupting older business models. They bring in millions of skilled people to computers and the Internet. They have eliminated millions of power-monger middlemen, and passed the buck to where it belongs.
On the other hand, their own compensation model replicates that of the industrial revolution and baby boomers’ corporate era. In this model, managers are more responsible, tech leads are those who govern developers, hence entitled to better compensation.
I discuss this dichotomy here:
Managerial Promotion — The Bigger Paradox:
Paradoxically, some great developers who chased career growth ended up never getting enough for their team management, and losing out heavily due to falling behind in things they loved: programming.
They failed to understand that one day, programmers will control the world. Little did they know, that programmers will work for Fortune 500 sitting in Thailand beaches, while they will spend their Mondays in early morning flights, racing for client presentations.
Their CVs ended up being a hotchpotch of some programming, some organizing, some co-ordination and much more hanging up with C-level professionals in Friday hangouts.
They buried their real ambitions of creating world-class products. They exchanged their private jets for doled out business class miles, family vacations and privilege club memberships.
So while competent devs are underpaid, they are armed with one strong asset that their managers aren’t: Technical prowess.
The industrious tortoise always beat the arrogant hare.
No matter how underpaid they are, they hold the key to the success of themselves as well as their under-skilled managers.
If only they shun their need to be employed, and show off their true potential, they can go places. They can hold Fortune 500 at gunpoint, and ask to be paid what they want, lest they would become entrepreneurs.
They are the Atlas who is holding up the earth on their shoulders.
If you watch closely, those developers turned entrepreneurs are calling the shots. They keep you working for their agendas by feeding small bribes called promotion.
More responsibility does not always mean more pay. Even when it is, it is never in the proportion of what you can do for them.
And not even remotely close to what you lost.
When I refused that promotion for the first time, I was inexperienced. But in every subsequent year that I was asked the same question, I wasn’t.
I am thankful for that first-year naivety, even today.
