Steven M. Goldberg

When one graduates from college with a degree in some technical field it is rather obvious where to begin.  You are going to get some sort of low level technical position.  From there you will move up in the ranks as you gain experience into more and more senior roles.

But at some point in your career, whether five, ten or twenty+ years in, it will all come down to one moment.  The moment when you must choose: Technical or Managerial.

There is a definite split in the career paths of most people that I’ve dealt with over my career.  There are some that choose to stay technical for their entire career in which case they tend to get more and more focused on one technical area until they become what I like to call, the Alpha Geek.  This is the person that we’ve all seen around the office that just knows everything.  The person that you immediately think of if you need an answer.  They usually have been around forever and may even have a real office with a door.   They tend to focus on one project that is their “baby”.  If they are really lucky they may even get to the point where they get to consult on many of the projects going on within their group.

The other option is to enter the ranks of management, otherwise known as “The Dark Side”.  You all know these people.  Unless you’re self-employed, you’ve even worked for a few.  They tend to spend most of their days in planning meetings, working on requirements/specifications for new products, schedules, customer issues and the care and feeding of their employees.  They will most likely have a very nice office with a door and maybe even a window but they will never be there, since they will always be in meetings.  Most of the people in this role that I’ve met at one time or another wish they could get back to the technical work they started on way back when they started their careers.

And that’s it.  Those are your choices within the corporate world.  Choose one.

Given the description above I’m not sure why anyone who started out as a technical person would ever choose to join “The Dark Side”.  However, there are some small problems inherent in staying with the technical role.

First, you can very easily get pigeon-holed into a technology that you know everything about but isn’t used anywhere else.  This isn’t a big deal until your product/company dies or you get downsized.

Secondly, there isn’t much (any) room for advancement.  You can sit at the highest level of the technical career path for years or decades even before becoming the “Alpha Geek”.  (There can be only one.)  And even worse, once you get to “Alpha Geek” where else is there to go?  (Answer: Nowhere)

But then take a look at the management side again.  Once you make the choice to enter that side of things you’ll have the full potential of moving up all the way to CEO.  Admittedly it’s not likely in a huge company but it’s at least a possibility.

I think there is a huge problem with these career paths.  It keeps the people with the most technical ability (the Alpha Geeks) at a level down where they aren’t that involved in making the decisions that shape the company.  It seems that the major technical decisions follow the management path while the implementation decisions get made by those in the technical path.

This is wrong.  There should be management professionals that deal with the management details and technical people that deal with the technical details.  There should be a direct career path from a lowly technical peon to the CTO and another totally separate path from basic manager to CEO.  In other words there really should be no decision at all.