Programmer can be a lifelong job

Wednesday, February 15. 2006

I'm asked many times when would I like to move up from programmer's job. Most of the times this question came from my friends who are also working as a programmer. It seems that most of the local programmers are hoping to move levels up within the organisation's ladder. It also means that most of the local programmers consider their current job some sort of ground and temporary work. Am I thinking too much or it is actually a fact?

This is the typical job position hierarchy in most of the local software companies (in terms of power, pay and authority):
Project Manager
|
System Analyst
|
Solution Architect
|
Programmer
|
Tester

Many of us strive for the project management role merely because of the mentioned factors (power, pay and authority). How many of them looking for project manager position because they like to manage customers and programmers? If they really do, will they be still enjoying in such position if they have lesser power, lesser authority and lower pay comparing to what programmers have?

Will this hierarchy possibly be changed where programmer can also be a very influential position? It indeed happens in US, but somehow, it just seems impossible for Malaysia.

Posted by Steven in non-computer at 19:50 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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Cool...I
thought the hierachy was a bit off, I thought that System Analyst came
after Programmer? Unless the System Analyst is actually the Business
Analyst. Sometimes, the role name can get confusing.Anyway, in
my humble opinion, certain organizations make programmer the king, like
Microsoft. The programmer is the life blood of the organization and
they are one of the best people who can determine how the timeline of
the SDLC can be accomplished. I heard that if anyone in top management
wanted to do something to change a feature, they have to go through a
lot of hell before that happens! This came from one of the Microsoft
Evangelists who was talking about the way Microsoft runs their project
management/business process. Cool way to run things when you
can tell your CTO/CEO to go p*ss off because if they want to make
changes midway, everything can be changed. :DHOWEVER, in M'sia,
we don't have such views. The PM is the big boss and whatever he says,
goes. I think in M'sia, management still fail to understand the that
programmer is the lifeblood, without them, who is going to implement
the solution/develop the product. The PM??There are good news
though. Some of our Asian friends like the Koreans have understood that
without the programmer, they are nothing and have done some sort of a
role reversal, but this change has not taken place in other places of
Asia.The questions are, will this change happen? When will this happen?Both answers are unknown. As long as we have managers out there who are not open-minded, we'll always face this problem.

#1 Angie Tan (Homepage) on 2006-02-15 23:19 (Reply)

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