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I have potential career advancement on the very near horizon but it's an odd one. Backing up a few years, I was an individual contributor on a large central team who had the chance to become manager of that team. While it wasn't always perfect it was my first time with people management and I both enjoyed it and was good at it. I think a large reason for both of those things was getting to work directly with people I respected and helping them in their careers. That team consisted mostly of young hires who were starting out in their careers and came with a lot of energy and enthusiasm but who often needed guidance. Additionally I was overseeing creative work that I'm passionate about. I was able to shield them from a lot of politics and use my people skills with higher level managers to position my team for the best experience I could. Eventually I took an opportunity within the company to move to another country. That opportunity meant going back to an individual contributor role (again, doing work that I love) but in a much more influential role within the overall org. As the new team was tiny there was no front-line management, just a higher level manager who was very supportive but had no experience with the work itself. The tactic there was to hire old pros who could self-manage. In the years since the team has doubled in size (still very small) and I'm now being asked to "envision what it would look like to manage the team without any additional headcount," i.e. a "player/coach" type situation. Being that I'm already spread thin doing the day-to-day work as well as a number of longer term strategic initiatives adding front-line management to the mix sounds tricky. Additionally, as this team is much more advanced in their careers (I'm actually the youngest member and I'm old as poo poo) there's a bigger chance of volatility if I were to become their manager (the previous team handled that transition mostly very well.) There's one person in particular who I'd expect to be unhappy about that, but of course that wouldn't stop me from doing it. For me it comes down to whether or not the financial compensation makes the added responsibilities worthwhile. Perhaps even more important would be whether or not the scope of the role is clearly defined: How much control would I really have over the direction of the team, given that I'd still also be a producer of the work, at least in the short term? I'm more than likely going to go with it if offered if only for the challenge (and to get another promotion to management on the ol' resume) and because the hierarchy is flat enough that opportunities like this don't come around all that often. Also, things have been volatile enough in the company that it seems like shoring up my position and not looking a gift horse in the mouth would be the smart way to go. Anyone have experience with this player/coach thing? My last promotion came with a clean break from doing the actual hands-on work so I'm really not sure how it would work in reality.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:50
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| # ? May 5, 2024 13:38 |
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My god, it's so many loving words and you conveyed zero information. You must be in sales.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:29
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Like, college football?
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Dec 5, 2016 22:37
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Gah, I've failed to communicate anything. Dagnabit.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:13
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It sounds like a great way to make less money than if you actually management while getting double the responsibility
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Dec 6, 2016 00:40
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That's what I'm afraid of. I don't even really know how to price out a role like that since it's not like I'm gonna see anyone else out there listing something like that. It's obviously just a cost-saving measure. Not really sure what to do.
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Dec 6, 2016 09:17
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You make them pay you like management and then add more on top considering the amount of bullshit work they'll also drop on you. They won't do that. And you shouldn't either.
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Dec 6, 2016 16:28
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I hear ya. This was presented to me today as a promotion, not an opportunity to apply for. The salary increase is ok (10%) and having fought for salary increases for others before when I was previously a manager I know that theyve wrung every cent out of it. And it does put me on par with lower level managers. I know everything in life is supposedly negotiable but I don't think this is. I did negotiate the job description to make sure it's abundantly clear what I'm responsible for and what I'm not. I'm not being asked to be a full time manager, but of course who knows how this will turn out. Haven't officially said yes but there isn't much of a choice. If I turned it down I'd need to start looking elsewhere immediately I think. At least it'll be something new!
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Dec 7, 2016 20:14
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It's not only pay, usually that coach bullshit also means that your people aren't formal direct reports. In that case you're just a PM with a made-up title and no one will care that it's on your resume, it's not actual management and won't be seen as such by other companies.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:21
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That would be frustrating. In this case though they are formal direct reports with all the authority that comes with that. So there's that.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:45
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So it's a manager job with a weird title? That seems fine then, most places I talk to want tech managers to still be hands-on, that question comes up a lot. I don't see the downside, I feel like any workplace that doesn't suck there shouldn't be enough managing to do to consume a full-time week until you're well in to indirect report territory. I know I would be bored if I couldn't go do actual work for part of the week.
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Dec 8, 2016 15:36
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Even the title should be pretty sensible when they settle on it (it's not gonna say player/coach on my business card.) The more I think about it the better I feel. My main concern was that the balance of responsibilities would be stacked unfairly but my manager assures me that won't happen and she really does have my best interests at heart (been a long strange trip....) I could have done with a bigger salary bump but as I said, I know how that game's played here full well and what they got was about the most I could reasonably expect.
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Dec 8, 2016 17:55
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I work for a Fortune 500 tech company where basically every manager's first management role is split half and half, so OP's proposed situation doesn't seem weird to me.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:07
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| # ? May 5, 2024 13:38 |
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This isn't my first management role but point taken. I'm also at a Fortune 500 co so it's not surprising that it would be similar. Now that I'm less concerned about being taken advantage of (in as much as any of us are being taken advantage of by KKKapitalism) does anyone have any pointers on balancing the player/coach (i.e. Boss/peer) thing? My team has a heavy reliance on peer review and I'm it's biggest proponent. I want to make sure that I'm solid in my managerial responsibilities but also integrated appropriately for the work part (it's not like I'm overly worried about that btw , just curious if anyone has experience with it...)
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Dec 10, 2016 12:08
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