I'm worried about career progression, I've tried several times to get a leadership position and have either been passed over or been shot down as "too technical" (with vague promises of being made Architect "someday"). I even got a Master's degree, PMI and agile studies to aid me.
I was recently approached for a junior manager position, but due to my lack of leadership experience they're offering a project manager role instead, with (supposed) potential to climb the ladder later.
Is this a good career move or am I limiting myself? Is leaving development a trap? I don't mind and would particularly like working with clients and business problem solving - I'd love a product role or team leadership, but I'm not offered those. Would I be better off trying to start working as a consultant?
I learned long ago that I hate, loathe, and despise doing any kind of management job, and I am horribly bad at doing it when I’m forced into those kinds of roles. That’s why I’m still an Engineer.
I can do the 2nd in command role reasonably well, at least for short periods of time. I like to think I’m pretty good at providing technical leadership on things.
But I find that most people who are good at management tasks, that is something they usually find out fairly early in their lives, and they tend to go down a different path than I have done. I have known some technical people who then later switched over to management and done a good job at that, but they are in the minority. Most of the good managers I’ve known are managers first and techies second.
I see it as a lot like being left or right-handed. Sure, you can use your off hand to do some things, and you might even get pretty good at it. But you’re pretty much guaranteed to always be better at doing those same things with your dominant hand. Unless you’re ambidextrous, of course. Of course, you can always make a point of training your off hand as much as possible, and most of that training will directly transfer without conscious effort to your dominant hand. And it will probably always be a lot of extra work and never feel as natural.
Anyway, this is my truth, as an aging Caucasian overweight computer geek here in Austin, Texas, but I’ve also lived and worked professionally in the Washington, DC region and Brussels, Belgium, and done short six month contracts in places like Denver, Colorado and Cupertino, California.
Among others, I’ve worked for the Defense Information Systems Agency in the Pentagon, AOL during their mid-90s heyday, companies in Europe you’ve never heard of, small consulting companies, and VMWare, and I’ve consulted for companies like AT&T, Apple, and Raytheon, to name a few.
I can’t speak for what your experiences might be in your location.
All of that said, don’t let me discourage you from trying, if that’s what you really want to do. But I would encourage you to do as much research as you can on the exact type of work you would be doing, if you were to switch roles.
Changing career paths is one of the biggest things you can do in your career, and your life. And it can be damn scary. But it can also be very fulfilling, if you make the right switch and at the right time.
This is probably an obvious question, so I apologize in advance if you've already done this, but have you talked directly to your manager about this? I strongly believe that you don't get what you don't ask for, but sometimes it's hard to actually ask for it in a way that gets your boss on your side. That's the trick, really. You want your boss to be your ally on your career journey, not just an authority figure who hands out job assignments.
One strategy that has worked well for me over the years is to go to a 1:1 with my boss, bring up career progression, and say something along the lines of "In 5 years, I want your job (or $Y job). What do I need to do to get there?"
If you have a good boss, they should be happy to help you and the two of you can come up with a plan with milestones to get you to the role you want. If you want to be a manager, maybe they can let you unofficially manage someone for a few months and then make it more official, starting with just one person and then expanding from there. If you want to be an Architect, then the two of you can define the steps that it would take to convince The Powers That Be that you deserve that. If you want to transition into product management, they can help you with that, too. Your career journey is up to you, not your boss. Ask, and ye shall receive. And if not...
Well... if your boss gives you vague answers and platitudes... you should probably look elsewhere and find someone who does appreciate someone with some ambition. Shitty answer that you probably don't want to hear, but IMO, it's for the best.
On that note, another strategy to get the job you want is to look for a new job. The best way to get a promotion and more money is to transfer companies, versus climbing an internal career ladder. If you're as technical and senior as you imply and live in a place with decent job opportunities, you could almost certainly find an Architect role somewhere that would appreciate your ambition and expertise.
I'd recommend pushing for product manager/ product owner position. It's a pretty fluid role and many job reqs want computer science education.
It does seem like there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of people who are capable of being managers/project managers/business consultants while actual developers are rather rare. And once you stop caring about the corporate game, it becomes really easy to sit back and let those types squabble aboout for influence while you just build whatever is decided on.