[ale] Technical Career Paths

[Tom Wiencko]

For most companies, a "technical" career track is not an option, even
if they say they have one.  For that sort of career path, you need 
to find a company with significant technical needs and resources,
usually in the R&D arena.  For example, two of the companies I am
aware of that have real technical career tracks that come close to
management or sales tracks are AT&T (because of Bell Labs) and 
IBM (because of their significant research and lab presence).

If you want to get a good idea of how significant the technical
career track of a company is, it tends to correlate highly with the
depth of their patent portfolio.  Companies with few or no intellectual
property rights tend to have little respect for pure technical
professionals, those with significant portfolios have a great deal of
respect for pure technologists.

In most companies, the need to crank out products or services means
that the only way to advance in the company is to learn how to leverage
your talents and experience through other people, which means sooner
or later getting into some sort of management.  Even in small companies
with significant technical needs (phone companies, software development,
hardware companies) the technology needs tend to be met by youngsters,
while experience is sent to management tasks.

One way to pursue a purely technical career is to become a contractor.
There are significant disadvantages to this, but it is one way to
stay continually employed doing only technical work.  You will be 
responsible for your own education, ongoing training, retirement plan, 
and other corporate perks, but you can consistantly find technology
only projects to keep you happy.

-Tom

jemcdevitt at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> This is kinda of any topic, but I just wanted to get a bead on what
> other folks are running into.  My basic question is, how many of you
> work at organizations that have a defined career path for technical
> personnel that doesn't require moving into what has been historically
> called "management"?
> 
...
> 
> What are some of your experiences.  How many of you want to stay
> technical in your jobs and how easy/hard have you found that.
> 
> Just throwing out for some discussion.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> JEM

-- 
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Tom Wiencko                                              tew at wiencko.com
President - Wiencko & Associates, Inc.                    (404) 255-2330
Telecom Consulting & Project Development -- Wireline, Wireless, Internet