[ale] Technical Career Paths

[Wandered Inn]

Tom Wiencko wrote:
> 
> 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)

Bell labs is part of Lucent now.  AT&T Labs now. :)

AT&T does in fact have a tech career track.  I can't give you $$, but
there is a direct correlation between a manager in the management plan
and a techy in the tech plan.

Levels at AT&T start are as follows:

A2, A3, A4, A5, B, C

There are higher levels than C in the management plan, but you're
talking vice-president level at that point.

The above levels exist in both the management and tech plan.  Promotions
in the tech plan are completely different than the management plan. 
Promotions in the tech plan are based on:

Education, experience, technical breadth and depth.

The criteria is very specifically spelled out.  For each level you
should have:

Either a particular educational level or comparable job experience

as well as

a certain level of breath/depth in the technical area.

It is much easier to get promoted in the tech plan, because you do so
based on the above criteria.  I've seen two promotions in the past 4
years and a promotion in the technical career path translates to a
promotional raise and higher yearly bonus %.

So, small companies don't have the corner on tech career paths...


--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy.
	-- Larry Wall, creator of the programming language Perl