I don't get things that I deserve
Couple of days back I got a mail from one of my friend who works in a medium
sized company. The mail read - "I am fed up with my job. I am technically sound,
I work hard but still when it comes to promotion or salary hike some one else
grabs the chance." I am sure almost all of us have faced such a situation at
least once in our life time. It is so common to believe - "I deserve it but
still don't get it". To his mail my reply was - "You get what you deserve." He
was of course disappointed. He expected me to stand by his side and show
sympathy to his situation. However, I never show false sympathy and being his
friend I thought of pointing out his possible mistakes.
Many developers believe that being technically good is all needed to develop
a successful career. However, in reality technical skill is just a part of the
overall skill set of today's software professional. Today a software
professional is expected to have many behavioral skills such as communication
skills, presentation skills, leadership and so on. Unfortunately many developers
never ever think about these skills. They confine themselves just to technical
aspects. Things such as promotion and leadership opportunities also call for
skills that are non technical. Just seniority or technical superiority many not
be sufficient at all the times.
Being a trainer I come in contact with many developers working in all sort of
companies. When I talk with them I often realize that:
- Very few have clear idea about their career goals
- They are not clear (or they are ignorant) about efforts required to
achieve that goal
- They lack behavioral skills necessary in today's competitive IT industry
- They do not know how to improve their behavioral skills
- They focus only on technology
- They forget that skill set evolves and changes as your role in the
organization changes
Whenever you feel that you are not getting what you deserve the first
question that you should ask is - "Do I really deserve it?" If so just note down
on a piece of paper why you think you deserve it. Believe me but many people
cannot even complete this exercise.
For a developer who has experience of say 5-10 years (depending on the kind
of company you work for) there comes a time when he starts hoping for leadership
or managerial positions. This is a crucial time. He is possibly a great
developer but he is now going into a zone where altogether different skill sets
are necessary. Leading and managing people is altogether different story than
writing great piece of code. Managerial positions are often looked upon from the
point of view of "high salary" and "control over others". Unfortunately very few
developers prepare themselves for these positions. When you are unprepared the
chances of failure are more. You feel unsafe and start working in "safe-mode".
When this happens all your creativity and enthusiasm starts diminishing. That is
why today we have so many poor managers and only few good, well respected
managers. You need to think which group you would like to belong to.
The same can be said about technical positions such as system designer and
architect. Developers dream about these positions as a part of "seniority" but
very few think about the skill set required. I remember a friend of mine who was
given a position of architect by his company on the basis of seniority. After an
year or so he started complaining - "My life is about Word, Power Point and some
block diagrams." Naturally, he didn't understood the job of architect well. When
I asked him as to what he does to keep himself updated with latest industry
trends and how he architects a new system. His reply was - "Most of our
applications were FoxPro based, later on we ported them to VB5 and now we are
migrating them on ASP.NET. So most of the work is already there. It is a matter
of copy paste and come up with new set of documents." Well...you will agree with
me that his approach itself was faulty. Any good architect who understands his
job requirements would have handled this situation differently.
The point that I want to stress is that - Decide what you want to be in your
professional life, set some learning path for yourself, prepare yourself for
current and immediate future job role.
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About the Author
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Bipin Joshi |
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Bipin Joshi is a .NET trainer and consultant and runs his own firm, BinaryIntellect Consulting. He is a Microsoft MVP and a member of ASPInsiders. He is a prolific writer on .NET technologies and runs a network of popular web sites including dotnetbips.com and binaryintellect.net. Having adopted Yoga way of life he remains absorbed in deep meditation when away from computers. His detailed profile can be read at his blog bipinjoshi.com. |
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