{"id":70,"date":"2006-12-14T22:01:08","date_gmt":"2006-12-14T12:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/?p=70"},"modified":"2006-12-14T22:01:08","modified_gmt":"2006-12-14T12:01:08","slug":"managing-technology-people-or-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/managing-technology-people-or-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing Technology, People or Business?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Since graduating from university I\u2019ve worked steadily for 5 years in various programming roles. I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that I\u2019ve reached a crossroad in my programming life. While I have plenty to learn in my current position (more than could possibly fit into my short Homo sapien lifetime), there seems to be some new options presenting themselves to me. It\u2019s the same crossroad that all programmers reach at some stage in their life, and quite a few follow the default path without even realising they have a choice. After investigating the crossroad ahead I see 3 paths leading off into my future. These include managing technology, managing people or managing business.<\/p>\n

Managing Technology<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the default path for programmers to follow. If you haven\u2019t realised you\u2019re at this crossroad (and haven\u2019t been flung along another path by someone else) then chances are you\u2019re on this path. The reason it\u2019s the default path is because it has its roots in the generic path that most programmers take straight out of university\/school. We start out by managing bits of technology, from code to databases to websites.<\/p>\n

Our main aim is to make technology do our biding. You could possibly look at it in this way: You start out fresh from school and begin \u2018managing\u2019 functions. You write little apps that do simple tasks, you then move up to creating classes followed by entire sub-systems and eventually end up writing entires game engines or \u2018enterprise applications\u2019 as the business world calls them. This path can ultimately lead to a technical director of a game or company where you make decisions about which tech is best for a particular need\/project. If you were coding in your basement since you were 5 then chances are this may be the best role for you. John Carmack is a good example of someone who manages technology.<\/p>\n

Managing People<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the second most likely path that programmers take. The cold hard truth is that a lot of the time, people move into these roles as they aren\u2019t very good at the managing of technology part. This, unfortunately, means that a lot of senior and lead programmers out there are only in the position as they couldn\u2019t hack it as a \u2018real programmer\u2019. Thankfully though, there are plenty of people that move up into these roles as they actually have an affinity at dealing with people.<\/p>\n

The main aim of this role is bringing the best out of people, making sure that teams work well together and that your programmers can be as productive as possible. I\u2019ve found some great inspiration about how this should be done from books like \u201cPeopleware\u201d and from some of the managers I\u2019ve worked with over the past five years. This role is different to a project manager (who managers an entire project rather than just the people) as it\u2019s more technical. Lead programmers organise who will be best suited to coding what, and in essence make sure the coders below them can do the best job of managing technology possible.<\/p>\n

Managing Business<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some people just aren\u2019t happy working for someone else, and they go on to become entrepreneurs and start their own business (or just spend their entire careers complaining about the fact they work for someone else). It\u2019s true that in this position, for a start-up at least, you get to have your hand in both of the other groups. However for most businesses, after a certain point it\u2019s not feasible for the founders to also be in the other two groups. You may be able to choose one group and stave off reality for a few more years, but eventually if you\u2019re successful you\u2019ll need to move away from the micromanagement and start looking at things from a higher-level. Bill gates is a good example of this, he was both Director and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Software Architect at the same time. However after a while he decided he wanted to spend more time coding and had to give up some of the \u2018business managing\u2019 to move into the other group.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re main goal in this group is making money. It\u2019s the hardest work, gives you the most options and even has a small chance of making you quite rich.<\/p>\n

Conclusion (What About Me?)<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what road will I take? To be honest, I\u2019m unsure at this stage. While I like technology, unfortunately I didn\u2019t start coding when I was 5. Some will say that means I\u2019m not a real programmer, but I\u2019d rather believe that it means I can actually communicate with other humans without the use of I\/O devices, other than the acoustic resonance generator and receptors God made us.<\/p>\n

During my time as a programmer I\u2019ve been asked to start businesses with a number of people, and so far none have made me want to \u2018quit my day job\u2019. That could all change in the future and I\u2019m not ruling it out, however for the time being, I\u2019m going to continue on my current path (managing technology) and see what opportunities come up. The first step I see is acknowledging that the crossroad is there and I that have the choice about which to go along. I\u2019d be interested to hear from others whether they think they\u2019ve reached this, already chosen one, or think I\u2019m full of crap and should spend more time coding and less blogging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since graduating from university I\u2019ve worked steadily for 5 years in various programming roles. I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that I\u2019ve reached a crossroad in my programming life. While I have plenty to learn in my current position (more than could possibly fit into my short Homo sapien lifetime), there seems to be some new Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","category-general","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-18","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}