First off, I think it's very interesting that the blogger characterized the assumption of promotion to be a very Indian/Asian thing, because it's absolutely something that, in America, is considered a very American thing! The whole "Peter Principle" concept of being "promoted to incompetence" is lamentably American, and it certainly shows itself in things like The Office, which began in the UK, too.
The part about being "just a developer" at ThoughtWorks also seems very, very similar to the corporate culture at W. L. Gore and Associates[1], which Malcolm Gladwell discussed in The Tipping Point. At W. L. Gore, everyone is assigned the title of "Associate," and that's it. Same deal!
The developer/manager transition has always fascinated and confused me. I feel like the term "manager" is overloaded. To the extent that a manager's responsibilities are to shield his team from corporate politics, to make sure the code they're working on is solving the right problem, and to keep the dev team happy, I would say that going from developer to manager should not be a vertical move, but a lateral one. Writing code and managing a team of coders have nothing to do with each other.
On the other hand, the managerial position that I would describe as lead developer feels like a more appropriate "next step." A lead developer might not write much code (which is similar to a "manager"), and a lead developer might be called upon to evaluate and discuss business requirements (which is similar to a "manager"), but his concern is the technical repercussions of the decisions made in that space, not the political ones.
I'm sure that many people with far more experience have written much clearer explanations of this pattern, but it's what I have seen so far.
"First off, I think it's very interesting that the blogger characterized the assumption of promotion to be a very Indian/Asian thing, because it's absolutely something that, in America, is considered a very American thing!"
I've worked in the United States :-) (I am the blogger). Believe you me India takes Office politics to a whole new level that Americans can only dream of :-).
Partly this comes from the fact that the Indian managers of "offshore dev centres" don't have any real power to make decisions(as compared to their American counterparts). Besides, society is far more hierarchical than in America, which reflects in the work place. Etc etc but office politics is really bad in India. As an example one of my (Indian) friends recently moved back from Google Bangalore to Mountain View because he couldn't stand the level of politicking here.
First off, I think it's very interesting that the blogger characterized the assumption of promotion to be a very Indian/Asian thing, because it's absolutely something that, in America, is considered a very American thing! The whole "Peter Principle" concept of being "promoted to incompetence" is lamentably American, and it certainly shows itself in things like The Office, which began in the UK, too.
The part about being "just a developer" at ThoughtWorks also seems very, very similar to the corporate culture at W. L. Gore and Associates[1], which Malcolm Gladwell discussed in The Tipping Point. At W. L. Gore, everyone is assigned the title of "Associate," and that's it. Same deal!
The developer/manager transition has always fascinated and confused me. I feel like the term "manager" is overloaded. To the extent that a manager's responsibilities are to shield his team from corporate politics, to make sure the code they're working on is solving the right problem, and to keep the dev team happy, I would say that going from developer to manager should not be a vertical move, but a lateral one. Writing code and managing a team of coders have nothing to do with each other.
On the other hand, the managerial position that I would describe as lead developer feels like a more appropriate "next step." A lead developer might not write much code (which is similar to a "manager"), and a lead developer might be called upon to evaluate and discuss business requirements (which is similar to a "manager"), but his concern is the technical repercussions of the decisions made in that space, not the political ones.
I'm sure that many people with far more experience have written much clearer explanations of this pattern, but it's what I have seen so far.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates