One problem is when external forces bring in incompetent management. Being part of such a team may be a great experience, but you are always at the mercy of higher ups. Your one real point of leverage is to walk out the door. If the people managing you don't respect what you bring to the table, you lose even this. And if they don't understand it, which is what often happens with "interchangeable" management, they are unlikely to respect it. Then, reflect that there is the potential for this disconnect at each level of management. Start counting the levels that exist in your organization.
If you are smart, you will develop an informal network of contacts/relationships throughout your organization. And keep your resume up to date. (I think that smart people develop such a network not only or even primarily out of a calculated decision to manage their career, but because they find interesting what other people know and do and struggle with and solve, and helping them.)
Perhaps this is one reason social skills (of a certain sort) tend to predominate in large organizations. Given the situation, they become the most essential tools to a career.
Also, regarding social equanimity, a large part of corporate life is "not rocking the boat". At lower ranks, this can imply a strong uniformity of treatment. Your increase will be between 0% and 4%, regardless, because those are the absolute limits that have been chosen. If someone were to receive 10%, there would be a lot of jealousy and unrest. The only way to larger increases is promotion. Promotion changes one's duties. Ergo, certain duties will never be compensated beyond "industry standards". The social structure caps their compensation and so, minus the individual who 'self-sacrifices', their effectiveness.
And this is, in part, where your "average or below-average" coworkers come from. Management won't sweeten the pot, even if, as the posted story implies, going after the top of the talent pool produces far greater returns than the additional investment.
I guess this comment is kind of thrown together. Large social structures tend to enforce norms and drift towards a lowest common denominator. Exceptions occur, but over time, they are fighting the tide.
I've had some good managers and some bad ones. The difference for me has been whether they add-to or reduce my set of concerns.
A bad one will make you aware of every microissue their boss has to worry about, and makes you code in some terrible things in order to please them.
A good one acts as a firewall between their boss and their subordinates. Bad ideas from above are pushed back (as much as they can), lots of independent (and usually fairly random) requirements are combined into something logical, and my resulting problem set is something reasonable to create, test, and maintain.
A boss with programming experience will be able to negotiate a deliverable that's internally consistent enough to make for a good product. They do some of the up-front thinking to reduce the problem down before it's even given to me.
A nontechnical boss just sees a spreadsheet of checkboxes that we have to complete. They're like a simple IO controller: send requests, wait for completion.
I would go as far as to say there really are only two things a lower- to mid-level manager should focus on. First--and this is by far the most important thing--she should make sure her subordinates have the best possible environment to do their jobs. The second responsibility is hiring the right people. With these two ingredients in place, whatever she does on top of this would actually harm the performance of her team.
What usually surprises me about large organizations is how little power the managers have over these two points. A manager in charge of internal applications development may negotiate the functional specs with the business, but have no influence whatsoever over the hardware that's supplied to the developers.
If you are smart, you will develop an informal network of contacts/relationships throughout your organization. And keep your resume up to date. (I think that smart people develop such a network not only or even primarily out of a calculated decision to manage their career, but because they find interesting what other people know and do and struggle with and solve, and helping them.)
Perhaps this is one reason social skills (of a certain sort) tend to predominate in large organizations. Given the situation, they become the most essential tools to a career.
Also, regarding social equanimity, a large part of corporate life is "not rocking the boat". At lower ranks, this can imply a strong uniformity of treatment. Your increase will be between 0% and 4%, regardless, because those are the absolute limits that have been chosen. If someone were to receive 10%, there would be a lot of jealousy and unrest. The only way to larger increases is promotion. Promotion changes one's duties. Ergo, certain duties will never be compensated beyond "industry standards". The social structure caps their compensation and so, minus the individual who 'self-sacrifices', their effectiveness.
And this is, in part, where your "average or below-average" coworkers come from. Management won't sweeten the pot, even if, as the posted story implies, going after the top of the talent pool produces far greater returns than the additional investment.
I guess this comment is kind of thrown together. Large social structures tend to enforce norms and drift towards a lowest common denominator. Exceptions occur, but over time, they are fighting the tide.