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> The lesson, however, is clear: a career ladder is a social construct that is only as real as the people in power at your organization make it This is a great
by ZephyrBlu 3y ago
> The lesson, however, is clear: a career ladder is a social construct that is only as real as the people in power at your organization make it
This is a great lesson. Above all else, career ladders are social constructs. They are a fuzzy match to competency, and the level of fuzziness increases drastically at each higher level.
Something I only recently realized is that part of being promoted to the next level is that your peers believe you are operating at that level.
There is a very social aspect to work that is rarely discussed in tech circles because people tend to focus on technical skills over everything else.
- davnicwil 3y agothis is similar to another point that in the vast majority of companies that make software the returns to technical skills are rapidly diminishing, in reality. In most companies it actually is, in a completely non-cynical non-political way, your 'social' skills that begin to dominate your efficacy in improving the company's bottom line past a certain floor of tech skill. That involves understanding and working with how the whole company works as a machine top to bottom, including the relationship with customers. There are times when that maps to problems with technical solutions but more often than not that's not the case. That's the fundamental reason in most companies you really do need great social and communication skills, and often business sense too, to become more and more senior on the (quote unquote) technical career ladder.
- marcosdumay 3y agoI guess the fact that technical skills have to be satisfied while social ones must be optimized was always true for software. I have never seen anybody implying that the industry uses people's skills. It doesn't matter when people are talking about.