Beware of technical ladder roles

Technical ladder is getting hot (Sakkath hot, magaa, as Radio Mirchi FM channel in Bangalore would say). Look at Economic Times devoting almost of a full page on tech ladder in the article “Grooming technical leaders” a couple of weeks back. The article presents TI’s technical ladder, its broad characteristics and how it helps as a motivational tool for engineers. In fact Santosh Kumar, head TI, India Software Council and a Senior Member of Technical Staff quotes in the article that ““It serves as a useful tool to see how you are growing in the company; it provides a reference point when you go out and say that you were on the technical ladder people can immediately understand your contribution”

For those who may not be aware, TI’s technical ladder process and its implementation in its India center is supposed to be one of the most mature in the industry (especially among the IT companies in India). TI has been leveraging “mature tech-ladder" brand for a while now. See, for example, how technical ladder is described as an important tool to motivate talent in this article when TI, India was declared No. 1 in “Great places to work” survey in 2004. Similarly, in the cover story “Texas Instruments: Taking charge of the Indian electronics environment” appeared in Dec 2007 from Smart Techie magazine, Dr. Bobby Mitra goes at length to explain how technical ladder is at the heart of innovation in TI, India.

If you were to take this story and extrapolate it to the rest of the IT industry in India, you will be grossly mistaken. Remember that TI, India is the oldest MNC to set up a shop in India. Moreover, first full product called Ankur came out of this center way back in 2000. However, HR in IT companies is getting really impatient and running out of ideas to attract and retain talent. Hence, it is not surprising that many organizations are advertising for roles such as “Architect” or “Technical Specialist” to attract talent.

This is the story I heard from a co-passenger in a train from Kolhapur to Bangalore earlier this month. His friend changed his job as he was being offered an Architect role (with, of course, significant raise). In fact, the company had advertised multiple Architect positions. It has been 6 months since the fellow has joined and he has no work.

It is true that “technical ladder” can be a good motivational tool for engineers passionate about technology. However, it can’t be sustained without a fundamental business need. If you are considering such positions (internally in your current organization or externally), you should ask the question, “Does the business really need this role at this point?” You may take up such a role in spite of business need not being clear. In which case, you are taking the responsibility of influencing the senior management in demonstrating how this role adds value. This may be an uphill task. But, hey, who says life is easy?

What is technical leadership?

Welcome to this blog on technical leadership!

It has been 9 months since I started conducting 1-day workshop on “Becoming a successful technical leader”. Over 150 budding technical leaders from 10 technology organizations (all based in Bangalore) have participated in this workshop. Information about the workshop can be found here.

During the workshop, we discuss various topics related to technical leadership mostly in the context of the technology industry in India. For example, why do we need technical leaders? Do we really need them at this point? What should be the role of such people in services industry? What should a technical leader be doing in a products company? And so on. I end up meeting various stakeholders like senior managers (including Chief Technology/Development Officers), project managers and technical leaders. I intend to use this blog to express my own ideas on this topic as well as publish conversations I have with various stakeholders.

In this article, we will look at various connotations of the term “Technical leader”. I have come across following usages:

1. Person with designation “technical leader”
2. Person leading or managing technical people
3. Person on technical career ladder (known as tech-ladder)
4. Person who carries a personal technical brand

I guess all the usages are relevant in their contexts and they are overlapping in their meaning. For example, most of the time, a person with designation “technical leader” is also a person who is managing technical people. Similarly, a person on technical ladder is also the one who carries a personal technical brand. However, if I were to choose one defining characteristic of a technical leader, I would choose the last one: i.e. the one who carries personal technical brand.

What is a personal technical brand? It is your ability to influence a bunch people with your technical expertise. These people may or may not be reporting to you. This is where it differs from what is called “span of control” (people directly or indirectly reporting to you). Many times personal brand goes beyond the organization. We will discuss this in more detail in the subsequent articles.