Published on 12, July, 2020
So i've been thinking about an issue that I think is dificult for STEM employees and especially autistic ones in companies. And that is that there offten isn't a path to career progresion that doesn't involve transitioning, even if gradually, from a technical to a people manament role. The issue is a lot of stem personel don't want to do this. And for autistic personel it may not be within their capabilities. That isn't to say autistic people are bad at managing tasks, planing projects, just not nessiceraly good at handeling the people working on those tasks and projects. So my proposal in a nutshell is let the two aspects of managment be seperated. Let the task manager and the line manager be two seperat people. Let the people persons specialise in line mangment and the probblem solvers specialise in task managment. Lots of orgonisations already do matrix managment where one person may answer to multiplu project heads but generally only has one line manager (who is also a project head or who is line managed by one) So why not have line managers who are not project managers, they just look after people. Training, vacations, sicknesses, absences, complaints etc, all that stuff. but not actual bread and butter work which they leave to the project managers. That way people can bepromoted from technical roles into technical roles or even promoted in place as they get more expert so the orgonisation can keep that acumulated skill.
The way I see it as things stand autistic people get stuck in junior roles, leave for other companies or go into roles that don't realy suit them. Also if you get really great people persons as line managers they can mange more people. And freed of the red tape project managers can project manage more people. And do it better.
What do people think?
My family taught me to have no interest in going into management ,as they were proud Trade Unionists.
Red82 (Formerly Mellowjian) said:My family taught me to have no interest in going into management ,as they were proud Trade Unionists.
I am curious as to the logic behind this choice.
It would seem more logical for someone with experience of working with the people at the sharp end of things and understanding of the roles to be the logical choice to manage the teams.
To demonise management like by saying you would never be one is creating a them an us system when you have a chance to make a difference for your fellow workers.
That was always my approach - I understood the individuals and their challenges (some obviously autistic themselves) and would regularly walk in their shoes to take the customer calls, fix the problems, prepare the laptops for new starters, test new versions of software and script them for release etc.
It meant they knew I appeciated their concerns, would defend them to management when justified and sort out the disputes (sometimes with customers) while having a fair approach to the situations.
To say you would never want to be able to do this seems like trying to leave yourself as the eternal victim to bad management to me.
Can you explain if I have got it wrong or the logic behind your choice of this approach please?
This a very wounded response to my one sentence.The idea that one individual can reform a beast as wild as capitalism by going into management is a bit of stretch for me.
Martin said:Senior management seem to often become 'Teflon coated', and go from one senior position to another, serially wrecking each entity they manage.
From my exposure to senior IT management (I've worked closely with Heads of IT and Director of IT in large companies) it has been my experience that most consider this a stepping stone on the way to board level roles so they just need experience, not success.
Look at Silicon Valley ethics around this - failure is a more valuable lesson than success for most so they don't care if you fail, just that you learn from it.
The sort of managers who really care about the little people under them are few and far between as the dog-eat-dog workd of senior management doesn't have much time for this. It is all about progress and money.
I know a few directors in the Civil Service still from my time saving them from high profile pojects that were failing and they were better than most, but still bound by the games of politics there.
The sums of money wasted to save face on some projects was staggering - I saw over £20 million get blown on re-wording a project brief that was highly over promised and under resourced but failure wasn't an option. This was far from a rarity.
The point is - at this level of management the rules are different and I don't see autists surviving at all there. Lower management would seem as far as we are able to aspire to.