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?
I am a software engineer, officially my title is "senior software engineer". This means I'm now at the level and experience to become what we call a technical lead on projects. I can manage my team at a technical level - I decide what the tasks are, maybe who does them and in what order.
There are other managers though who do different roles. Project managers handle project tracking and organising meetings. Account managers handle budgets and client relationships. And line managers handle each employee, such as how they are doing, booking annual leave and dealing with sick leave.
I work together with all of them. What you describe sounds similar to this, where I might be "managing" some things but they are only related to my speciality. I'm happy with this arrangement, I would not be very good at managing purely people since it would take me away from doing the things I like best.
Someone else said something about the number of people, I can handle around 2-3 people at once, but a larger team I would struggle with.
yeah that's prity typical for the civil service. one person might manage 1-3 people who themselves might manage their own 'underlings.' But that's mixed project managment and line managment. frankly it sounds like your company has a better way of doing it.
Universities can end up with one PI (principal investigator) 'managing' 6 or more people but typically 3 of them are PhD students.