Moving up the corporate ladder
February 14th, 2007 by Robert
A change of events has occurred at my regular day job. I am being promoted from a developer to a manager position for what will be a new internet division. As a developer the new division doesn’t have the appeal that would keep me going as there will be little actual application development. The focus will be more on building content sites which is all good and fine, but it isn’t my specialty. I can do pure web stuff and I enjoy it once in a while but not on a daily basis as the challenges aren’t the same as building the type of software that I am used to building.
However as a manager it takes on a whole new perspective for me. This new group is essentially a startup within a larger organization and I am being given almost free reign to build the IT staff, implement processes, set standards, etc. as I would like. That really appeals to me. I could take the idea of “building my kingdom”, but that isn’t it. I have two motives that are leading me to accept this challenge:
Doing It Right
I’ve worked in a few large companies and always had an uphill fight to get our dev groups the tools and processes in place for doing our work ‘the right way’. Now this right way wasn’t always my right way, but what we as a group thought was correct. From having good documentation, the right issue tracking software, build environments, etc., we rarely had the time or support from management.
So, here is my chance to do things the way I always wished it would be done.
Managerial Challenge
Leading a team isn’t new to me. I’ve either been placed into that position or it sort of just happened, but I’ve never been an official ‘manager’. So what does that mean? Well, I’ve always worked to earn the respect of my customers and peers, but what was always missing was the authority for certain decisions. In the past I’ve always had to inform my boss, who was the manager, and they would have to inform whom ever about a decision because they had the title and authority to do so. Now I will be in that role and I can take the decisions of the development staff along with mine and communicate those directly.
Far more important than that however is that I hope to have a larger influence on the sites and certain directions that we take. I have a vision and that vision not only fulfills the business vision, but goes beyond that and also covers a vision for the everything that happens beneath what the end users see. As I told my new boss, great designers will give the end user the visual appeal of the sites and that is all good and fine, but I am also interested in what makes that happen. So when she gets the accolades for high traffic, high revenue, great looking web sites I will be able tell myself and the staff that I work with that everything that makes it happen is of the same high quality, attention to detail that the visuals are. And that is a challenge I am looking forward to.
As for my entrepreneurial aspirations, I still have them but this new position will teach me a lot more of what I need to know to one day have a large company of my own (should I end up down that path). This is a unique experience for me and I plan to capitalize on it!
