By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
I want to stay technical and do administrative work. What can I do that will keep me technical and not management?
What is Success About?
I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I coach people in and organizations. I do career coaching,, leadership coaching. . . You know, I work with people to succeed in their job searches,transition to their new roles and be very successful.
Someone wrote to me and asked this question and it’s more detailed than the intro. So, let me give it to you. “Where does an IT person go that’s in their 50s to continue to improve their salary or total compensation package?” As they write, “it seems to be an unwritten rule that those in your 50s and 60s are too old to write code or too expensive to write code and, thus, they need to go into management or, perhaps, a strategic architecture design position or become a road warrior to write code as a hired gun.”
This person would prefer not to do a hundred percent Road Warrior work like the big four consulting firms and, thus, what they prefer to do, they say, it’s preferable to not be in the abstract world of design and strategy because he’s fairly concrete and likes to deal with concrete problems and solve them in person and it’s preferable to not be in management because he doesn’t like the administrative stuff. So, he’s wondering what he can do.
Now, we don’t know what this person does for a living specifically, other than they work in IT. AH! I see they’re a data architect!
Now. I don’t know what their compensation is, but I do know that firms hire data Architects! They hired data professionals and you don’t necessarily need to be in management to be pretty well compensated. Now, again, we don’t know how much this person is earning currently but, looking at their picture because I’m staring at them and on LinkedIn, he presents himself as a youngish looking 50 . . . Unless this is an old photo.
And my first reaction is in everyone’s geographic area, there are larger organizations that are willing to pay more for talent and, thus, larger organizations tend to have roles like principal or there are other unique titles to those organizations for highly technical individuals who are not necessarily involved with managing people or resources.
Now the other alternative is to think in terms of consulting, but not the way this person is thinking of it. They’re thinking of the Road Warrior role where they talk about a hundred percent travel. The firms I know of who do that kind of work . . . It’s more 80% . . . But that’s okay. He doesn’t want to do the travel.. But there are multiple organizations that work with firms that they might consider going to work for and allow themselves to transition into a super tech role.
Now, the issue with that is, although they won’t be involved with management, they can still speak to being very technical. Eventually, there comes a point that, unless they can find what they’re going to be let go. That’s also true in industry.=, but consulting has that rep for it. So, I want to acknowledge it. In Industry, in big businesses, when there comes to be a recession, guess who’s laying people off? All these big far ms that claim stability?
So there’s no guarantee about anything, but if you went into consulting in the local market and talked with firms about not doing Road Warrior, as opposed to going to the big National or International firms and spoke with them, and, instead of speaking with those firms, he spoke with a local firms about working in your market area. Within a reasonable proximity to it, you have a shot.
But I also want to bring into account that you claim to be a fairly expensive individual and, the more senior you are, the more that the only way you’re going to get the money, is to go outside the firm and be an independent consultant and to work privately. But that’s going to involve marketing and sales, promoting yourself or working through some contracting agency.
So there’s no simple answer. There’s no easy solution and all them have downsides to them. So, I’m not going to paint a picture of flowers and roses, beautiful music. These are going about tough choices that you have to make and, whatever you choose is fine, but go explore some different options.
So, I hope you found this helpful and I’ll just say that if you’re interested in my coaching, contact me through LinkedIn. So my LinkedIn address is www.Linkedin.com /in/TheBigGameHunter. Mention that you saw this video because I just like going I’m helping folks, and, from there, once we’re connected, send a message and indicate that you’re interested in coaching. I’d love to help you.
Hope you have a great day. Take care.
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