If you are a software developer newly graduated in Singapore, what are your possible route of career advancement?
This is actually a topic that has been a constant frustration for me.
Outlined is a natural progression of a typical software developer in Singapore:
1. Developer -> Team Lead -> Project Manager.
Short and simple to understand. Most software developers would follow this natural progression, and is probably the only model they are familiar with. Project Manager is where the money is, which is of course essential for our day to day expense, especially in this country of high cost of living (I think we are ranked like 10? in the world).
Notice also that in this progression, a person develop less and less, but manage more and more.
Now what about those who do are not good in managing? Or uncomfortable in managing project and people?
In the current situation, they will just... try to manage. This path is a very natural model here, as I stressed. And in fact, for some, this is seen as progress, or promotion. It is just NATURAL. If you don't go up the chain, you are seen as well.. incompetent. Irregardless of how beautiful and perfect your code is. Or how knowledgable. Or how good at debugging you are. If you don't go up the chain, you are simply SECOND CLASS. Your pay and bonus will definitely be lower, because there is likely a cap at each stage you are in. Even worse, maybe the highest pay a developer can get will still be lower than the lowest pay a Team Lead get. Simply because a Team Lead manage, which means additional responsibility (this is true). But even if he suck at managing, he can probably still get more pay than the most component developer in the company.
But actually, there is an alternative route of progress, which is not that common in Singapore.
2. Developer -> Senior Developer (-> Architect) -> Consultant
*(-> Architect) represents an optional progression
The developer could be not good at managing, or simply uncomfortable with managing. This represents an attractive alternative route. All experience, built up since the time of development, are still utilized. In fact, the developer is free to, and strongly encouraged to, engage in active development at every stage of progress. Even when he is an Architect.
In this other route, the skills of a developer is capitalized and maximized.
But why is this model not popular in Singapore?
The answer is very simple. Singapore Companies do not recognize software development as a high quality skill. This arise when you have management who have no experience in the software development industry or domain, who had never done any software development before. They see software developers as expandable works, who can be easily replaced as and when. Every software developer, to them, has the same amount of output, and contribute evenly to the development of a project. Software developers can be added to a project anytime, which can result in a directly proportional speed increase.
Of course, we cannot deny the contributions by our Software Development Industry itself on this misconceptions. Recognizing Software Development as an engineering discipline gives people the perspective that the development lifecycle is predictable, and easily controlled. The original waterfall approach does not help, but it is widely adopted (agile and scrum is the right approach, but still need some time to properly displace waterfall in most companies). And then, the cheap outsourcing alternative is not helping as well. To the management, why pay 2x for a senior developer, when you can hire 2 junior developer? And of course, 4 foreign developer for that matter?
Which is why as software developer, we should recognize which route we are comfortable with. And identify companies that support the selected route.
IBM, Sun, and other MNC would be more keen in supporting both route of advancement, while most local companies like ST, NCS, would be more keen in supporting route 1. I am actually lucky to find a local company that support route 2. But still, the best approach is definitely to work overseas ;)
Posts
