I have only one year of experience. I have to choose between two jobs. The first one is only project manager job, small company and they pay more. The second one is a big company, technical kind of job and they pay less. I really like technical jobs… I’m in the telecommunications fields… Please give me reasons for your choice… I think I need a lot of technical exposure before stepping into project management and being successful there.
Follow your bliss and you will never work a day in your life; the technical job.
The manager job is good, but in a small company there is not much room for growth. Also it is a well know cliche’ of a manager who doesn’t know or hasn’t even done work in his own field. How does that person manage; poorly.
You like the technical aspect and say that yourself. You have more room for growth in the larger company, you will get the technical experience that you need to become a good manager, you can always try for management later, but going from management down to technical is usually a step backward. Finally, you said it in your last sentence; you don’t feel qualified enough to take the management spot.
It is not impossible but usually, you cannot manage a project if you do not understand the design and implementation aspects of the project. Furthermore, you should do what makes you feel more comfortable. The lower pay in the technical job will not matter if it is only 10 percent less than that of the management job.
Dan has given you a first-class answer — follow his advice.
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Follow your bliss and you will never work a day in your life; the technical job.
The manager job is good, but in a small company there is not much room for growth. Also it is a well know cliche’ of a manager who doesn’t know or hasn’t even done work in his own field. How does that person manage; poorly.
You like the technical aspect and say that yourself. You have more room for growth in the larger company, you will get the technical experience that you need to become a good manager, you can always try for management later, but going from management down to technical is usually a step backward. Finally, you said it in your last sentence; you don’t feel qualified enough to take the management spot.
References :
If you are capable of doing the technical stuff, project management will bore you to tears after the initial novelty has worn off (probably in about a month). There are two main types of projects, the ones that don’t need the project manager to do anything more exciting than watching paint dry, and the disasters where the best project manager in the world isn’t going to fix them anyway – it’s the techical people who are going to solve the real problems, not some BS merchant making PowerPoirt presentations.
I used to do both at once. The biggest project I ever ran involved half a dozen companies and about 10 university research departments, spread over several different countries. It ran for 4 years with a budget of a several million dollars. Actually **managing** it took about 2 hours a week maximum – less than the amount of time wasted on having to go to pointless meetings and writing pointless progress reports that nobody read anyway. That still left abotu 50 – 60 hours a week (yes really!) for doing interesting technical stuff …
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