or… How do I always manage to be the employee that does his job, works hard, keeps abreast of business and technology, steps up to manage projects and architect solutions, yet still not be the employee that is a) given the position with responsibility. b) Treated like he knows anything at all about 1-the business, and 2-The technology.
The answer is I don’t know. Believe me, if I did know, I’d stop doing whatever I am doing that puts me in that position. You think I like this?
I like the place I work. It’s largely evil, and only cares about money, not people (customers or employees), but the people are (mostly) good, They know their stuff, and the money is not too bad. That said. I’ve been overlooked recently in favor of other employees that, while not incompetent by any stretch, know a fraction of what I do, as far as the company and it’s people, and the applications we support.
My team has two System Architects… one of which can’t architect a thing. One manages to take a single project and “architect” it into a ginormous project that only he can work on, excluding all else. THe other does about as much architecting as I do flipping hamburgers at McDonalds.
And here I am, wanted to get into the architecture field, having the knowledge of our systems, having good relationships with people on all teams, having a reputation as a developer who can deliver and make the customer happy. And I get the run around. I get, “It’s 50% trainging and 50% experience” fuck that! I have the experience. We’ve got architects at our company that weren’t any good at coding, yet I’m not qualified? WTF
Then I talk to a good friend of mine at another company. Same business. He’s got a web architect, who doesn’t want to use Flash because it will lock them into a single technology, but some, no name .NET component that sucks for UI, that’s a great choice. It makes my head hurt that this bozo is doing the job I want, and sounds like he couldn’t program or architect his way out of a paper sack!!!
For Crying out loud!
