@ Ming – ask yourself how you’d improve all that. If you could, you be part of driving a better company with less loss and more efficiency.

How good would you be…

I binned management because of all the political bullshit. I now get to mentor young aspiring engineers, whilst someone else deals with the HR bollox. People management sucks in the modern world, too many pitfalls.

I took promotion to team leader away from tech. programming work. I enjoyed the programming, wasn’t sure if I was that good at it mind; however team leader left and so I was obvious experienced person. It did have plus points – I was already acting as liaison with folk abroad (Japan) so this was an extension of that. However it put me in the firing line when the shit hit the fan, was working late a lot more, home life suffered, running a team of programmers was not so good either.

The only advantage in the end that I could see was that – with the higher salary – came an increased redundancy payment when I got made redundant…

I’ve been covering my manager a fair amount over the last two years…I like the extra responsibility but performance management etc and constant target setting from higher up the chain makes it completely unappealing after a relatively short period. I’m not sure about Mings hierarchy, but in my company, a front line manager is target driven by above and does not have a huge influence on national working practises etc, those decisions are made higher up and the front line managers basically have to promote and implement the working practises whilst not killing off all moral.

Why take a manager position where I would end up worrying about work at weekends/whilst on holiday, where the money would take many years to pass that of the higher technical grade above me?

I am well received when I coach/assist other more senior guys on the team and although there is next to no chance of securing a position like this, a manager position comes a very poor second place.

I enjoy my job and I’m good at it, for the sake of a few thousand I could throw it all away and make the worst decision in my career. I secured an interview recently and when I was told the exact nature of the role and did some research I realised it was not for me and pulled out, despite my manager and his both wanting me to progress. Plus its getting quite common to see managers quitting and going back to a technical grade when they get a chance…

Spooky, your post makes a lot of sense and runs true with some of my own thoughts.

Kryton57 – Member

@ chekw Sounds like the company interview process is a fault if people are allowed to bullshit themselves into a position.

What happens to the now vacant Senior position & the position they vacated – are they filled with lesser experienced people?

They don’t have to interview to promote as they can promote a person as they like. No bureaucratic rules there.

The now vacant Snr position is either filled by promoting from within or recruit externally. If candidate oversell themselves again the same process happens again all over …

However, other employees like those that actually deliver the services/operations never get sacked. Their jobs are almost “guaranteed” for life but obviously forgoing the possibility of high pay.

Spooky’s right, here I’m almost at the top technical grade with zero chance of going higher bar management and unfortunately he’s right when he says that as a depot manager your just a mouthpiece, dog to kick when something goes wrong for the senior management in a blame free culture.

It’s a bit grim when I realise that I’ve 20 years to go before I max out my final salary pension which is about the only reason I’m staying.

I’d like to do something else but whilst I’m very good, probably the best in the South East Production District, it’s dead tech now and even our new “state of the art” gear is still a good 5-15 years behind what the real world uses and currently we are being de-skilled into card changing monkey’s as they are cheaper.

So I’m a bit stuck really. 😥

I think the key deciding factor for me was although everyone was telling me to go for it, I was lacking the drive/ambition that I think I would need to make it work, let alone enjoy it.