I have decided to dedicate this post to writing about my career as I enjoyed writing about that last time. Currently, I am on the fence between engineering track and management track. I am currently a technical project manager, and not sure if I enjoy management. It is very stressful and frustrating navigating to do lists that are highly dependent on other folks. I am an independent type of worker, and having dependencies on other people who aren’t as committed to a task as you are is difficult to navigate. For example, Jira. Jira only works when everyone is involved to a certain level. People except responses when you are tagged, expect tickets to be made for your tasks, and expect tickets to be moved to their proper swim lanes and columns. If someone simply does not do the above, there is no point of Jira. Having half of my team behave like this is very frustrating and even though I’ve expressed the necessity of their participation and request it, the behavior does not follow. Influence without authority is something that differs for many people.

In addition, I notice that in any managerial positions, the more technical knowledge you have the more influence you have. Therefore it is very important for the managerial person to not only have the managerial chaps, but also the technical knowledge whereas an engineering position is expected to only have the latter. This is challenging as the skills of the managerial position must be very multifaceted but the pay might not be as equal. Of course on the other side of the coin, and engineer is expected to have deep knowledge of their domain and must continually keep being on top of the technologies and trends. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just running away from something that is difficult or if the career path is just not for me. If it’s the former then I’d be running away from both management and engineering are both difficult.