Comment by pleasecalllater | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pleasecalllater | Hacker News Reader

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pleasecalllater

I'm an introvert. I've been working on it, now I can talk with people... however I find it terribly boring, and exhausting. I like to work on my own, talk about technical things, and get back to working on alone. It's a huge problem for my management promotion.

Over the last 16 years of my work I've noticed that the people who are being promoted are mostly (not all of course) the mediocre ones, who like to talk and make good impression (however hardly making any good work - they are just selling this as good). But they make good impression of how great they are (unfortunately they use lies to proof that, but seems like nobody cares).

A couple of jobs ago the whole management was made by the guys who were petting the boss, and were going out to pub with him. I wasn't. I hate crowded places, and insincere people. When the boss was lying about my work in my half year review, no one from the management said anything. When I was fired because of that - they were afraid of saying anything. They were talking with me that it's not fair, not with the boss. And frankly, I'm really grateful for firing me.

Now I'm still an introvert, however I have wife and kids, and I have to be more open. However only to them.

I'm working remotely as a consultant, so I have no real chances of any leadership promotion. Working remotely is great for people like me. No promotion it not. However the job pays my bills, which is also quite important.

So overall: it's harder, seems like people care more about the impression, not the employee real work.

For many companies, much of Management is connecting introverts and doing things that don’t look like “work.” (Coordinating and connecting are important, especially as companies grow.)

The companies I’ve seen that promote introverts are ones where:

- There is little change, and therefore less change management. (Management becomes solving optimization problems, and everyone knows their roles)

- Making key technical decisions is the single most important factor for company success. (If a company can succeed led by Yes-people, it’s likely they are more sales than tech focused)

If you want other inspiration on the case against Charisma, look up Good to Great by Collins.

I'm not nearly as introverted as it seems you are, but I was a bit awkward when I'm was younger. Probably still am, but less so!

One thing that helped me was treating small talk as a game and a technical skill to master. I can still get pleasure and find interest in doing a good job of making small talk, even if I'm not interested in the topic per se. It's a complicated game for sure, which is what makes it interesting.

It doesnt sound like you would actually be interested in a manager role. Are you looking for a promotion because you would like a higher salary? There are other routes than management. Technical Architect roles can pay as much as management roles and often don't involve people management.

In my case I didn't want to manage people. I was looking for some technical roles like architect. I like talking about programming. What I don't like is just hanging out after work, and spending hours on boring chat, and that's how you get promotions in the companies I worked for. Including the technical positions. So as a result the architects and all technical stuff was made of extroverts who new quite little about the technical work. After some time it turned out that they knew quite little about any work. This is not the biggest problem. The biggest one was that they didn't seem to want to learn anything. Normal programmers were getting more and more unhappy, but the higher management was extremely happy watching how the managers can sell themselves.

And now an anecdote: a super-high-boss asked once "how much time would you need for that"... we, normal programmers, answered that about 12 to 14 months. Two days later he came back and said happily "I have sold it to the HQ, they agreed to give us the project, I told them that in 6 months it will be ready". We felt betrayed, powerless and sad... the management was extremely happy. Just guess who was told to spend weekends at work to save the managers' bonuses. The project was not delivered in that time, but I think it's quite obvious.

It looked liked this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mokllJ_Sz_g.

So my conclusion, based on my experience, is: introverts are seldom promoted, the biggest chance of promotion has a stupid mediocre person who walks after the boss replying how super he is.

This is of course just my observation. I hope I was just unlucky.

As for now, I just don't care about my promotion, I want to make interesting things, and get paid enough on time.

You say that but an architectural position - to me at least - sounds like one where you spend a lot of time in meetings and such either discussing, explaining, or convincing. As an architect you don't just sit in a room drawing UML diagrams or whatever, but you have to sit with - often opinionated - developers and whatnot.

An architect has no business giving top down orders to anyone if they are not in the team as a productive member. A leader is right there doing the work, giving advice and support.

If you don't enjoy really talking with people then you might want to reconsider whether you actually want to be a manager. Seeing as then a large part of your job would be doing just that rather than technical work.

I don't know whether it's feasible in your area of expertise, but have you considered getting into contracting? From what I can see the pay is often better than a full-time team lead would make, and there is also often a lot less expectation of joining in with office socialising. Seems like it would suit you...

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