Think of a programmer! ( Part 2 )

Previous part: A programmer's thoughts

In the previous article, I tried to describe some aspects of the programming profession, but forgot to mention the most important point: why is that and how do we do it?

Where will we go from this position?

Now, let's start with the question:

What will we do when we join a software company?

The prevailing concept says that you will start at the lowest position as a programmer (programmer, either developer, or coder, or tester, or technician). There you need to successfully complete the tasks assigned by personal effort. If you do well, you will advance to be the leader of the group (team leader, or senior developer), when the professional job is divided, you only do the most difficult and most important things; For easy and often repetitive things, you will instruct the programmers below. To a higher level, you will be a project manager (if you are inclined to manage) or will be a technical manager (if you have a technical bias). Now you will spend most of your time on planning, assigning, controlling, using people, training, etc. Continuing high up, you will be able to participate in the leadership, where you will be responsible. task orientation, analysis of opportunities, challenges, … And so on up again.

I heard people describe the career ladder right from the moment they entered the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology. When I went to interview at software companies, people talked about it again. When I went to work and during performance appraisal sessions, people talked about it. When I left the company, people still talked about it. Until recently when I had the opportunity to return to Polytechnic University, I still saw people continuing to talk about it!

I see that concept is somewhat contradictory and somewhat funny. Why? I would like to mention some of the following reasons.

1) The upper position is not the higher form of the lower position

The most miraculous thing about humans compared to other creatures is their ability to evolve and develop. We know that species evolved from low-level to high-level. People call it a part of development.

But our career does not develop in such a way. Take the example of a software tester (tester) and programmer. Many managers make a gross mistake when they say that the programmer is the "higher form" of the tester. That means, if an employee is weak in programming skills, it is best to put that person in the position of the tester. When that person shows a relatively good job of the tester, we will promote that person to the position of programmer.

In fact, testers and programmers require two completely different types of people. Good programmers are special people who love rigor, efficiency, and difficult problems (can read the book "How to move Mount Fuji?" To know the creators The best teacher in the world likes to solve some difficult puzzles, but note that the translation into Vietnamese is a bit poor.) That ability helps them understand an abstract and concretizing problem. It is equal to the computer command line in the shortest time, with the highest accuracy.

But if you have the opportunity to meet excellent testers, you will find them completely different. They are particularly good at combinatorial problems (eg, with these conditions, how many situations can occur); they hate to follow a fixed set of steps (they are always curious what will happen if we skip this step, if we reverse the order of two successive steps); and they have a passion, it can be said to be pathological, in finding the error of everything (excellent testers are always happy to prove that the product is faulty, and feel very uncomfortable when must accept that the product has no errors, while the average person is the opposite).

That shows that there is no sign of ensuring an excellent tester can become an excellent programmer. There is also no reason to think that programming is a job that requires higher skills than testing.

As such, we will see that system analysis is not a higher form of developer, manager is not a higher form of system analysis, and director is not a higher form of manager, … At each In comparison pairs, success in the first place cannot guarantee success in the next position.

To make it easier to imagine, let's talk about football. When I was young, I and my friends still had the same childish thinking as when playing football. The best (or the most prestigious) will be kicked on the front line, a little worse, in the middle of being a midfielder, who has no skill and ability to be a defender, and who is bad Most push down as goalkeeper.

How did that team play? Completely failed. We have mediocre goalkeepers, mediocre defenders, mediocre midfielders, and mediocre strikers. Everyone does not feel comfortable in his position, thinking that he cannot fulfill his potential here. So no one really competes, especially the ones below. Everybody rushed up to score a goal or show his own technique, hoping to be reconsidered to be placed in the upper position.

Many software companies are in the same situation as our team before. The phenomenon is different, but the nature of the problem is one.

2) A meaningless race

When designing other career ladders, people unknowingly pushed all employees into a meaningless race and lacked humanity. All beginners will stand on the lowest rung. Among these people, the better one will be able to step up the ladder. The higher the ladder is, the less places for people there. What do you think? A very good competition for development?

On the surface, it seems. But actually inside is not the same. Listen to the stories of the following two so you can understand why.

Mr. K. is an excellent programmer when he works for software company X. He has an intense passion for programming, and only in half a year of K.'s special talent has been won by everyone. admit. K.'s manager, worried that he could lose K. to other companies and also want to help K. develop his career, he suggested to promote K. to the position of programming leader. Still with such a momentum, after nearly two years of K. adding a higher step: project manager. Bad things start here. In this position, K. soon realized he lacked too many things to become a good leader: knowledge, experience, talent, … K. felt everything was stagnant. K. feels lost. K. feels no longer enthusiastic about doing his current job. K. felt the work was deadlocked. Although the company leader facilitated K. to attend management training courses, K. still did not see better situation. Knowledge can be learned, experience can accumulate over time, but that's not enough. K. understands that he does not have leadership skills: he is not able to present well, is unable to make decisions without sufficient information, …

Superior K encouragement K. that if tried, K. will soon overcome those defects. But K. does not believe that. K. understands that he lacks the most basic element to do these things: K. has no passion for management. Without passion, he could not see what he wanted, where to go, and had no strength to overcome difficulties and tempt him around. Training or experience cannot help to create passion.

K. feels time is stretching out. K. feels depressed with his work. K. felt dissatisfied with the current ladder I was standing on. K. wants to be new, progressive and develop. Management sees that and encourages: K. needs to try to improve some more to be able to leave the current ladder and step up the ladder even higher.

And K. felt overwhelmed. No, he no longer wanted to step on the next step. Even the highest rung at the top is no longer attractive to him. He had walked through many steps in so short time that he suddenly realized that he had walked too far. The more he got away from the things he loved the most, the things he could do to the best of his ability, the things that always stimulated him to grow and learn more. Sadly, it was the work on the ladder below where he stood.

But K. can't step down. No one can from the project manager position move down to become developer. And K. also didn't want to step down. At the bottom of the ladder, there are only people with mediocre programming abilities and mediocre leadership who are not passionate about work, who are as disoriented as him.

K. doesn't know where to go from his current location. K.'s tragedy is very popular, and that's why I took it as the title of the article.

This career development system brutally pushed K. and others into a completely meaningless race for themselves. It always motivates people to move forward and blindly advance; The higher they go, the more they realize it's meaningless to themselves. What is meaningless to every employee is soon to be completely meaningless to the company.

K. will not step up to the next step, even if the company does everything. You will not step down the stairs below. And he had only one real choice: to jump out of that ladder.

The second story.

T. used to be an energetic and capable student of analyzing and evaluating extremely excellent issues. She loves the work of analyzing system design and longing to pursue it. But when it came to company F., it was judged that because of T.'s programming experience, it was best to start from the position of the tester. After a while if there is progress, she will be put up as a programmer, then if she still does well, she will have the ability and experience to be an analyst. T. gladly accepted this offer.

Nearly two years have passed and T. is still a tester at that company. Of course she was disappointed. She found herself stuck at the bottom. People still remind T. in the staff reviews that T. needs to pass two steps before reaching his desired position. But T. can't step up. Only some people get up the next step from their current location. Those who soon develop the ability in testing work have stepped up before T. is over. She cannot compete with them, simply because her testing ability cannot be equal to them. People continue to encourage T. improve skills and experience testing, programming to become a member !!! T. found it funny and lost confidence. T. no longer sees patience with work and company. Family and boyfriend's are no longer patient. Like K. she also jumped out of that ladder.

We all know how meaningless the ladder and its stairs are. But no one said it to us. We still draw it to encourage each other, and encourage ourselves. But sooner or later, we'll know it's stupid.

It is meaningless because no one can walk all the steps, from the lowest to the highest. If someone can do that, then I can't imagine a person so perfect. I tried to understand the biography of many outstanding and successful figures in my field, and realized that no one is so perfect.

It is meaningless because it forces us into a race that eventually all participants are losers. It forces us to develop if we want to develop. As we move forward we have to leave the position we like and can progress, to enter a district where we are completely unfamiliar and show no signs of progress.

Industry insiders have all heard of K. and T., but don't know what the end of the story is. I don't know what they are now. Some say that after jumping off that ladder, K. became a freelance programmer. Others say that K. changed his job. Some people see T. marry and follow her husband to settle abroad and study up. Some people think that T. has become his own businesswoman.

But I believe that, wherever it is, and whatever you are doing, if you are asked about the story of the career ladder, both will laugh and say you never want to go back to it.

3) Eliminate outstanding individuals

Of course there are also some who can climb very high stairs in a very short time. Currently in Vietnam it is becoming more and more popular. We no longer find it strange to know that someone less than 30 years old has become a senior manager, even a director of big companies.

What does it mean to become a senior manager at less than 30 years old?

It means that the person only needs to spend about 1-2 years on each rung: developer, team leader, manager, … (Of course there are a few people who went to work before graduating from university, but that is not is the majority) before stepping up to the next step.

I have doubts about this. Perhaps in Vietnam we are too easy to assess human capacity. I was fortunate to have a chance to know some programmers working in US companies (they are my company's partner companies), and were shocked to learn that they were all 50 years old. They have been programmers for more than 20 years, meaning their job age is bigger than my age! Oh, don't think they are inferior employees, so stay in that position forever. In terms of competence, experience and knowledge, I may not know anyone in Vietnam who can match them.

Employees in Japan also need 10 to 15 years of professional work before being considered for promotion. At Microsoft, programmers also have 4-5 years of work or more.

In a study called The Talent Development Project, Dr. Benjamin Bloom of NorthWestern University explored the development of outstanding individuals in many different fields. The conclusion he made was that the average person took 10 to 18 years to reach the highest achievement in his field. That means even the most outstanding individuals in the world (that study evaluates them as world-class qualified), needing no less than 10 years to reach the peak in their field. Note that programmers, managers, or businesses are completely different areas. Dr. Benjamin's research did not say that it took more than 10 years for people to rise to the highest leadership position.

This is another harm of the career ladder. It makes us not see the peak in every job, but it makes us rush to find a way to express ourselves well enough in the current ladder to get up. And at some point, like Mr. K. for example, we will soon realize that we have walked so far, that we cannot go back, and we are no longer interested in hiccups. ladder above. Anything that is too easy to leave is so easy.

Maybe this is a product of people working in human resources? In an effort to find a way to help all career development workers, they unknowingly forced people to escalate! And after the escalation process is so tired, we will see a few people who are high up to be able to do many things well, but there is nothing outstanding. Most people are underneath, dissatisfied and bored because they don't see themselves improving. The people in the middle are confused and disoriented.

You need to pay attention to the word usage here, you need to see the difference between good (good) and excellent (excellent, or great). I believe some people only need 1-2 years to do certain things well, but it is impossible to achieve excellence.

I would not be surprised if more and more later we have few outstanding people who hold the top positions in their field. Without those people, we will not be able to develop far. I was not surprised if one day, everyone would continue to boast about the series of articles: the number 1 Vietnamese climbers. There are people who escalate like that, we will always linger far behind other countries.

This will be very difficult to change, as more and more people participate in the escalating race. And the stairs are getting bigger and bigger. I know that there are only 3 companies at the start of the company: developers, team leaders, and bosses. But then they have a manager in the middle of the team leader and boss. Then consultant in the middle of team leader and manager. Then senior developer between the developer and the team leader. Then added a senior manager. The last time I saw the company website, I saw that there was an extra director. I think the ladder number will not stop here.

This is very dangerous. With such insatiable development, companies will soon be like a sick and tall sick guy. Everyone is managing some people below their own. Many generals but few troops. Some people below have to work hard for a lot of people above. Too many mediocre people at intermediate management levels. People will waste a lot of time for meeting, reporting, planning, evaluating, rewarding, etc., so there will be less time for real work (writing code, checking, creating good relationships with customers) , …)

What should we do?
We have 2 approaches to solve these problems. Both are taken from the Peopleware book I introduced, along with the book "First Break All The Rules" – a book that managers and personnel should read. I wrote this article because of the information from the two books above.

The first way: I call it "mild repair". We will adjust the effects of the ladder in a positive way.

The second way: I call it "a complete remake." I will discuss this in the following section.

Light fixes mean that we temporarily accept the existence of the ladder, but will "customize" it a bit. The usual view is that we are only allowed to move on the ladder (or we can turn left or right depending on whether we have a managerial or technical bias, but eventually we have to go up). So we will add one more option when escalating: if anyone does not like to climb up, it can climb!

That is, each person will be encouraged to go into the field they are doing. It is not necessary to be good at everything in a short time to be appreciated, instead each person needs to find what he likes the most and has the most ability, then focus on developing to become the best in that field. .

Here I will explain in detail how we will do and what the consequences will be.

1) Pay wages according to their capacity

Certainly what I have shown above will make you suspicious immediately: the reality is cruel, but it must be. Manager is more important than developer so salary is higher than developer. So everyone wants to advance to be a manager. After all, who doesn't want high status and high salary!

Yes, finding a good manager is much harder than finding a good developer. In order to become a good manager, it also requires more time, more skills, more experience, so the average salary of the manager must be higher than the average salary of the developer.

But it would be wrong to assume that every manager's salary must be higher than the salary of all developers. If the company pays salaries based on the ladder the employee is standing for, sooner or later all employees will push each other into the escalating race with no post-end.

Back to football story a bit. In fact, even small children understand that being a striker is more valuable as a defender. The striker rarely competes for 90 minutes, runs less, but always receives a higher salary, the transfer value is also higher, and is always more admired than the defender. So who wants to be a defender?

The answer is yes. Those are excellent defenders. Sports, especially football, have a good salary system that other disciplines should study. It encourages good defenders to strive for excellence, instead of training to become average strikers. They understand that excellent defender is better paid than average striker. Of course, they also understand that at the same high level as them, colleagues on the front line will have higher salaries, more advertising contracts, the ability to win prizes (such as Golden Ball) will also be great than. But that does not interest them, because they understand that they were born not to be excellent strikers.

Similarly, in football, the average salary of the coach is always higher than the average salary of the player. Mourinho has a salary that many players at Chelsea have to covet. Vietnamese players will have to be afraid of Mr. Riedl's salary. Coaching career also has a higher life expectancy as a player.

But few players want to end their careers quickly to become coaches. Because being an excellent player for them is more feasible, and then they also have a higher income than being a village coach.

We should do so in the software industry. We still keep such ladders, but paying wages so that the outstanding people on the lower rung will have a higher salary than the average person on the ladder above.

Take Merrill Lynch, for example. According to author Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the book "First Break All The Rules", the highest salary a financial advisor can receive is $ 500,000 a year. Meanwhile, the lowest salary of a branch manager (higher position than a financial advisor) is only 150,000 dollars. Therefore, if a good financial adviser wants to be promoted, he / she must accept the risk of being much lower in salary. Of course, on the other side, if they become excellent branch managers, their salaries can reach millions of dollars. The game is very fair.

Excellent players or veteran players must also consider a lot when switching to coaching. Because they will immediately lose wages compared to being a player. This principle encourages good people to become better, and eliminates those who only target high income without talent out of the game.

There are also many people who have to deal with this. They think the current way of doing things is less expensive. Paying more for managers (with fewer people) and paying less for developers (more people) will be more economical than doing the opposite. They think that only a good manager can manage an average developer.

As an average developer, the end result will be average, no matter who the manager is. The manager will take a long time to "catch" the consequences and errors left by the developers. They will step on each other's feet. Some people, especially managers, even have to spend time on coding instead of incompetent people. This nightmare must one of us once knew.

If a manager is excellent but the team is inferior, what will be the result? It is not difficult to guess, because experience shows that the results of that collective will be very poor. Điều duy nhất mà manager xuất sắc làm tốt hơn manager kém cỏi trong trường hợp này là dù thất bại, các thành viên cũng vấn thấy vui vẻ vì đã làm việc chung với người manager xuất sắc, vì họ đã học được nhiều điều có ích. Ngược lại, họ sẽ vô cùng tức giận và ganh ghét vì thấy người kém cỏi mà cũng được làm manager.

Khả năng duy nhất mà manager xuất sắc có thể làm là biến một tập thể có tiềm năng trở nên thực sự xuất sắc. Điều này thì manager trung bình hay kém cỏi không thể làm được.

Vì vậy, hãy trả lương cao cho những những developer xuất sắc, và trả lương cao hơn nữa cho những manager xuất sắc; đối với những người còn lại thì trả lương thấp hơn.

2) Mở rộng các nâng thang sang chiều ngang

Phần lớn các công ty phần mềm đều định ra bảng liệt kê các tiêu chí để đánh giá nhân viên. Trong đó, nó sẽ phân biệt rạch ròi đâu là sự khác biệt giữa developer với senior developer, với team leader, với manager, với senior manager. Chẳng hạn, senior developer thì hơn developer ở số năm kinh nghiệm và khả năng truyền đạt. Nhưng rất ít nơi nào có khả năng định nghĩa đâu là sự khác biệt giữa developer kém, đâu là developer trung bình, và đâu là developer xuất sắc.

Đánh giá như vậy thì buồn cười quá. Nếu dựa vào cách làm đó, tôi có thể nói rằng Trần Tiến Anh, cựu thủ môn của đội Thể Công giỏi hơn Ronaldinho nhiều. Ronaldinho chỉ biết đá ở vị trí tiền về tấn công hoặc tiền đạo. Nhưng Trần Tiên Anh thì “tròn trịa” hơn, bắt gôn thì hay, thình thoảng cũng đá được hậu vệ, khi nào có dịp đẩy lên đá tiền đạo cũng ngon lành chẳng kém tiền đạo mấy đội bóng phong trào.

Cách làm hiện nay đang phá hủy nghề nghiệp của tester, developer, và cả team leader, những người ở nấc thang bên dưới. Rất nhiều người làm testing và lập trình hiện nay đang hoang mang và chán nản, vì cho rằng những công việc này chẳng có gì phức tạp cả, ai làm cũng như ai. Là một người say đặc biệt say mê phần mềm và làm phần mềm, tôi không khỏi xót xa vì chuyện này. Ngay cả những người dọn dẹp phòng trong các khách sạn cũng hiểu được thế nào là người làm giỏi, thế nào là người làm dở, vậy mà chúng ta không chịu phân biệt đâu là developer giỏi và đâu là developer dở. Mà thật ra ngay cả những vị trí ở trên cũng đang xảy ra tình trạng tương tự đấy thôi.

Chúng ta nên chấm dứt tình trạng so sánh táo và cam, so sánh chó và mèo, so sánh tàu thủy và máy bay. Thay vì vậy, hãy so sánh những con mèo với nhau, chỉ rõ ra được đâu là mèo đẹp, đâu là mèo xấu; nuôi dưỡng và thưởng cho mèo đẹp để nó đẹp hơn, và không bao giờ khuyến khích nó trở thành chó nếu điều đó là không khả thi.

3) Thay đổi công việc phát triển phần mềm

Thực tình tôi cũng phải thừa nhận rằng với công việc phát triển phần mềm hiện nay, rất khó để khuyến khích mọi người phát triển theo chiều ngang được, dù đó là tester, developer, hay manager. Vâng, phần lớn chúng ta làm gia công phần mềm (outsourcing), và khi outsourcing, chúng ta không cần nhiều những developer xuất sắc như nước Mỹ, và về mức độ cũng không cần phải xuất sắc như những người hàng đầu ở Mỹ.

Trong tình hình hiện nay, một số nhỏ những cá nhân xuất sắc ở Việt Nam sẽ không tìm được vị trí của nấc thang thích hợp cho mình. Họ đang hoang mang không biết làm gì. Phần lớn họ quyết định ra nước ngoài học lên cao. Tôi chưa có khả năng bình luận về điều này, bởi vì tôi không may mắn được sinh ra trong số đó. Tôi đã và đang phải vật lộn với từng nấc thang đấy thôi, bắt đầu từ nấc thang thấp nhất đấy thôi

Nhưng ngay cả trong gia công phần mềm, vẫn còn rất nhiều khoảng trống để nhiều người phát triển sang ngang. Vấn đề là chúng ta có biết cách làm hay không. Tôi sẽ trở lại với đề tài này trong thời gian sắp tới.

4) Hiểu rõ bản chất của sự phát triển

Tuy vậy, cũng sẽ có nhiều người phản đối những gì tôi đã trình bày ở trên. Tôi đoán có lẽ họ xuất thân từ ngành nhân sự, vì cái thang sự nghiệp là sản phẩm của ngành đó, không phải là của ngành công nghiệp phần mềm. Tôi cũng đoán có lẽ họ nhiễm phim kiếm hiệp Hồng Kông nặng.

Trong phim kiếm hiệp, nhân vật chính của chúng ta sẽ luyện võ công từ cơ bản đến thượng thừa bằng cách bước vào một tòa tháp nhiều tầng. Ở mỗi tầng sẽ có các đối thủ với những sở trường khác nhau. Chẳng hạn, ở tấng 1, anh ta phải đối đầu với một cao thủ về khinh công. Anh ta phải rèn luyện để khinh công của mình vượt qua được đối thủ đó. Chiến thắng ở tầng 1 sẽ cho phép anh ta bước lên tầng 2. Ở tầng này, anh ta sẽ phải luyện kiếm pháp để đánh bại một cao thủ chuyên về kiếm. Cứ như thế, tấng 3 sẽ là đao pháp, tầng 4 là quyền pháp, tầng 5 là khí công, tấng 6 là trí lực, tầng 7 là phi tiêu ám khí, vân vân và vân vân. Khi vượt qua được tất cả các tầng và lên đến đỉnh ngọn tháp, anh ta sẽ trở thành cao thủ đệ nhất thiên hạ.

Quan niệm thông thường dạy chúng ta rằng đó là sự phát triển của con người. Chúng ta được khuyến khích chinh phục những cái chưa biết, những cái chưa làm, khắc phục những điểm yếu của mình. Chúng ta cần làm cho mình hoàn thiện hơn.

Sự thực thì chẳng ai có thể làm được như vậy. Mỗi người sinh ra đều có điểm mạnh và điểm yếu riêng. Rất khó để chúng ta tự rèn luyện nhằm có thêm được những điểm mạnh mới, và càng không thể nếu chúng ta cố gằng tự sửa chữa điểm yếu để nó trở thành điểm mạnh.

Tất cả các vĩ nhân đều có khiếm khuyết. Họ không mất thời gian đi sửa chữa khiếm khuyết của mình. Thay vào đó họ tìm ra đầu là điểm mạnh của họ, tìm môi trường để điểm mạnh phát huy hết, và tìm những người cộng sự xuất sắc ở lĩnh vực khác để bù đắp cho khiếm khuyết của mình.

Tôi hiểu ra điều này sau khi đọc 2 cuốn sách ở trên, và nhất là sau khi cuộc trao đổi với một nhân viên trong công ty. Tôi hỏi:

• Định hướng nghề nghiệp trong tương lai của em như thế nào? Và rồi tôi thao thao về những cơ hội phía trước, nào là leader, manager, technical director,…
• Em thấy mình phù hợp với công việc chỉnh sửa và hoàn thiện lại những phần mềm sẵn có, để nó trở nên tốt hơn. Em thích được làm việc, nhưng quan trọng nhất là em thích được chơi game!!! – Nhân viên đó trả lời.

Tôi bị bất ngờ và chợt bửng tỉnh. Tôi đã quá ngu muội, tưởng tượng mình là đạo diễn trong bộ phim kiếm hiệp, và dựng cho người nhân viên này vai chính trong đó. Tôi lại đi khuyến khích nhân viên này kinh qua tất cả các tầng để trở nên hoàn thiện hơn, nhưng lại không hiểu người này muốn gì và có khả năng gì.

Bây giờ thì tôi đã hiểu. Người nhân viên của tôi không cần phải trở thành nhân vật chính trong bộ phim. Ngược lại, anh ta nên trở thành một trong các nhân vật phụ. Anh ta sẽ đi tìm xem mình thích cao thủ ở tầng nào nhất, và nếu đủ khả năng, anh ta sẽ ở lại tầng đó, rèn luyện để có thể trở thành cao thủ đệ nhất trong lĩnh vực đó. Có thể anh ta sẽ trở thành đệ nhất cao thủ khinh công, và như vậy anh ta không cần thiết phải luyện phép mình đồng da sắt làm gì nữa. Đơn giản là không thể được như vậy.

Anh ta sẽ ở lại tầng đó càng lâu càng tốt. Có lẽ anh ta sẽ không bao giờ đi lên những tầng phía trên của ngọn tháp. Điều đó là không cần thiết. Bởi vì anh ta là một người rất đặc biệt. Cuộc sống của anh ta không phải là ở ngọn tháp đó. Anh ta chỉ ở tầng 1 của ngọn tháp trong một phần nhỏ của cuộc đời, và trong phần lớn thời gian còn lại, anh sẽ ra ngoài ngọn tháp, chơi những thứ mình thích, làm những điều có ý nghĩa khác, rồi ở bên những người quan trọng nhất đối với anh ta. Đó là phần kết của bộ phim.

Chúng ta có rất nhiều chọn lựa

Còn một cách khác, tôi cho rằng triệt để hơn, đó là chúng ta hãy dẹp bỏ cái thang đó. Rõ ràng là nó vô nghĩa và nó đang làm sự nghiệp của nhiều người trở nên vô nghĩa.

Bất kỳ công ty nào cũng cần có sơ đồ mô tả bộ máy quản lý của công ty. Từ người thấp nhất đến người cao nhất. Sơ đồ này là phải có ở bất kỳ tổ chức nào. Nội dung của nó hoàn toàn giồng “bản vẽ” cái thang sự nghiệp mà chúng ta đang dùng.

Nhưng chúng ta không nên sử dụng nó đễ định hướng cho nhân viên phát triển sự nghiệp theo đó. Chúng ta nên tìm cách khác tốt hơn.