[zeemonkee3]

In the UK you get ahead by going into management. Tech (or sales, or accounting, or whatever) is just a short term thing you do for a few years until you get promoted into management. We don't like to reward people for being clever; we like to reward people who tell others what to do.

[bpyne]

It's really difficult to generalize the situation in the US due to the size and diversity, in terms of industry and business scales, of the country. In general, I would say that you hit a ceiling in career development within 10 years on a technical track. (Of course, there are exceptions in industry sectors and a small number of geographic locations. But, I'm looking at the aggregate.)

However, management is no panacea. The pay is higher, but you can easily be stuck in mid-level management limbo with no say on budget or technical direction. Of course, you are "empowered" (read the remainder of the sentence with an abundance of sarcasm) to do reviews, deal with resource allocation issues for projects, operations, support work, and not to mention the coveted verification that your team does mandatory training on sexual harassment and the like. My manager is a prime example. He sits in many meetings. Ostensibly, he has a voice at the table with the "big wigs". In reality, he controls nothing and has the boring administrivia to handle. Mid-level management is also the first layer to be cut in a down-sizing.

If you stay on the technical track past 10 years, it really has to be because you love the ability to create something and see it used. I've been on the technical side for 25 years. Much of my job I find boring and intellectually vacuous. But, the times when I can actually create something still thrill me like the first time I wrote a program and saw it run.

[branchless]

Also IMHO management is risky because you become specialised to your companies systems.

One downsizing later you find yourself with 10 years of experience in working around limitations in the stationary ordering system at NowBustCompany. Welcome to the scrap heap.

By contrast in IT you can stay fresh more easily and be in demand should you need to move on.

[taurath]

The same thing can certainly happen in IT. How many IBM folks specializing in lotus notes are being laid off as we speak? Its one of the bigger problems working at BigCo's - you can end up only knowing internal people and internal systems. The only place you can conceivably jump to is companies nearby founded by other ex-BigCo people (in many cases nowadays, the primary competitors are overseas - capital has free trade to move freely but humans do not).

If you don't maintain some semblance of connection with the outside world you can get stuck. The scariest thing in the world to me is a job that is only internal facing.

[branchless]

Agreed. I think this is easier to do in middle management but agree with your general fear!

[JPKab]

I noticed this phenomenon myself. I work in retail data analytics, and deal a lot with both American and British customers, as well as technology companies.

It is mind-blowing to me how huge a disparity there is between the British and US mindsets on technology talent in an identical industry. The American companies, even the more old-fashioned ones, are (or are starting to) treating technical talent the way a sports team treats it's players. The British companies are way, way more 90's style: the techies need to stay in the closet and let the big-boy managers do all the talking. The pay, of course, reflects this. I'm sure there are numerous exceptions in both directions, but within my industry it is pervasively accurate.

[mattlutze]

It works similarly in Germany and other economies with strong social support systems as well, it seems. You're doing really well to break 65,000ish Eur as a developer, but get on the management track and the sky opens up.

[zeemonkee3]

Why would "strong social support systems" be connected to this?

[JPKab]

I have a suspicion how this works:

As an American, when I was early in my career, and had a baby and wife to support, being underpaid was super painful. Medical care, for instance, was expensive. Being able to be easily and quickly fired without a typical European justification process is another factor. You can find yourself unemployed at any time, with any justification.

It all lit a fire under me to demand better pay. In fact, I got very used to doing so, and also got very comfortable with the idea of doing whatever it took to turn myself into a sought-after commodity, with a goal of being able to find a new job as fast as possible "just in case" things went south quickly. I quickly learned to recognize companies where technologists are treated as a cost center. These companies, if they are indeed technology focused businesses, are going to inevitably have terrible products, mediocre employees due to the dead-sea effect, and awful work environments.

I wonder if a strong social support system would have never incentivized me to get comfortable negotiating, to invest in myself as a valuable piece of human capital in a very cutthroat, competitive market. Who knows?

[J-dawg]

I think you're overestimating European social support systems a bit.

Here in the UK, you can be fired quite easily until you've been in a job for 2 years.

After that, you can still be made redundant. IBM are currently laying off a lot of people and only paying them the legal minimum settlement (1 week's pay for every year worked).

Our unemployment benefits are very low. Most professional people wouldn't even bother claiming them when between jobs, the hassle involved is huge.

It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

So I still feel pretty damn incentivised to look out for myself, even in this socialist utopia.

[JPKab]

Yes, perhaps I was overestimating, especially for the UK. We Americans tend to jealously view the EU as a bit of a utopia when it comes to these things, as you correctly pointed out.

However, don't underestimate the NHS. My biggest fear when I was early in my career was not having health insurance for my baby boy and wife. Getting ill between jobs (this was before Obama's new health care expansion) could result in bankruptcy. In fact, perhaps the biggest driver for me was the fact that my wife was not insured by her job when she became pregnant with my son. My job charged unaffordably high premiums to cover her (they don't scale to your salary, and I was being paid $11/hour, so it was literally a third of my monthly pay to cover her). The awful medical care she was able to get was Medicaid, which is the government subsidized health plan for the poor in the United States. Good doctors don't take it at all, so you end up getting terrible health care from the doctors nobody wants to see. She received horrible pre-natal care, typical screening procedures were never done, including simply looking at her cervix to check for warning signs of pre-term labor. Had these warning signs been even checked for, we could have avoided my son being born 3 months premature. But they weren't, and we didn't. The doctors at the hospital were appalled when they found out that my wife had gone to a checkup and been cleared a few days before the labor started, and one of them began crying when she found out from us that the doctor hadn't looked at my wife's cervix. My son was given a 70% chance of survival at his birth, because my wife didn't have fucking insurance.

Just be thankful you have the NHS. Healthcare here is a fucking horror show.

I had to accept that I live in a country where not having a GOOD job means that you and your family are going to get inferior medical care in tangible, life-threatening ways.

[J-dawg]

Point taken, perhaps my final point was overstating things a bit (or underestimating just how awful the healthcare situation is in America).

I think people like me who are lucky enough to be basically healthy can get a skewed view of the NHS, because for routine medical care the 'customer service' is pretty awful.

I've come to believe this slightly mediocre experience is actually necessary to the survival of the NHS. If you could (for example) instantly see a GP and get referred to a physiotherapist every time you got a bit of back pain, the whole system would be inundated with demand. For routine stuff like this, most working people would skip the NHS altogether and go direct to a private physio (or have it covered by their employer's plan).

But it's there for all the important (and expensive) stuff like childbirth and serious illnesses. And for that we are insanely lucky.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to your wife and son. I hope they're both doing great now.

[toomuchtodo]

> It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

I have private medical insurance in the US. I can still go bankrupt if I go to the emergency room and whomever is providing care isn't covered by my insurance plan.

[stuxnet79]

> It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

Is the NHS really that bad? I understand there must be some disadvantages to it but it is still pretty damn impressive especially when you consider that Americans spend more per capita on health care but still need to get private health insurance.

[J-dawg]

It's not that bad, I think I was overstating things. I've explained a little more in my reply to the parent comment

[ido]

Continental Europe (Germany, Austria, the Nordic countries, etc) is a lot more socialist than the UK.

The UK seems to be somewhere in between the US and continental Europe.

[kspaans]

Generally speaking, you don't need to be paid as much if you don't have to pay for your own healthcare, pension, schooling for kids, etc. I believe that's what the parent is alluding to.