Providing technical career Path: Whose job is it? (Part-I)

It was one of those gloomy afternoons in Bangalore and Savitha, HR prime for the Product Engineering Services (PES) business unit (BU) at Technovation Services Limited, was sipping her coffee alone in the specious company cafeteria. In one corner of the cafeteria, a bunch of cricket enthusiasts were still watching an ICC trophy match whose outcome looked as gloomy as the weather outside. Savitha was feeling low in spite of it being a Friday. She was not sure why. Sometimes you don’t even get time to think about why you are feeling in a certain way. Now that she was alone, Savitha started re-playing the events of the day in her mind to see if she can find a clue.

Savitha had finished all planned activities for the day. She had planned 4 one-on-one meetings and she finished almost all of them on time. She had faith in conducting regular one-on-ones and believed it provides her with one of the best views on what is going on in the minds of 500 odd people in PES BU. Savitha’s typical one-on-one lasts for half an hour. Today, however, 2 of them went on for 45 minutes. Nothing unusual. She already knew all the issues that were raised: BU goals/direction not clear, growth path uncertain etc. None of the employees appeared to be an imminent attrition case. Clearly not a reason to feel low on a Friday evening.

The only other activity she did today was attending Vishal’s promotion review meeting. Vishal was one of the top performers in the BU. At least that is how he was unanimously rated by all managers during salary revision a few months back. Being a non-technical person, Savitha had no way of understanding Vishal’s technical expertise first hand. However, she knew that he was well respected among his peers and juniors which she believed to be a better indicator than the view of the managers. Vishal’s reporting manager Mamtha was recommending Vishal’s promotion from senior software engineer to technical leader. Savitha had reviewed the case and she felt Mamtha had done a good job in addressing all the questions in the recommendation form. She had used the role description available from the intranet which not too many recommending managers use. All in all, Savitha believed that Mamatha has built a strong case for Vishal. However, to her surprise, the review committee had turned down the promotion recommendation. The committee did not even consider conditional promotion with three month watch period which Savitha, anyway, was not fond of. They suggested that Vishal is clearly not ready to take up “technical leader” role. He had technical depth only in a selected modules the team worked on, however, he lacked the systems view which they considered necessary for technical lead position. Savitha decided that she will talk to Mamtha on this topic and try to understand if there is any systemic issue.

It had been a couple of weeks since Savitha thought of meeting with Mamtha regarding Vishal’s promotion review. However, she got busy with various activities like BU HR dashboard, management offsite, sending BU training requirements to corporate training department and meeting with Mamtha never happened. Today the first email she gets is Vishal’s resignation. Savitha felt really guilty that perhaps she could have done something had she met with Mamtha. Anyway, now she was all the more determined to get to the root of this issue.

Meeting with Vishal had not revealed much to Savitha. Vishal’s view (at least what he expressed) was that he has spent six years at Technovation and it is time he should see world outside this company. He did not express any grudge against his reporting manager or the system. However, Savitha felt that he was not opening up and perhaps not telling the real reason behind his decision to leave.

If one-on-one with Vishal was a dampner, meeting with Mamtha was really insightful. Mamtha clearly felt that promotion review debacle was the trigger point for Vishal’s decision to leave. She felt bad that in spite of her sincere efforts she fell short of making a good recommendation. “What do you think went wrong in the promotion review?” Savitha asked the question that has been nagging her since the meeting.

“A bunch of things went wrong, as far as I can see. First, it became clear as the meeting progressed that there was no common understanding among the reviewers as to what it takes to be a technical lead. During the meeting, I also realized that I have never probed Vishal on his technical decisions. If I were not the right person then I should have got some of his decisions reviewed by the right set of people. In any case, promotion review meeting was not the right place for Vishal to get feedback on his technical capabilities. The only way he got assessed quarter after quarter was based on how he is contributing to delivery. That is certainly required. However, I feel, something more should be done. I don’t know what,” Mamtha said. “How about if we talk to Sujot (BU head)? After all he did participate in the promotion review and asked some pointed questions to Vishal” Savitha asked. “That is a good idea”, Mamtha said and that is where the meeting ended. Savitha was happy she has got hold of a thread which seems to be moving.

Sujot was about to travel the next day. However, as soon as Savitha sent a request over email, he confirmed to meet early morning. It was a signal that this is important to him. The meeting was short – lasted only 15 minutes. However, it left Savitha and Mamtha both with lots of energy. Sujot agreed that it is important for us to be able to groom people like Vishal to take on architect roles. At the same time, he said “We don’t want technical ladder to be an escape route for people who don’t like project and people management. I agree our supporting structures and processes are not mature enough to show career path for technical people.” However, he asked some pertinent questions, “How many technical specialists does our business need? For example, does our BU need a senior architect? I am not sure.” At the end he said, “Why don’t you guys think about it and come back with what you think is the issue and how we can solve it? Let’s meet again in 2 weeks when I am back.”

Mamtha told Savitha that she would like to participate in this activity. However, she is tied up with her work and can give only a limited time for this activity. However, she mentioned she knows someone who specializes in these issues and consults organizations. She promised to talk to him and set up a meeting with Savitha.

“What is the problem you folks are trying to solve?”  Paulose, an independent consultant, was asking basic questions to Savitha and Mamtha. After Savitha narrated Vishal’s story as a trigger for this activity and said, “Well, we feel that we are not able to show a career path for technical specialists and we believe that technical specialists will make a difference to our business.” “Why do you think your business needs technical specialists?” Paulose asked. “We have seen the quality of statement of work improves when a technical expert is involved during contracting phase. Similarly, people like Vishal do add value throughout the project lifecycle in improving phase containment (i.e. catching defects in the phase of origin such as requirements, design, implementation, testing etc)” Mamtha was speaking from her experience. “And what would Vishal have done 2/3/4 years from now?” Paulose asked. “We don’t know” “Why don’t we find out?” Asked Paulose.

After a few meetings with Sujot and a few senior managers Paulose joined hands with Savitha  and Mamtha. Their first task was to assess the alignment of technical talent pool especially the senior technical people with business goals. This meant 3 things (a) Understanding what kind of technical specialists does the PES BU need today (3-6 months) and tomorrow (1-2 years)? (b) To what degree is the need getting fulfilled today and where are the critical gaps? (c) How is PES BU’s technical staff getting ready to meet tomorrow’s challenges? Once these objectives got laid out, it was clear to them that the first thing they need to understand is PES BU’s business goals for today and for tomorrow and how it intends to get there, in effect, PES BU strategy.

Savitha thought the strategy dump session would be boring. She had gone through this so many times. However, as the session unfolded with Paulose asking lots of questions and Sujot clarifying patiently, everybody started seeing newer dimensions. Product Engineering Services, the market segment in which PES BU operated, was one of the fastest growing segments in the industry. A special report from NASSCOM on engineering services pegs the growth of outsourced services to grow from $750 million in 2005 to $1 trillion by 2020. Of the $750 billion only $10 to $15 billion is offshored and India brings home 12% of today’s offshored market. India has the potential to control 20-25% of the global market for offshored engineering services by 2010.

PES BU had three verticals Embedded systems, Semiconductors (semicon) and Aerospace. Embedded was the oldest group and also the largest (300 engineers), Semicon had 150 engineers and Aerospace group was the youngest and had 50 engineers. Embedded had 8 managers and 2 senior managers, semicon group had 5 managers and 1 sr. manager while Aerospace was being managed by a manager. Overall, the BU had 3% management and there was no technical specialist equivalent to management positions. Embedded group had 2 main sub-groups (each managed by one senior manager), telecom and automotive. PES BU was expected to be doubled in size (1000 engineers) in the next 2 years time.

One of the key competencies PES BU needs to foster to sustain its competitive advantage was its ability to take on complex turnkey projects and deliver on time and with quality. This was possible only if PES BU can groom not only good managers but also excellent technical specialists.

After the meeting with Sujot, Paulose had one-one-ones with all group heads, all the key technical people and some of the budding senior engineers. Savitha joined in for a few of the meetings. She would not follow some of the discussion threads especially when it came to the architectural issues being faced by the customers and the group’s readiness in tackling them. However, she perhaps had more insight than anyone in the BU when it came to career aspirations, inter-group interactions etc. Moreover, she knew that all the discussions were focused around the three objectives they set out to address. They had a couple of internal review meetings before presenting the findings to senior management at PES BU.

Today was the review with Sujot and other senior managers. Paulose opened the session with a set of questions, “PES BU has 3.2% management and no senior technical staff. Is this in line with PES BU’s business needs? If it really needs technical specialists, how many and what should they do? What are the cost implications for the additional senior people and what are the expected returns?”

“Let’s look at two key operational dimensions: (1) Business acquisition and; (2) Delivery. Sales team sites lack of technical support as one of the important reasons why the sales cycles are long and they are not able to beat the competition. It is a technology business and who can articulate the technical competence better than the technical specialists? Cost of poor quality (i.e. cost of re-work) is at 12%. With industry average being anywhere between 4%-8%, it is clearly an area of improvement. Product quality can certainly improve with improved systems view in the BU. When a person like Vishal leaves, it is not just a question of hiring yet another replacement. All these things point to the fact that the BU will certainly do better with a few technical architects. But, how many? Let’s look at the 4 domains: Telecom, Automative systems, Semicon and Aerospace. The BU needs at least 2 architects (with same level as managers) – that would make technical ladder at 0.4%. Considering the growth rate of the BU, I feel the BU should aim to have or groom at least 4 such people which would make it 0.5% to 0.7% of the engineering staff by the time such positions are filled. This would make the ratio between management positions and technical positions 1:5 to 1:7. This may increase the cost by 1-1.5% and not all the effort is necessarily non-billable. For example, contribution of these folks in requirement gathering phase could be charged to customers. However, the returns due to improved sales as well as delivery will should be at least 10% and certainly worth the investment.”

“What should these people do, I mean, on a day-to-day basis?” One of the senior managers asked. It was a valid question since staff was not used to having such senior technical people around. And after all, he may have to manage technical specialists, if the BU decides to create such positions. “Well, as we discussed, these people have to have one foot anchored in growing today’s business. They should be addressing questions like: How do we bring out the best of PES BU’s experience for acquiring new customers? To address this, they need to sit through some of the sales meetings with prospective customers. How can we improve the impact analysis during bug-fixing? What kind of design/coding defects is costing the BU dearly? However, that is clearly not sufficient. They are the ones who should look at new technology areas where the BU should focus on. They should suggest and run pilot projects in the new technology areas. They should publish papers, write patents and in general, contribute to the technology brand of the organization. Apart from that they should mentor aspiring young talents, not just within the BU but across the organization.” Paulose said.

“Apart from the structural and the process aspects, I would like to bring out a few observations. All groups are working in silos and there is very little knowledge sharing among them. On the face of it, Aerospace and Telcom may appear poles apart. However, there are many similarities in the embedded nature of the software they write. After a crash issue which resulted in several days of diagnosis in the Aerospace group, the group purchased a tool which does good static analysis. However, telecom group is not aware of the tool. There is hardly any cross-group participation during design reviews. Another observation is that there is nobody focusing on performance parameters (like MIPS, memory, power) proactively. And hence performance issues are popping up during the last few weeks of delivery. This puts huge pressure on the team and results in a few people putting extremely long hours at work”.

“What kind of career growth will these people look forward to?” Sujot was asking. “Well, that is a good question. Frankly, why can’t an architect become a manager if she demonstrates the required competencies, similarly, senior management roles should also be a possibility. After all, the two ladders have to merge at some point” Mamtha said.

Sujot concluded “Team, it has been an insightful meeting for me and I hope all of you feel the same way. Paulose, Savitha and Mamtha have done a great job as a team. We don’t have answers to all the questions that got raised today and I am sure we can debate some of these questions until the cows come home. However, it is clear to me that unless we start the process of building a strong technology brand today consciously, we are out of business sooner or later. I feel we should request the same team to work on what they called phase-2, where the objective is to detail out process and cultural enablers. This means to articulate the critical competencies of such positions, start technical forums and mentoring programs where like-minded people come together and discuss. We plan to invite technology gurus from outside the organization. Paulose, please send us a plan for review before you guys start. Let’s wish the team all the best and give them all your support.”