>>
>> I would have enjoyed a technical career, I think. But very early on it became
>> apparent that I was far more proficient at managing people than machines.
>>
In my own mind, at least, I was quite the opposite, but from fairly early on (all but the first 6 years when I really enjoyed programming) I gained various man-management responsibilities alongside the technical. At times, I was running geographically dispersed teams of hundreds of people, which was the most difficult of times. Smaller, tighter teams I could (over time) be comfortable with.
Most of the time, it wasn't really of my own volition; My career was marked by a small number of conscious personal decisions for change, and a continual stream of "opportunities" being offered (some of which I wouldn't have selected myself for, but were not at the time easy to refuse. I learnt an awful lot from these ones, both personally and career-wise).
I always, however, found the man-management aspects rather challenging (but successes were concomitantly very satisfying).
Whatever; the mix was obviously OK. Just making statistics up, I actively enjoyed about 85% of my career ("challenges" and all), around 10% of it was "OK", and 5% was rather less than enjoyable. I think it would be difficult to better that as a lifetime mix.
|
