How do I reach a true executive position?

February 18, 2024 7:11 AM

As others could see from my previous questions my titles have risen to director level but I am still stuck not making any leadership decisions and some coworkers treat me with respect while others treat me as if I’m the software developer of last resort (professionally I can’t/don’t). I am consulting and feel as if I’m truly at a dead in. In my 15+ years I’ve never seen someone non-junior and outside get promoted. Joe do I reach that next level or join a company preferably outside consulting?

Basically as I’ve progressed I’ve seen the worst of the worse. Lack of knowledge of source control. Being told if the client tells you to kill how high. The politics are that quality and even lip service to basic quality and moving towards non-antiquated technologies is secondary to billing. I am on extreme burnout from constantly being pushed to fulfill whatever account wants.

I took Metafilter’s advice and on the weekends spend it doing passion projects and realized I do very much know what I’m doing. I created a kubernetes cluster out of pink de for fun, looked out how the browser really interprets the DOM and began looking lot how things really work not just at an academic level. I began questioning things and in ways as colleagues said got “too academic” as every single page people reached for NextJS or state management for no reason.

More than that I’m actually good at intuitively mildly client relationships, growing accounts and working with clients to find solutions and develop departments. However someone from the outside with buzzwords and not necessarily help the corporation (literally all new accounts *need* to use “genAI”).

I sat down and seriously studied management going through popular curriculums which are online from the large schools. Most of this gave names to what my experience knew intuitively. 5-S strategy, developing LOIs, strategic story telling. Analyzes competition, price analysis. More intuitiveness of building a product someone wants that doesn’t coke from a text book but pitting MBA terminology helps convey the point… I thought. But I guess isn’t as easy as making up arbitrary goals.

How do I get to the next level? As cars as leadership capabilities is concerned people generally below me see through the “person no one has heard of old in and every six months tries to change things” bit also others get intimidated I guess?

I feel as if getting out of consulting and moving towards a product, preferably at a mid size startup would be a sweet spot. I want people to come to work and not be stuck in a client office working on outdated technology and having the general philosophy of believing in a product motivated me: owning a codebase, doing what I can to help them do their best job as possible, maybe not take the easy way to profits for longer term success, etc.

Sorry if that sounds arrogant. I spend a lot of downtime learning, and the more I do the more I go through the cycle of I know nothing then realizing get it and learn more. I don’t care about a title as much just at this point in my career I see the same mistakes again and again. I tried being formal about (a partner at Bain helped me quite a bit on the business end but I found they get the red carpet because they’re Bain and could secretly do my job and people would dismiss them).

What would be a career path and what would be a good way to get a mentor!l? This has been a lot harder as networking has died. I definitely have failed and learned from my failures, and I succeeded and learned. I also did both and learned nothing.

I have no idea how to penetrate the midsize startup market if that’s even the gold choice to go to and it seems rather cliquey. I’ve work for good firms, unfortunately not product. I know grass is always greener but working with the cheapest billable resources for large corporate ITs with no one caring but anything except billing with the cheapest resources possible.

I’ve made this into a book since I don’t know what ok exactly asking, I just feel as if I’m very much aging lot and don’t have the FAANG background of places I like. I am in the Midwest and the startup world is basically nonexistent. Any thoughts or how to find a “mentor?” I naively jumped into the “what level are you” type sites but I’m not looking necessarily for making more money just being motivated and having agency in what I do.

posted by geoff. to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

It's really hard to reach a leadership role in consulting because the structure is so flat. There is always a really wide base of "doers," and within that layer there are a lot of people in small leadership roles (where they might have a team of 10 or so under them, say). But above that layer, the pyramid gets really small and the roles get very political. If you were in line for one of those roles, you'd know it because you'd be invited to leadership meetings and involved in decisions and discussions.

I'm in a different field, but what I've seen in terms of people taking leadership positions has most frequently been people jumping from a lower role at a large company to a higher role at a small company. My impression is that it is often a horizontal move in terms of salary and responsibilities, but a big jump in terms of title, which then opens the door to the next move upwards. And, the people I've seen doing this were all very political, in the sense of being very attuned to office politics and hierarchies, and very strategic in terms of making connections. (Like the cliche where someone learns to play golf because their boss plays golf, and then uses that to build a rapport.)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:47 AM on February 18 [1 favorite]

It sounds like you're a software person at what is fundamentally a management consulting firm. Have you thought about trying to move to somewhere like ThoughtWorks or a small software consulting firm? I've never done consulting, but I did work at a company with a bunch of ex-ThoughtWorks people (someone of whom were technically independent consultants not employees, I think), and that might be a route into the larger tech industry. (I suspect it would be difficult to make that move as a manager otherwise.)
posted by hoyland at 7:52 AM on February 18 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: This is strictly a software consultancy. I’d rather be at management consultancy to be honest as it’d abstract me from knowing you didn’t fix the bug if it pops up every week, everyone just wants to pretend you did. As others have said it’s incredibly flat and I’m fundamentally done with consulting and not owning the code base, having contracts that get an account manager an account and being essentially staff said to large corporate IT departments. I’ve been at smaller, more capable niche consultancies and they tend to take the trajectory of finding it easier to find offshore configuration specialists than running a software project with devs often at odds with in-house.

Has anyone successfully font from a life of consultancy into product? Again pay staying the same but with some agency in my work is what I I’d like to have I believe.
posted by geoff. at 8:43 AM on February 18

Response by poster: (This is also a WITCH)
posted by geoff. at 8:43 AM on February 18

Honestly, the kind of consulting you’re describing sounds like the places that recruited business students straight out of my undergrad. That kind of place does not actually CARE about the quality of the product they deliver, they care about making more more more more money and your proposed solutions would cost money. Go work for someplace that isn’t “consulting” and actually makes things themselves.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:44 AM on February 18 [5 favorites]

Watch Pierrepont Finch climb the corporate ladder in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'
posted by Czjewel at 9:51 AM on February 18

I apologize for this brusque reply and invite it to be deleted if appropriate.

Your question looks like you dictated it, and then didn't check to see what you had said before sending it out to the world. I don't think you need examples, but if you do, see: "I’m truly at a dead in. ... Joe do I reach that next level...?"

If this is a habit of yours, you're giving a bad impression. Maybe work on improving your professional communications.
posted by JimN2TAW at 11:19 AM on February 18 [20 favorites]

Response by poster: I did dictate and need to stop doing that and using my phone. Sorry about that.
posted by geoff. at 11:38 AM on February 18

My experience is in a very different field from yours, but I think it's rare that someone gets an executive position in a consultancy by simply being extra good at being a consultant, or at a tech company by being the strongest person in the room technically. I'm not saying it never happens, but that I think it is rare.

The step up to performing an executive role well is as big a shift in mindset as the move from being an individual contributor to a manager. To move up on the inside of any organisation you usually need to build influence with the right people and get exposed to the right meetings so that you become trusted. To join from the outside you need to demonstrate that you already have the skills they need to fix whatever problem the role is designed to solve.

The classic answer is to start doing informational interviews with people who have the kinds of roles you would ideally like and ask them about what they do, what skills they use and how they got there.
posted by plonkee at 2:42 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: You’re right I need a change of mindset and I am sticking to do that. I don’t want to be an executive but it’s kinda my title and middle management is hell. I can never enact change and I guess I need that weird charisma and think too logically to have “it.” I assumed this was the next step in my career and I wasn’t getting it. This is more of a midlife crisis. Go to meetings. Know people are wrong and just live life.
posted by geoff. at 4:50 PM on February 18

You sound like you want to be in a position to do things your own way. What about working in good old-fashioned established small software shops that aren't trying to IPO or be acquired, or as in-house dev supporting the operations of a small company? There might be less prestige and pay, maybe, but maybe also less bullshit. You also said you want to work with cutting-edge technologies, though, and that might overlap a lot with the more buzzword-focused world and less with the more down-to-earth jobs.

But yeah, being able to communicate coherently is probably going to be important for any career growth. Your style is highly stream-of-consciousness and I wound up mostly skimming because it was too hard to parse (for me, anyway).
posted by trig at 5:21 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]

Just a general comment, may or may not be pertinent for your specific consulting industry: the leap from director to executive is social-political. You need an executive champion who sees opportunities and positions you / advocates for you for them. Without that, the invisible doors are closed.

How to get a champion? This is all political. You’re already smart and educated enough, it’s not a technical issue. It’s one of: demonstrating social acumen, being chatty and friendly with the right people, having something someone else values or needs, show that you’re not only able to handle conflict but have some calm+natural “top dog” energy.

Hard honesty: just based on the read I’m getting, you’re extremely bright and totally miss social cues. So this won’t happen without a lot a growth on your end

Go to your boss and ask for honest feedback. If you’re known to be a little defensive they will already be reluctant to say anything real or meaningful (“you’re great just keep doing what you’re doing” smoke-blowing). But ask for some honest feedback about what might stand in your way from your dreams and goals and then stfu and listen and find the top three social/behavioural things to work on and then put yourself to work addressing them.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:49 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]

#1 - I just read something that seems (?) relevant to your question, but I'm not sure if it contains the solution. In any case it is a very short article. For What That's Worth.

#2 - I was promoted at a Bank I worked for (in the software development department) and it was a total shock to me. I worked for a boss who had shaky people skills and didn't appear to be well liked. But being the kind of grunt I am I would always do my best to deal with middle of the night problems. I also interfaced with the other departments on their initiatives. People would come to me from other departments to ask how best they should get approval for their conversions, or new tech approaches, etc. This is another For What It's Worth.
posted by forthright at 6:21 PM on February 18 [1 favorite]

In 2002 I took a long hard look at the IT industry and finally accepted that the way the whole soul-sucking enterprise operates is fatally, fractally fucked from invasive roots to poisonous barbed tips. Walked away, tried to train up in some completely unrelated field, realized that there are no completely unrelated fields any more, and fell into a bit of a slump.

Then, instead of politely eyerolling behind the back of the next random person who found out that I "knew something about computers", I helped her clean out all the malware that had rendered her cafe's business PC completely useless. Before I did that I had had no task-specific knowledge about cleaning up Windows boxes, but as it turns out, web search plus a deep understanding of general principles can solve pretty much any civilian's intractable IT issue given sufficient time and dogged persistence.

So I got a box of business cards printed up, left a handful with her, and asked her to pass them on to anybody she knew who was (a) nice (b) beset by some intractable IT issue. And it didn't take long before I was being kept quite busy fixing intractable IT issues for nice civilians and charging them way too little for the degree of skill and care applied.

Eventually, one of those nice civilians hooked me up with a part time job at one of the local primary schools, playing second banana to their overstretched, underfunded Education Department travelling tech support guy. I learned a lot from that guy about time-efficient ways to keep underfunded, outdated school IT systems tottering along without completely crumbling between visits. Again, I had zero systems administration experience before landing that job and again, Google plus clue plus that little dab of mentorship were more than enough.

That led me to being offered a second part-time position at a second local primary school. This one was a Catholic school rather than a government one, and they put me on as a part-time employee rather than a casual as the Department had done. They also gave me absolute freedom to do whatever the fuck I wanted with their campus IT resources on the understanding that I would in turn be doing my best to make those resources plus my salary cost them less every year than they'd been spending on them hitherto and work more reliably besides.

After a couple of years of being jerked around by the conditions of casual work, I gave up on the government school and made the Catholic school my sole employer. Still part time, still getting paid a lower hourly than an entry-level McDonalds management trainee, still doing private PC fixit on the side (quite a lot of it for school staff and their contacts, as it turned out).

Kept that job for fifteen years, then retired. Best job satisfaction ever. Don't care underpaid. Don't care overqualified. IT is still completely fucked from every viewpoint, but feeling fully trusted to arrange for as little as possible of that to burn both my teacher and admin colleagues and the thousands of kids who went through that school during my time there was just balm.

The point of all this onion belting is to suggest to you that if your problem is creeping, chronic misery in IT, your solution might not actually exist inside the C suites from whose miserable occupants all of that misery ultimately spurts and oozes. I found it completely worthwhile to take a massive pay cut in order to get as far as feasible from their sick and sickening culture, instead putting myself in a position to contribute to real work that really mattered with real people I really cared about. Perhaps you might too.
posted by flabdablet at 9:55 PM on February 18 [8 favorites]

It's a huge economy out there, and there are niches you've never heard of. There even a few with good management.

My best answer to your very first question is that the best way to get accepted into the top ranks of a consulting firm is to be a rainmaker, that is, by bringing in new business. The easiest way to do that is to build relationships with the clients you have, and learning what other problems they have that you can help with.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:25 AM on February 19 [2 favorites]