Rediff Article: Infosys to have employees master technology before they become managers

A couple of days ago, Ravi commented on one of the articles that most IT students look at programming simply as a stepping stone - something that they would work on for 3-4 years after which they would become a project manager / team lead.

This has pretty much been true for the past 10-15 years. Under pressure of rapid growth, IT & ITeS companies have been promoting their employees to team lead / manager positions with only 3-4 years of job experience. This is very different from what happens in the west as well as in other industries - typically, people spend well over 6-8 years before they get into a supervisory role.

Thanks to the recession and the slowdown in growth, IT companies are now taking a number of steps to rectify some of the mistakes they have made in the past. Infosys has announced today that they now expect their employees to spend atleast six years on technologies before they get into a manager role.

http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/nov/13/tech-master-technology-first-be-a-manager-later-says-infosys.htm

I, for one, am very happy to see this change. In the short run, this may sound like bad news for the employees. But I truly believe that this is a good thing for them as well in the long run - people with better understanding of technology do make for better product managers, project managers and business leaders.

So, kudos to Infosys for taking this step. I hope the rest of the industry follows this lead as well.