Career Progression

I talked to a friend whom I worked with in Malaysia. We caught up with what happened and he asked about what’s the best way to show a resource in a project. A graph for project planning essentially. I racked my brain for a while before I truthfully answered that I didn’t know. I haven’t looked at project planning and management for a long time that I had no idea how to do what he asked (not that I was great at doing then in the first place).

My friend was mildly surprised. I explained that most plannings are done by project managers and we engineers do not concern ourselves with them. Of course engineers need to contribute and be aware of issues but it’s not like actively managing the project. My friend asked when am I going to progress and become a project manager. I said never, or at least very unlikely.

I understand though my friend’s question because in Malaysia, engineers almost always will become a senior engineer and hit the ceiling and changes into a project manager. I don’t know the exact reasons but I think it is likely due to culture, where it is expected to manage other people to get higher up the corporate ladder, and secondly because there’s simply not much engineering works to be done. Malaysia has low R&D so specialisation doesn’t really bring much to the income, hence people pivoting into management.

I can see some traces here too in the UK, where if you become an engineering director or something along those lines, you’d be earning more, while managing others, but there are also cases where people can still do what they like, i.e. the engineering details, while still earning more than enough.

For now though, I am not at that level but let’s dua that you and I can flourish in what we like doing.

Thank you for reading.