Nausheen,

Your perspective is valid, and I’m glad to see more people atleast see it in a practical way.

Consider this tho: So what if everyone brainwashed you guys into believing that coding jobs are bad — now that you know they were wrong you should think about giving it a serious look.

The problem is people create an image as if “Project Manager” are higher in the company hierarchy than “coders”.

That’s completely false — project managers hold greater liability than coders, but they are equal people with just different roles.

It does happen that PM typically need some good experience in the market with actual SDLCs before they will be asked to manage software projects.

That experience is better learnt on the front lines, where you can atleast understand the coders perspective of the SDLC, and then learn the PM techniques of optimizing it.

Other than that, “coding” as a career is still bright — you have coding -> design -> business analysis / architecture -> Director Engr -> VP Engr -> CTO.

That’s the entire “coding” / Technical career stack. Even if there isn’t too much respect in “coding”, why give up on the chance to become someone respectable like Architect / VP Engr?

That’s what I mean when I say the youth are giving up too early by seeking an easy way out.

Project Management, on the other hand, is a completely different field altogether.

That said, I do agree that it is the responsibility of teachers in college to instill this bigger picture of career paths, but dont me started on how much that is lacking.

osama u r right, Another reason for this is there is no career counciling of IT grads and no one tells them what are various career paths to follow. they just do what might be their seniors doing or some of their friends.
and qazi Although coders+tech ppl are most important asset for working of the company not for the company impt decision making process.
they are treated like 3rd world countries are treated by western world.

Qazi, I think that’s what she meant.

Engineers are the backbone of the company, but I have seen many companies where their input is not considered in the decision-making / planning process for the software.

Unfortunately there DOES exist a precedence that says the Project Manager inherently are better and know more than coders — this type of a culture is very negative for an engineering environment, and precisely what I wrote about in the “Why engr are afraid of becoming coders…” post.

I think Nausheen points out a culture problem in Pakistan – very valid.

On the contrary, in US for example there are many developers who started their company by writing the code for their product.

The one thing which I learned: smart people can adapt to do anything, all they need is motivation. As long as coders dont have a narrow focus they can be effective managers and leaders.