So Many Varieties…

Nambi Sankaran
Transforming How We Work
2 min readDec 20, 2016

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This is part 2 in a multi-part series. Read part 1 — waves of innovation.

In the last article, we looked into “Waves of Innovation” and how organizations are stuck in the past. This time, Let's look into another aspect of an organization. Namely the roles.

Software Name Tags

Can you name different types of software engineers?

I asked this question to many people. Most people came up with more than 10 names right away. Many told they can come up with 100+ names.

For example: front end engineer, Java engineer, PHP engineer, image processing engineer, backend engineer, full-stack engineer, data warehousing engineer, machine learning engineer, cloud engineer, devops engineer, database admin, system admin, network engineer, mobile app engineer, game developer, QE, application software engineer, messaging system, hadoop engineer, nodejs engineer, sales engineer, site reliability engineer, business intelligence, linux kernel engineer etc..

The list goes on…

Now, A different question…

Can you name different types of managers?

I asked this question to the same people. The answers were predictable. Everyone told the same set of names.

manager, senior manager, director, senior director, VP and SVP.

The above names only reflect the hierarchy, not skills. Ofcourse, there are titles such as HR manager, Sales manager etc. But this pales in comparison to the specialization among software engineers.

Hierarchy may be important for corporate pecking order and compensation, but it is irrelevant when dealing with people. The titles of managers should reflect his or her role(s). It enables others to interact with them better.

Why is this a serious problem?

A manager needs many skills. These are people(soft) skills. When a person is elevated to a manager, often it was due to his/her technical skills. But after they become a manager, they are expected to use their “people” skills. He may be an expert in a certain “hard” skill, but may be a “novice” in important people skills.

Most managers are not aware of the “soft” skills needed for dealing with people. But having awareness doesn’t mean they are skilled.

Can we help bosses understand their roles better? Can we help bosses learn soft skills without causing pain to others?

yes, it is possible..!

In the coming weeks, I’m planning to summarize the problems we face in large and medium organizations. I’m hoping to gather issues we face, so, please share your experiences.

The purpose of this story is to reach out to bosses as well as people managed by them. So, please provide your comments. Looking forward to see your inputs.

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Nambi Sankaran
Transforming How We Work

Self taught software engineer, technologist. interested in finding the truth irrespective of the subject.