|~|roman_pix200a.gif|~|Roman Konovalov, managing director of Aroma Software |~|In a typical IT organisation, software company or IT department, employees progress their careers essentially choosing between three different routes – become a highly skilled developer focused on reaching a senior position within your field where you’re able to leverage your development skills and attain ultimate job satisfaction; move into a managerial position, but sometimes risk being promoted to your level of incompetence; or set up your own company – with all its inherent job satsifaction and risks.
The first option, to become a high skilled professional developer and reaching the senior level typically entails staying in active development for decades. Such people grow as professionals becoming very valuable for the company since they bring their experience and skills through a tremendous number of projects.
Usually this kind of person – the very necessary geek of the IT world – is notable for his or her high ability to learn new technologies, tools or techniques and apply them to any problem or project in hand.
I know one such person from Finland who has been working as a developer for about 20 years – and I’m very proud I got a chance to work with him. Very skilled and experienced, he caught ideas on the fly. He is very dedicated to what he is doing and he really loves software development. Several times, he has been offered a management position, but has refused. His field is software development and he is very good in it. He has made it clear that is where he wants to stay
Others are not so reluctant to take a step up the management ladder. Usually, after several successful years as a developer, you get an offer to lead a group of other programmers who do not have as many skills and experience as you. So you become a component lead, a group lead, and then the career moves upwards and suddenly you find yourself in a position of a module manager, project manager, and development department manager. Ultimately, you achieve your CIO goal and have hopefully developed the competency to go with it.
The third way to move your carrier forward is to start your own company. There are people who are potential entrepreneurs. They like to drive hard. They are highly motivated and push themselves as well as other people to their limits.
There are several ways to start your own company. Some people quit their jobs, put all their money into the venture, trying to come up with the product and get that all important first customer. The risks are obvious and despite all the success stories of garage-based operations becoming HP and Apple, the majority sadly fail.
Another approach sees these entrepreneurs continue working for the employer for about 40 hours a week as it’s stated in their contracts, and then they spend another 40 hours a week trying to implement their ideas and develop a product. Once the first version of their product is developed, they try to sell it by advertising on the web or some other indirect means. Many well known controls, games, and tools have been created this way. When these people start getting income comparable to the one from their current employer, they quit and start working on their own full time. Many fail.
So, both approaches of becoming an entrepreneur are very risky. You might run out of cash and start looking for a job again. The product you’ve developed might not be as attractive for the potential customers as you hoped because it does not solve the problems it is supposed to solve. You can make mistakes making market research and come with the product that is not able to compete because the market has already got many similar products, which are cheaper and represent better quality.
At the end of the day, you get no result after working hard spending every evening and week-end in front of your computer over a six month period or more, taking your time from your family and friends.
A lot can happen to make you fail. In fact, you might be aware of the statistics that say that “80% of new businesses fail within the first five years”.
Such a pessimistic picture causes many potential entrepreneurs to put such thoughts behind them. They do not want to bet with all the odds for success stacked against them. Many, maybe with a family or other commitments just cannot afford to take such a high risk. Definitely, this is something that all but the brave – and some might say foolish – want to avoid at any price.
On the other hand, if you have to say goodbye to your dream of being an entrepreneur, working for your self and developing your own products, the result is probably going to be a feeling of unfulfilled ambition and dissatisfaction with your life.
This is where the savvy company gets an excellent chance to become more attractive to those employees driven by an entrepreneural spirit as well as more profitable. If an employee is motivated by entrepreneurship rather than career progression, then why not exploit it? You should use the potential of your employees to not only fulfill their aspirations, but also develop the company’s ability to make innovative products. Your company benefits from this as well as staff.
If you have driving people who might want to become entrepreneurs, but they have too much to loose and cannot accept such high risk – help them. Create a laboratory in your company – a kind of a sandbox – where people can test and implement their ideas. Of course, they would do their daily job because this is why you actually hired them, but also give them a chance to try to come up with something else even if their ideas do not match your current product line up exactly.
If your developer believes that his idea would work, create conditions for him to try it out. You might want to sign an agreement with this person that he gets a certain percentage of the profit this product might bring in to satisfy his entrepreneurial goals. For most frustrated entrepreneurs a profit share would be motivation enough for him to push himself to develop the product without salary or bonus. Knowing that he would share in the profit would drive him to invest his own spare time to come up with the first version of the product. This way he works like being an entrepreneur, but all the risks and additional costs are carried by the company. Of course, the employee does not get the same benefit as if he were to run his own company, but this approach gives him a safe environment for trying out ideas and it gives him or her the corresponding reward. This kind of cooperation between the company and employee will work out the benefits for both parties.
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