Friday, August 25, 2017

Of careers and jobs and progression? Or the lack of...

My current boss is a nice guy. A people person. He's more of a "get everybody involved and everybody discuss together" kind of boss. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty and muddied in operational matters and he is rather independent in terms of admin issues. He has a PA but doesn't rely on her much. 

He's a techie and he's also experienced, having assumed several different managerial and leader roles over the years. He's quite lor sor though and can be quite abit of a broken record at times. He was even seconded to Brunei and led their government tech agency as their Director-General for a good 5 years.

Despite his experience, when he returned to Singapore, he remained a Deputy Director and was not promoted to a Director. And I wonder why. At his age (he's in his early 50s)and in his current role as our boss, I doubt he has enough key and strategic responsibilities to be promoted to be a Director. 

I see some of his traits and work style in me. And I wonder what my path would be if I am still in the same agency 5, 10, 15 years down the road...

Of course, from my current SM position, I still have many years to go before I hit an Executive Manager or Assistant Director position...and only thereafter will I hit a Deputy Director position. In the current team where I am comfortably at, we are already quite top heavy and I am fully aware I won't progress anymore. 

We spoke last week again. On the possibility of some role switching and some restructuring of our team. He mentioned he did consider putting the marketing function or customer service team under my care. Let's see how that goes...talk is just talk sometimes.....

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