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How hard is it to advance within Programming and I.T Jobs?

If I was working for a huge or even small company, Is there options to advance in the company becoming a team leader, manager, or even CEO how long would it take?

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Ryan’s Answer

Hey Kyrese,

It's possible in a small technology company to work your way up to CTO or CEO.

Advancing from the programming or IT side depends on several factors, including your skills, experience, work ethic, and the company's size and growth potential. The difficulty of progressing in your career can vary greatly depending on the specific circumstances and opportunities available to you.

In both large and small companies, there are typically options to advance within the organization. For example, you may start as a junior developer or IT support specialist and work your way up to a senior developer, team leader, or manager. However, the path to becoming a CEO is generally more challenging and requires not only technical expertise but also strong business acumen, leadership skills, and experience in managing large teams and resources.

It also takes time to advance within a company and it varies significantly based on your dedication, ability to learn quickly, and other opportunities available within the organization. It happens to some individuals with exceptional skills and a strong work ethic to progress relatively quickly, it just depends.

But to increase your chances of advancement, focus on continuous learning and skill development, take on challenging projects, and demonstrate your commitment to the company's success. Networking and building strong relationships with your colleagues, managers, and other professionals in the industry can also help you identify new opportunities and make a lasting impression that may facilitate your career growth.
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Jimil’s Answer

It is relatively easy to advance in the software field. While a company may be slow to promote you internally, other companies will likely garner an interest in you as you gain more years of experience. The average person gains a 20% raise when they change jobs. People that remain at the same job may get a 5% raise each year in comparison. If you truly desire to advance in the field as a software engineer, then you should put in more than 40 hours a week in order to exceed expectations. In my opinion though, you are better off switch companies every year or two. Every time I switched companies, I got an extra 20,000 USD per year after less than a year of work. It is important to "cast a wide net" as well. What I mean is to market and advertise your skills to as many people as possible so that more companies know about you so you have a higher likelihood of getting a job that pays more. The upper management positions such as CEO and director are generally reserved for internal hires, so once you become a senior employee at a high end company, it would be in your best interest to stay there, given your managers understand your plans for upward movement in the company.
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Tamiz Thendral’s Answer

Hi Kyrese!

Good Question. The pandemic has changed a lot of things one such thing is our interactions with others. Remote workstations, online classes, virtual meetings, and so on. The pandemic has forced us to use IT more than we ever have and it opened up a lot of gateways yet to explore i.e. artificial intelligence. I believe that IT is the one field that'll grow tremendously in the next few years. In order to start a career in IT or programming, the two most important skills needed are problem-solving and critical thinking, with these we can learn any programming language syntax and use them to implement our logic. In order to advance in the IT field, you need additional two skills, which are strong technical knowledge and leadership. The time for these advancements depends on our performance and the company size as well. In a small organization, the growth may be fast-paced when compared to a large organization since the abstraction is very low and most of the things are transparent. I would like to give you an approximate time for a software engineer to get promoted as a team lead is around 5 years and from team lead to manager is around 8 years and from manager to CEO is 10-15 years. Hope this answers your question. Good luck with your career!
Thank you comment icon Thank you so much this helps a lot with my career planning and gives me much hope in my choices. Kyrese
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Elena’s Answer

Any career progression takes years, no matter where you work. You should consistently exceed expectations, have solid technical expertise, and - very important! - ability to lead people. That includes building teams, motivating, hiring and firing, providing constructive feedback and dealing with daily issues. You can progress as an individual contributor and not directly manage people, but ability to influence horizontally and vertically is required nevertheless for any senior position.
Thank you comment icon THank you so much Elena I appreciate your response I wasn't sure if it could be different in a technical work enviroment. Kyrese
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Rebecca’s Answer

Thank you for your question. I am glad to know that you are interested in Tech.
This really depends on a lot if factors, eg opportunities, your performance, do you have the sufficient knowledge and experience, etc.
Technology keeps changing every day. If you working in the industry, you have to keep to yourself up to date, eg keep an eye on the latest technology, learn / attend courses that seems to be appropriate, etc
On the other hand, if you plan to move into management role in the future, you can take the management as your minor in the college or take MBA class after finishing your undergraduate degree.
Hope this helps! Good Luck!
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Vincent’s Answer

It really depends on the company. I've found that advancement is harder to come by in mature, smaller companies. The company may be entrenched in their segment and don't do much to try to expand and create new opportunities. It can also be more challenging to ensure the current team is aware of new opportunities. Larger companies inevitably mean more turnover which means more positions opening up and more room for advancement.

I will also say that in Software Engineering/IT, it is becoming increasingly important to move companies to find advancement and new opportunities. It is increasingly rare for someone in software engineering to stay at one company long-term and move all the way up the ladder. Moving companies has been the best mechanism for advancement over the last few years.
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