What are your longer term career plans?

Miklos_Hollender · 2013-11-21

I know many of you self-define as primarily programmers/techies, so if your plan is "stay techie, widen my skillset by learning additional MSFT and other technologies, ones that can be well integrated to NAV, from Cognos to ASP.NET" then I wish the best for your but I am primarily interested in the other options

My worry: I am 35, and at 40, 45, 50 years old, or at 15, 20, 25 years of experience one could become unemployable if one is nothing more than NAV functional / technical expert because people who who have 8-10 years of experience are almost as good, but are cheaper and more flexible.

I graduated from a business school 10 years ago and always seen ERP as a springboard towards stuff like becoming an operations manager, but it never really happened I guess because I do not communicate well, but I program reports and other customizations lightning fast so people treat me like a techie and I don't seem to be able to break out from it.

You know many managers look down on techies and treat only managers and salespeople, "businessmen" as equals.

I am fixing now my communications problems by having joined Toastmasters. That is truly great. But I don't really see the road from here to operations, logistics etc. whatever management.

I guess part of it is that networking is really not for me. I am just not that social. All my jobs came from ads. I do not chat up old coworkers on Facebook or Linked it just does not interest me. And I guess manager types of people are social and network a lot.

Another option would be not management at end-user companies, but becoming - as a freelancer or don't know - some kind of a not so technology dependent consultant, you know, business process reorganizations, stuff like that? But there people have to do the most networking.

Or a general project manager, even for businesses who use different ERP (read: SAP), but again very networking oriented stuff.

Anyway. What do you do? What are your plans?

And... what is your Plan B if Microsoft screws it up real bad?

(My plan B is https://www.openerp.com/ but I cannot find the free time to learn it. Anyway currently Microsoft is going strong so not urgent.)

davmac1 · 2013-11-24

Miklos,
You can count on change. There is nothing wrong with being a techie if you are willing to keep learning and adding to your skill sets.
My original software is long gone and NAV as we know it today will be gone at some point in the future.
Maybe it will be around in a new form or maybe it won't survive, but as long as there are businesses, there will be something to help people run them.

Micrsoft's original aim was to dominate the mid market ERP space. The new CEO will probably be less sentimental about prior acquisitions and give Dynamics a deadline to acchieve 50% market share or spin it off. (If you only own 20% of the market, you don't want to keep annoying the other 80% who use your cash cows.)
In that case, Dynamics or just NAV could be standalone or bought up by another conglomerate.

mdPartnerNL · 2013-11-25

The social thing is not my cup of tea too. I always tried to find a salesperson with those skills and this worked out most of the time in a small company.

At this moment i'm in search for a new one. So always expect things to change

and there is never one good advice which will result in what you want, you need a little bit of luck too.

About this openerp; is it cheaper? better?

Miklos_Hollender · 2013-11-25

mdPartnerNL: cheap, as in, free, definiltey not better, pretty much every open source ERP I have seen (i.e. this one and Compiere) went for the low hanging fruit, the easy and spectacular stuff like hotel room reservations in a table, not touching difficult stuff like inventory valuation.

I believe inventory valuation is the Achiles heel of accounting and ERP. In the otherh and it's incredible hard to get right. On the other hand nobody considers that a feature or an achivement. Everybody just expects it works, and when it doesn't then they get incredibly angry. So it's like a huge sunken cost to develop it right: all the trouble but no credit, no extra sales. And this is where open source currently fails.

I wonder what accountants think about it. I wonder what they did about inventory value before they had software for it.

Marije_Brummel · 2013-11-25

Miklos Hollender wrote:

I wonder what accountants think about it. I wonder what they did about inventory value before they had software for it.

a.) Companies were smaller back then
b.) People still trusted each other

Kowa · 2013-11-25

Miklos Hollender wrote:

I wonder what accountants think about it. I wonder what they did about inventory value before they had software for it.

Some of the traditional methods:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpda ... ontent.htm
http://eprints.ibu.edu.ba/1302/1/28.%20 ... entory.pdf
http://maaw.info/Chapter2.htm

geordie · 2013-11-25

In my opinion crucial factors to succeed moving to a management position are the ability to sell yourself, capacity to oversee people and often the nerve of declare what you think regardless who you are in front of.
Generally these features clash against the classic stereotype of technicians: shy, clod, how can I say...nerd.

Nowadays IT is much more important than 20 years ago since basically all the business is conducted through it: there are for sure chances for "us" to show off, especially when it's possible to demonstrate in an incontrovertible way your capabilities and your work produced a tangible advantage (but most of the times it's enough to prove you made the company save money

).

Unfortunately at the moment, since I haven't find the key to come out on top...I prepare a couple of gleaming "hot air" Big Data presentation

David_Singleton · 2014-03-24

davmac1 wrote:

... The new CEO will probably be less sentimental about prior acquisitions and give Dynamics a deadline to acchieve 50% market share or spin it off. (If you only own 20% of the market, you don't want to keep annoying the other 80% who use your cash cows.)
In that case, Dynamics or just NAV could be standalone or bought up by another conglomerate.

The danger here, is that the safest bet for Microsoft would be to Sell to SAP, maybe in some sort of a deal that encourages them to push more SQL and less Oracle.

I couldn't imagine that Microsoft want Navision out there as an independent product. Maybe they would rename Navision as SAP TWO

einsTeIn.NET · 2014-03-24

Miklos Hollender wrote:

I know many of you self-define as primarily programmers/techies, so if your plan is "stay techie, widen my skillset by learning additional MSFT and other technologies, ones that can be well integrated to NAV, from Cognos to ASP.NET" then I wish the best for your but I am primarily interested in the other options

Don't get me wrong but this sounds like you think pure techies work is less of value than management/consulting work. Maybe that's the reason why you don't get along as much as you want because you see your own work as something that doesn't help you regarding your expected career? Personally I think you should do whatever you like, not what's the best to become the best paid person in the company. Of course, if one is poorly paid compared to his skills and this doesn't change after talking to his boss then one should think about changing the company. But changing your working area just because you think it's good for your career isn't the right decision in my opinion.

Miklos Hollender wrote:

My worry: I am 35, and at 40, 45, 50 years old, or at 15, 20, 25 years of experience one could become unemployable if one is nothing more than NAV functional / technical expert because people who who have 8-10 years of experience are almost as good, but are cheaper and more flexible.

I think you shouldn't worry about younger techies. It's your experience that distinguishes you from those guys. Of course, the number of companies that will proper pay for that experience will decrease the more experienced you are. But that's the same when you are in the management/consulting area.

Miklos Hollender wrote:

Another option would be not management at end-user companies, but becoming - as a freelancer or don't know - some kind of a not so technology dependent consultant, you know, business process reorganizations, stuff like that? But there people have to do the most networking.

I do work as business process analyst for a couple of years now and it doesn't feel like it's better or worse than the time I worked as pure programmer. I would even say I'm in luck that I never lost the connection to my roots in programming. That way I can still look into and work on this technical stuff but also my recommendation regarding the business process is much appreciated. I'm not sure if I would like to focus just on the business process. I feel like I would miss the technical part.

geordie · 2014-03-25

einsTeIn.NET wrote:

I do work as business process analyst for a couple of years now and it doesn't feel like it's better or worse than the time I worked as pure programmer. I would even say I'm in luck that I never lost the connection to my roots in programming. That way I can still look into and work on this technical stuff but also my recommendation regarding the business process is much appreciated. I'm not sure if I would like to focus just on the business process. I feel like I would miss the technical part.

I still believe the most gratifying activity is following the complete software life-cycle from analysis, across development, testing and user training.

What are your longer term career plans?

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