There comes a point for everyone working in the tech industry where they need to decide on their future career path. Traditionally two, options are presented. You can either take the technical path or the managerial path.

The technical path is the one most people in the tech industry start in. The technical path normally means taking on roles like: software developer, senior developer, software architect or technical expert. The technical path tends to prioritise the ‘hard’ skills, such as programming, requirements engineering or knowledge of specific tools or domains.

The managerial path is one that normally becomes available to people in mid-level roles. It tends to involve taking a step away from the technical work, and instead focussing on managing people, projects and performance. The managerial path can involve taking on roles like: people manager, project manager, department manager, or roles involving managing business support functions like HR or finance. This path tends to prioritise ‘soft’ skills, such as communication, people skills and time management.

Women are at a Crossroads

Across the tech industry, we see that women are under-represented in mid-to-senior-level technical roles and thus underrepresented in the technical career path. In the USA a study showed that 26.7% of the tech workforce are women, but only 20% of senior software engineers in the USA are women. The British Computing Society found that in the UK 22% of the IT workforce are women, but only 16% of programmers/software developers are women. However in the UK, women are overrepresented in roles like IT Support Technician and Project or Programme Managers, where 30% and 26% of these roles are made up of women respectively.

Women are more likely than men to be pigeon-holed into taking roles on the managerial path. This may be in part because research shows that women are more likely than men to display skills that are desirable for mid-management roles, such as empathy and emotional intelligence. There are of course cases where women want to go down this route and these roles can be a great fit, but this path shouldn’t be seen as the default option for women.

Another issue women face is not knowing what the path for advancement in their given sector looks like. In a survey conducted in the USA, 66% of women state that they see no clear path for advancement or improvement within their tech careers, which leads to them feeling stuck.

The Third Career Path

Many women know that their soft skills are a strength of theirs and want to make use of them, but they also don’t want to give up their technical work and move intro traditional management roles. So what can be done to help them progress in their careers? I think a potential solution to this issue is to create a third set of roles, ones that balance the use of soft skills and hard skills.

I was chatting with a friend about this over dinner, and we came to the realisation that these roles already exist, they just aren’t talked about much in the context of being a hybrid of technical and people skills. My friend and I both work in DevOps, and realised that we love our roles because of the varied nature of the work we do. We both code regularly, but also spend time managing teams.

We also realised that we ended up in these roles almost by accident. Roles like those in DevOps aren’t usually advertised in schools or universities, and we only found out about them after starting our tech careers in different roles! There is a huge gap when talking about tech careers, and that gap is the third career path, which is made up of roles like:

• Scrum Master
• Any role in DevOps practices
• Roles in Quality Assurance
• Business Analyst
• Product Owner
• Software Engineering Manager
• Release Engineer
• Roles in Digital Transformation.

These are all roles that can be great fits for women in tech, and for anyone looking for a role that requires a combination of hard and soft skills, or a role that combines technical work with other tasks like stakeholder management or change management. These careers also tend to have junior, mid and senior level positions and so can be entered into at any stage in your career.

So, if you are looking to start a tech career or looking for a change, always remember that there is a third path that you can choose to take.