“Organisations need more technical contributors for competitive advantage”

Krishna Bhagavan, Country Head-HR, Motorola Solutions, discussed the role and prospects for individual technical contributors at the TimesJobs.com Hight Tea chat

Indian IT companies today are looking for specialists, individual technical contributors who are subject matter experts in their chosen domains and can contribute with cutting edge work in products/service offerings of the company.
Reflecting on career opportunities for individual technical contributors (ITCs), Krishna Bhagavan, Country Head-HR, Motorola Solutions, at a recent TimesJobs.com High-Tea session, said, “There will be domain-based opportunities across industries for ITCs. And, in 2013, there will be many start-ups that will require individual technical contributors in domains such as telecom, wireless, VLSI and large enterprise applications.” High-Tea is a dedicated chat platform on TimesJobs.com for candidates to ask career related queries to experts.
Elaborating on the profile and importance of individual technical contributors, Bhagavan added, ITCs are senior engineers or technorats who are the key differentiators for products, technologies and services offered by a company. They bring in innovation by focussing on the realisation of product, project goal through technology and domain expertise.
On being queried about the money and growth for ITCs, Bhagavan replied, “Today the ITCs have excellent designations: – architects, principal engineer, distinguished engineers, and fellows, etc. Their salaries are growing faster and their value in the job market is going higher.”
Do individual technical contributors rise to leadership positions? “Leadership roles come to techies more often than sales or manufacturing professionals in some industries. If the industry you are in has no scope for differentiation through products or technology then a sales person or a materials person becomes a leader. Having said that, we will see more technical persons attaining leadership roles than MBAs,” he explained.
During the session, Bhagavan also stressed that to retain and motivate ICs Indian IT companies should promote technical contributors to senior levels, create designations and job titles that indicate the value of the role and respect for the role in the organisation. They should also create a pay structure where ICs can get more salary than the manager.
According to Bhagavan, the demand of individual technical contributors will continue to grow in emerging verticals of renewable energy, system engineering, and hardware design.