Company uses my junior subordinate to de-value my position and contribution

Question

This is a company ran by young CEOs, in Thailand. I am Chinese 3rd generation in Thailand. My background were mostly western since the elementary school, university and first software house I worked with when I was junior.

I am not a professional developer (yet). But, I strive to practice and become one. I put effort into watching both paid and free tutorials, and studying from books. I also participate in every meetup of software developer groups. My employer does not supply any learning material for me like they promised, I am doing this all on my own.

A junior level subordinate said, "I am gonna learn from your code". I am happy with that. He has made very good progress learning from me. Cheers to the community and company. He reduces my workload due to what he has learned. I did this too when I was a junior.

My Problem:

The company is using that junior's knowledge (which was acquired from me and with me) to de-value my position. They claim that the junior is able to perform at the same level as me.

I am scared because I have 3 - 4 more men under my supervision, and may soon have more, since new projects are coming. I suspect that one day, the company will use them against me in the same manner as the aforementioned junior.

My concern:

This experience is going to demoralize me and leave me unwilling to share my knowledge.

I want to continue sharing but only as long as the outcome is not detrimental to me and indirectly spoils my reputation.

Question:
What is the best approach to deal with this situation at my employer? I am not ready to quit yet. I have only worked here for 6 months and I have no customer relationships. Otherwise, I would have started my own company already.

Answer 1

Problem: Company is using junior to de-value my position. By claiming that the junior level be able to do at same level as mine.

Ask the junior if he thinks that he can do the job as well as you. Hopefully, he will cay that he cannot. If he does, tell your manager to ask him. Your manager may not believe you, but he will have to believe the junior if he says "of course, I am not as good as Sarit".

I have 3 - 4 more men under my supervision and number is tend to increase since projects are coming.

So, you are supervising and coding. These are two very different skills. Even if the junior becomes a better coder, it does not mean that he would make a good leader.

Also, this does not sound like a very good company to work for, so you might want to consider working somewhere else.

Answer 2

As the supervisor and team leader, your job is not only to write code but, more important, to lead your team.

You coordinate their work, check its quality, keep them motivated when work is hard or boring.

Leading a team requires different skills from programming. You should take part of the time you spend learning technical skills and instead learn leadership and management skills.

You will be more valuable to this company and you can use those skills when you start your own company.

Answer 3

Your question does not mention if you for yourself came from the Western corporate culture or you are a native Thai. My answer assumes that you are a Westerner who's working in a Thai company. If it is otherwise, please comment or update the question.

Working in Thai company requires understanding the Thai corporate culture. One of the most important keystones of Thai (and Asian, in general) culture is saving one's face. You should:

• view everything your bosses say to you in light of this paradigm;
• act accordingly to this paradigm.

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First thing first. A Thai boss would never embarrass you in front of your subordinates. If they did (this is not clear from your question), this most certainly means that they do not value you on your position. If that happened, no Thai employee (your subordinate) will never ever respect you anymore, and you should probably look for another job.

If they spoke to you in private, this is not a big problem alone, but it may be a yellow flag, depending on how the events develop in the near future.

If I were you, I would think of building a reputation of avid small-range manager who is successfully managing your subordinates (even if this is not exactly what personality you are).

• as the existing answers say, limit the amount of coding by yourself;
• report for the entire team to your boss. By acting first, never ever let your boss micro-manage your subordinates (the boss would be thankful to you for this);
• in fact, this is you who should come to your boss and say, "Khun Boss: my subordinate, Khun Employee, performs very well";

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Summarizing the above:

Always consider the corporate culture. It may happen that you are not doing what your boss is expecting from you. And doing something else, but they do not value your input.

On a position with subordinates, your primary goal is solving bigger goals than "just coding". Make sure your team delivers projects in time and in budget. Act as a front-person for your subordinates, advocate their needs in front of your own boss. Do that before your boss sees someone in your team working better than you ("better" here means a subjective measure which may be totally different from your usual understanding being a Westerner). And good luck.