Ask HN: Stuck as a developer for 15 years. How to become a manager?

I am an IC and I outlevel my manager and probably make more than my skip who is at the same level (I have some significant extra performance bonus equity grants), so no.

Obviously managers have more direct reports, the definition of an IC is that they have zero direct reports, besides maybe a temporary intern.

At any competent tech company, moving to management results in no immediate change to compensation. It is a transition, not a promotion.

Actually, the right question to ask is "what kind of manager would you like to be?"

Management comes in two flavors :

* technical management (think "architect" or "lead dev") is about expertise, experience, higher technical vision. You surely have some points to make here, not because you know the last tech fad, but because you know that every fad will fade in 6 or 12 months, and that only good engineering last

* team management is a COMPLETLY different beast: you won't work on code but you will work on humans and how to help them to fulfill their mission in the company. It's about psychology, finance, sociology, politics... Think budget, reporting, forecasting... It's really interesting too but has nothing to do with development. If that's your interest (and it's a real focus change), then you can leverage every experience as a technical team leader on some part of system, and show how you improve THE TEAM (and how that improvement lead to a PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT)

Be very cautious: you should consider this as a career change. A lot of bad managers are managers that went down this road for wrong reasons (money, status...) and not because they want to develop the human side of corporation

I think the best thing to do is to pay managers less than developers and also disqualify anyone who demands to be a manager, that removes all the folks doing it for the wrong incentives.

I know of a few managers that hate being a manager, and are not the best at it but they've done so because they needed the money.

Senior Director here, I moved into people management from being a frontend developer (and still occasionally pop into that role, project depending...)

I worry about your motivation for being a manager. I got into this role because I started to find people more interesting than programming. I enjoy shaping their career growth, resolving interpersonal problems, building culture, and even the 1:1s and retros. It has felt like an evolution of programming in a way; people are highly unpredictable, which results in a greater occurrence of unique challenges. I found with programming (especially frontend) that after a while the problems reveal a repetitive pattern.

All to say, does this interest you? Are you running towards this challenge, or away from your current role?

You must decide if you want your career path to be a manager or a technologist. In most cases, there is valid career growth in either path but they are different paths because there are fundamentally different skill sets and inclinations involved. It is important to take a brutally honest introspective look at yourself to determine what you enjoy about your career and what motivates you.

Then, if you still really want to change to the managerial path, you must again be brutally honest with yourself as you try to figure out why that has not yet been an option. Usually a technologist starts to get opportunities to make this choice at between 5 and 10 YOE. It might be that you unintentionally are signaling to your management that your preference is to be a technologist either because of personality characteristics (your objection to being managed by those younger than you is a potential problem area) or obviously deep focus on technology. Figure out what is blocking you and fix it.

I understand where you are coming from with regard to being managed by those younger than you but take it from a technologist with over 30 years of experience, being a manager is not a function of seniority but of talent. As I mentioned before, management involves a different set of skills. You must evaluate managers for their talent at the activity and remove your bias based on their age. You may find that working for a young manager sometimes gives you the opportunity to lead and mentor them and help them become a better manager.

As others have mentioned, if you really want to move to the management path, you must communicate to others that is what you want. You do this explicitly by telling them and you do this implicitly by demonstrating interest and focusing on your behaviors.

Finally, I’ve noticed that it is very common for people to think that a natural and expected career progression goes from low-level worker to worker to leader to manager to director, VP and CEO. In technology, this is not the only case. Senior technologists are valuable stores of information and capability and there is a valid career progression for them which goes: low-level worker to worker to leader to senior and principal technologist to fellow to CTO. You still get leadership responsibilities but you don’t have the administrative responsibilities. It is important to note that your authority, in this circumstance, comes from a reputation for being knowledgeable and smart (influence), not from position.