Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

firstround.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 198 posts

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#51

Post by eitally »

illuminek wrote: post #4
esturk wrote: post #2

Interesting, I think this idea should be explored more. Does anyone else think the "MBA Degree" market is rip for disruption? We've been seeing a huge flux of MBA graduates that gets hired for mainly their network or connection. This seems almost opposite to the whole meritocracy culture in the tech industry. So given a manager/employee could do effectively what a MBA can do, why would a company hire a MBA degree ins…

Well I am an MBA(IT)[+ Mechanical Engg.], and right now I am managing some 15+ people engg team. I can very confidently say that being an MBA has helped me a lot. It gave me an insight in being a leader and made my job of managing a engineering team easy. However I started my career as developer and have spent 7+ years in developing complex systems. The one difference I could always notice was leadership/initiative d…

Counterpoint: I'm not an MBA but I have a BA in history and a MEng in Industrial, and I spent the first 5 years of my career as a programmer before moving into management. I steadily moved up and am reporting to the CIO and managing 115+ folks. As my old boss said, you can learn the key skills of an MBA on your own, but you can't learn emotional intelligence or how to lead without practical experience.

I'm not saying your MBA hasn't helped you. I'm just saying it's not a magic bullet (unless a company requires an MBA to get in the door). For most situations, just having a basic understanding of accounting & finance is enough, and for the times it isn't, knowing how to organize and lead a large multidisciplinary project is. That part's tougher and all the theoretical knowledge & case study readings in the world will only get you so far.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#52

Post by spacecowboy_lon »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #14

I cannot tell if blog post is this a theory or 15-page commercial for one man's opinions. The title claims it turns engineers into remarkable managers, yet provides no evidence. I see a lot of bold claims (e.g. "As with any new job, the most important task you should be doing at any given time will definitely be uncomfortable. It should be") but this piece lacks the reflection and perspective of a PG think-piece or a…

Didn't Steve McConnell (code complete) suggest that managing up should be a firing offence.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#53

Post by jackgavigan »

plinkplonk wrote: post #12

"Don’t manage only to advance your career. Many tech companies have parallel career paths to seniority for both technical and managerial high-performers." Is this really true? Many engineers do become managers only to advance their careers. The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Even when a rough parity exists on pa…

> The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level.

The scope of a person focused solely on technology is narrower than the typical scope of senior management, and does not typically cover key functions like strategy (i.e. top-level decision-making) and sales (i.e. revenue generation).

I'm not saying that the latter are more valuable than the former but I will just point out that there are plenty of examples of companies with great technology that fail because of poor strategy or an inability to market their product/service as effectively as competitors who have crappy technology but better (or, at least, more effective) sales and marketing.

I think that managers also enjoy leverage from the people/teams/resources they manage - a kind of reflected-glory halo effect. The equivalent for a technologist (e.g. the creation of technology that makes others more productive) is not as obvious in most companies for various reasons (e.g. senior management lack of understanding of the impact technology has upon their company, non-technical managers' greater focus on self-promotion).

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#54

Post by plonh »

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #52
alexandercrohde wrote: post #14

I cannot tell if blog post is this a theory or 15-page commercial for one man's opinions. The title claims it turns engineers into remarkable managers, yet provides no evidence. I see a lot of bold claims (e.g. "As with any new job, the most important task you should be doing at any given time will definitely be uncomfortable. It should be") but this piece lacks the reflection and perspective of a PG think-piece or a…

Didn't Steve McConnell (code complete) suggest that managing up should be a firing offence.

What? Why? That's insane.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#55

Post by _pmf_ »

plinkplonk wrote: post #12

"Don’t manage only to advance your career. Many tech companies have parallel career paths to seniority for both technical and managerial high-performers." Is this really true? Many engineers do become managers only to advance their careers. The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Even when a rough parity exists on pa…

> Is this really true?

No. Even the poster boy companies have fancy titles and slight salary upgraded, but nothing that could be called a career path.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#56

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Couple random pieces of advice:

1. Learn management, even if you're never going to use it. Everybody in this world has a manager. The more you know about the job, the better integrated you can be with others, either as a manager yourself or working with managers. That 3-way diagram? Holds true at the developer level as well.

2. Management ain't programming. When I learned to fly airplanes on instruments, the toughest thing was realizing that I had to rely on the gauges and fight my natural instincts. Likewise, if you've been a super-cool coder for many years, you're going to have to give up those coding and architecture instincts and learn people management ones. I see far too many extremely smart people try building and managing systems of people just as if they were computers. Wrong answer.

3. Ambition is fine. Being a jerk is not. If you like managing, you need to realize that it's always a gut check to make sure you're doing the right thing, and you very well may end up in a position where it is better to leave your current company and go play somewhere else than it is to continue. That sucks, but there's a difference between being a cog in a machine and being a professional. Be a professional or don't do it.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#57

Post by Ensorceled »

levosmetalo wrote: post #40
Ensorceled wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 30 years of experience, the "parallel" technical track is really only for super stars. As merely a very good developer, management pays better.

And by "superstar", it's usually a person that can communicate his ideas eloquently and knows how to effectively evangelize and self-promote. It has not much to do with the actual technical competency. So, the skillset required to become a "technical superstar" resembles more of a skillset required for good manager or marketing persona than actual engineering skill set, though some level is required.

True, most of the superstars are "architects" who can both come up with excellent technical plans and then socialize/communicate them. I have a had a few "put on head phones and pump out 5 developers worth of excellent code" types as well.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#59

Post by sokoloff »

plonh wrote: post #54
spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Steve McConnell (code complete) suggest that managing up should be a firing offence.

What? Why? That's insane.

Most overt and intentional "managing up" is a waste of time at best and often runs counter to the organization's goals.

By this, I mean when you decide on your drive into work "Today, I'm going to manage up" or block it on your calendar. I don't mean doing a naturally good job and keeping your boss informed of what's going on, figuring out how to best help the company achieve its goals, etc. That's the productive version, but it's 1% of the usage of that phrase IME.

Most of "managing up" ranges from pure politics to useless paperwork to ass-kissing.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#60

Post by DamnYuppie »

netcan wrote: post #29
plinkplonk wrote: post #12

"Don’t manage only to advance your career. Many tech companies have parallel career paths to seniority for both technical and managerial high-performers." Is this really true? Many engineers do become managers only to advance their careers. The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Even when a rough parity exists on pa…

I have no idea if this is true, but just postulating a reason… If you consider management to be a distinct skill,Someone with 10 years of experience engineering and also 10 years in management is (potentially) very skilled in two distinct fields. Imagine you have a lawyer with a PHD in geology and they work on ground water disputes or oil well stuff. Being an expert in two fields is valuable.

You will lose a lot of your technical skills in 10 years time. Also most companies will force you to become more political and "reasonable". Thereby making it even harder to straddle both as the real engineers will smell the stench of your technical decay a mile away, and will rightly retch all over....
Post reply on HN