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A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

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Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#91

Post by tamaatar »

ryandrake wrote: post #79

The day I decided to make it a goal to switch from developing software to management: I was sitting at my desk at 8:00 at night fixing some bug and I looked across the sea of gray half-height cubicles at a someone 30 years older than me doing the same thing with the exact same job title, probably not making much more than I. At 95% of companies, there is zero career development and advancement once you become a "Seni…

You are right about the salary. but what is your opinion on job security and employability. the way I see it, in a tech role, as long as your are flexible and open to learning whatever technology is thrown at you, you will always be employable. But in management,especially in junior management and especially in very large organisation, managers are in most cases dead weight. they don't do much.Don't they feel the insecurity?

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#92

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

eitally wrote: post #70
viewer5 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that seem unreasonable? I don't have any experience with such things, but it seems reasonable to me. The company decided you'd be most effective in position Y, so they put you there and gave you a pay/benefits raise, and now you're saying "I'd really like to do position X which is less optimal for the company even though you want me at Y and might/probably have already found someone to do X, and my reasons are A…

Yes, it was the right way to handle it, but my impression when I went through it was that it was completely novel to the HR organization and they were reluctant to agree to demote anyone at all, whether they were requesting it or not.

It's a loss of face for HR and the company.

Admitting they made a bad mistake makes everyone unhappy.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#93

Post by hiou »

maxxxxx wrote: post #71
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.

That's what I have observed as freelancer in a lot of companies. People who rise high on the technical track have to be exceptional (and often get let go to save money) whereas managers can be average and have more staying power. My advice to anybody who wants to have a long career and make good money is to go into management. this may be different for companies where there is more respect for engineers.

I have seen very similar things as a freelancer as well. It just seems like management is a much easier path when looking for longevity, money and work/life balance.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#94

Post by guj11 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #83
ryandrake wrote: post #79

The day I decided to make it a goal to switch from developing software to management: I was sitting at my desk at 8:00 at night fixing some bug and I looked across the sea of gray half-height cubicles at a someone 30 years older than me doing the same thing with the exact same job title, probably not making much more than I. At 95% of companies, there is zero career development and advancement once you become a "Seni…

Worth noting is that it's not just about titles. Titles matter, but they can also become a joke. It's easy to imagine a company, realizing that its best seniors are underpaid, inventing a new title to justify paying them only 10% more instead of the 30% they should get. The bigger problem is that most companies view "engineer" as "implementor of ideas that come from the business". Hence, all that Agile/Scrum bullshit…

Totally agree with your second paragraph.

Good technical people at large companies (ran by non-Technical management) are often undervalued. I see over and over again how an engineering team gets a non-technical PO/Manager - who is just a very bad proxy. They can't bring any important insights into technical products and can't easily fix inter-team dependency. That's why all Google's APMs are technical (most with CS degrees).

This gets worse when top level management is not technical for a technical company. Since they are not technical, they don't have good vision about where the industry will go in 10 years and what are the limitations. Ex. Microsoft under Steve vs Satya. One only had a vision for next quarter and the other seems to think longer term (and knows where the technology is going).

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#95

Post by jaegerpicker »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #65
yanilkr wrote: post #7

After being a consultant, engineer, manager and again starting as allinone on a small project, I believe organizational hierarchy is just an OK solution. If I put on a career planner hat, I find so many career paths which are in big hierarchies personally bad deals and would avoid them in future and advice the same to others. I wrote a summary of what I observed so many times. Sorry for a lengthy post. When a softwar…

I just joined an organization with minimal hierarchy (no team leads, no architects, no whatever) and minimal process. It feels right somehow, I'm curious how its going to work out.

In my experience poorly as it starts to scale above 5-10 developers on a team. Good developers tend to be opinionated people and after a certain size you need someone to break ties and keep everyone pointed in a useful direction. I'm a team lead/Developer manager and somewhat new to the job and that's my role. Help the team get the info they need, make difficult decisions about the direction of the tech, and help solve the really hard issues that they are bumping their heads against. Mostly stay out of their way if things are going well but still keep track of everything that's going down.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#96

Post by maxxxxx »

bonzini wrote: post #74
msravi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably true, but the thresholds to move up to the next level are vastly different. On the "management" ladder, you probably need to mostly stay out of the way of your team and let them execute, while acting occasionally to filter information up/down the chain. If you've stayed in the position for a reasonable time and have not really screwed things up, you advance to the next level. On the technical ladder, on…

This may be true for the low levels of the management ladder, but it definitely won't take you to the point where you have 2-300 people under you and growing.

Very true. From a certain level on managers have to be extremely high performing. But in the lower ranks it's easier to advance as a manager than for technical people.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#97

Post by potatolicious »

kelukelugames wrote: post #82
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…

This is as true as: 1) We value work life balance! 2) We only hire the best! Everyone here is a rock star. 3) We love diversity! 4) We have an open door policy. You can complain about anything!

The best way to tell if some company actually gives a shit about the above is to ask them what they are doing about it.

I interviewed at a company once where the answer to #1 is "we do 4-day work weeks and make sure people are actually working 32-hour weeks instead of 40-hours-in-4-days". They seemed like they actually gave a shit.

Ditto diversity - companies love to talk a lot of smack about hiring women and racial minorities, but ask them about actual programs, policies, or structures in place to pursue this goal and... crickets.

But yeah, in most places the answer to "what are you doing about these things you allegedly value" is "absolutely nothing".

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#98

Post by perlgeek »

jerf wrote: post #88
Ensorceled wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm continuing to wander slowly but surely into more architecture roles, and while the term has fully justifiably been badly wrecked by people doing "architecture" who think it involves drawing diagrams with lots of boxes and lines and never checking the architecture against the requirements, there is a legitimate architecture role that does exist and there are legitimate skills that are specialized to that role. I'm…

> I'm not sure it's something that can be taught very well, though

Why ever not? You can study and discuss existing architectures, their advantages and disadvantages, discuss case studies of existing code and new requirements and what architecture to implement them in etc.

Of course, you also need some decent programming experience to come up with architectures that work in practice, but that can be also acquired.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#99

Post by kelukelugames »

potatolicious wrote: post #97
kelukelugames wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is as true as: 1) We value work life balance! 2) We only hire the best! Everyone here is a rock star. 3) We love diversity! 4) We have an open door policy. You can complain about anything!

The best way to tell if some company actually gives a shit about the above is to ask them what they are doing about it. I interviewed at a company once where the answer to #1 is "we do 4-day work weeks and make sure people are actually working 32-hour weeks instead of 40-hours-in-4-days". They seemed like they actually gave a shit. Ditto diversity - companies love to talk a lot of smack about hiring women and racial…

The best way is to look around and see who is rewarded financially. Just because a program is available doesn't mean it's not a trap.

Are the 40 hour workers getting promoted? Are people joining us from Google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc? Are there minorities in management?

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#100

Post by huehue »

"Teach Yourself Management in Ten Years" haha

Management isn't that hard, specially compared to engineering where competition is fierce. The degrees are an absolute joke. I had virtually no social life during my CS studies, but the other one? Some of the managers I know don't even have one.

If you're the average HN reader you might have to hone up your soft skills and that's about it. Any competent developer would do just fine without training, even with autism going rampant in our industry.

It's not like we all jumped into the management career path in search for a challenge.

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