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A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

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Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the type of manager you describe could be more aptly called a leader: visionary (motivating the team behind ideals), willing to do the hardest work (as opposed to handing it down apathetically), respectful (building trust and such) and more.

"Leader" is usually reserved for a different kind of work. A leader determines where the organization should go; a manager ensures that everyone under him is marching in that direction. They require very different skillsets - leading is an outward-facing, synthesizing, strategic role, while managing is an inwards-facing, empathizing, tactical role. To use Ben Horowitz's terminology [1], leaders are Ones and managers…

"a manager ensures that everyone under him is marching in that direction"

That sounds like a boss to me (and not just because you used an unnecessarily gender-specific word ;). One of the anecdotes in the article is about this person, as a manager, acting as a listening board and ultimately conduit for an engineer when discussing the importance of a specific project at Twitter, and raising questions that came from that engineer that ultimately resulted in the project being cancelled. I think that advocacy role is important management – where the manager advocates both up and down (and ultimately you can't "tell" people what to do, you can only fire them or convince them, so it's "advocacy" both directions).

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True in my experience that managing developers paid better and had other perks like more equity and some control over priorities and projects that was nice. Technical or pure software companies seem to do a better job of valuing engineering talent and how core they are to business but still not as good as they could. The two things I've seen over and over are: 1) Pure technical people are under appreciated and in gen…

Maybe developers valuate themselves too low more often than management, at least when it comes to negotiating salaries? In general they might think more in terms of what they need (or "should earn"), than what they could earn. That is kind of a mistake.

This is a contributor to the 'gender gap' in pay.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#163

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…

True in my experience that managing developers paid better and had other perks like more equity and some control over priorities and projects that was nice. Technical or pure software companies seem to do a better job of valuing engineering talent and how core they are to business but still not as good as they could. The two things I've seen over and over are: 1) Pure technical people are under appreciated and in gen…

> Good managers/management are under appreciated by most engineers. It is hard to measure quality in management and it is one of those jobs that when you're doing it best it appears like you're not doing much...

Oh, the irony!

Can we just agree that any job that require expert judgment of context-rich situations to take decisions - versus the raw application of fixed rules - is simply not suited to Taylorist evaluations???

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#164
post #100

"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 because something is a "soft skill" doesn't mean it's easy.

I suspect anybody that thinks effective management is easy would not do very well in that role. I've seen plenty of competent developers get chewed up and spit out as managers because they didn't understand what they needed to do to run successful teams.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At 95% of companies, there is zero career development and advancement once you become a "Senior Software Engineer". Fix that and you'll see more engineers stay put (where they're likely happier and more productive). In many companies I see more undermanagement than overmanagement, so starving out the management track doesn't sound like a great strategy. And if a company is going to have better career development an…

OP is not saying to starve out management. Providing a meaningful career track for experienced engineers as technical experts rather than managers does not require reducing the number of managers. It does, however, require accepting that there's such a thing as a non-management job that might actually pay more than one higher up the org chart. Often, organizational and technical challenges are intertwined. We become…

I guess my sense is that in some fields – software development specifically – the management track is generally starved. Sure people enter management, but they do so reluctantly (which itself causes many problems), or for the wrong reasons, and that's in part because there's not enough people interested in entering that track.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True in my experience that managing developers paid better and had other perks like more equity and some control over priorities and projects that was nice. Technical or pure software companies seem to do a better job of valuing engineering talent and how core they are to business but still not as good as they could. The two things I've seen over and over are: 1) Pure technical people are under appreciated and in gen…

Maybe developers valuate themselves too low more often than management, at least when it comes to negotiating salaries? In general they might think more in terms of what they need (or "should earn"), than what they could earn. That is kind of a mistake.

Certainly everyone has the responsibility to make sure that they like the deal they entered into and ask for more compensation when appropriate.

I think that good management realizes that things will end badly for them if they don't compensate employees well, but I for one though have never seen a corporate dashboard that tracked how fairly the developers are being paid. Management often seems genuinely surprised that they can't just replace the talented technical person who left and that they can't hire top talent for median wages.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not as many available jobs. Every company in the Valley seems to be looking for engineers by the truckload, but there are not so many openings for [people|project|product] managers. Apparently, engineers now self-organize and products simply leap from their fingertips onto store shelves. As for job security, I guess I'll find out eventually. My gut feeling is that in software companies, it's easier to get…

Yeah, this is my gut feeling too. Unspoken is the fact that productivity tools like Asana, Trello, Slack are innovations to replace management.

If you think you can replace managers with Trello, you clearly have had some very awful bosses in your career.

I don't need anyone to tell me to keep working on my TODO list. On the other hand, someone who grasp the big picture is useful to have around to tell me in what order to tackle the task in the TODO list. Its even better when said someone has the clout to go poke a 3rd party that is blocking me so I can keep working on the TODO list.

But the very best managers I have had are the ones that are willing to bite the bullet and say "No, X cannot go into the TODO list as it is now. Let's work together to define what realistic actionable items need to happen for X to be accomplished and then we can put those in the TODO list."

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#168
post #33
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SOMEONE will end up managing the team that adds value to the company. I think the point is to play the politics & turf battles so that YOU are that someone.

Exactly right. If you feel you're the highest EV manager with the best team then getting that hot project naturally maximises the value for the company. And being the best is useless if you're not perceived as the best, and that takes politics and turf wars.

This is very realpolitik ;) Note that you aren't proposing that you get ahead by bringing the most value to the company, you are saying it's important to be perceived as bringing the most value to the company.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Very true. Engineering is the hard way up, because there's so much less of the title and grade and salary inflation on the management track. Take Google. If you're a manager and don't make Director in 5 years, you fucked something up. On the other hand, the Director-equivalent…

Pretty sure a lot of what you said about Google isn't true. I personally know at least one Principal Engineer who works on the Search team in Google NYC; it's possible he was promoted after you left, but even then, he would've been Senior Staff and highly regarded. Also, upper management in Search is still on the engineering ladder. These are folks with 2000+ and 500+ folks reporting to them, one of whom reported dir…

There were Senior Staff SWEs at Google NYC when I was there. It's not surprising that there's a Principal SWE now.

You're talking about anecdotes with regard to those highly-compensated engineers. They exist, but I don't think that anyone entering Google at 2015 has any real chance of becoming one of those 9-figure engineers from a SWE-3 start.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Leader" is usually reserved for a different kind of work. A leader determines where the organization should go; a manager ensures that everyone under him is marching in that direction. They require very different skillsets - leading is an outward-facing, synthesizing, strategic role, while managing is an inwards-facing, empathizing, tactical role. To use Ben Horowitz's terminology [1], leaders are Ones and managers…

"a manager ensures that everyone under him is marching in that direction" That sounds like a boss to me (and not just because you used an unnecessarily gender-specific word ;). One of the anecdotes in the article is about this person, as a manager, acting as a listening board and ultimately conduit for an engineer when discussing the importance of a specific project at Twitter, and raising questions that came from th…

Difference between a "manager" and "boss" is entirely in how they go about getting everyone on the same page. For any given strategic direction, there are a lot of different ways that could be achieved. A good manager takes in information from all her reports (including their preferences, fears, concerns, and goals) and then figures out a plan that keeps all of them happy while also achieving the strategic goals coming down from above. A bad manager takes the goal as the only input and then outputs commands to achieve it.
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