How was the new role challenging? What skill-sets from earlier were important in the transition?
Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#2The new role itself was not challenging, per se, except getting used to approaching unrealistic demands by non-technical people who have a say in the project. (There is a near constant influx of requests that are made without appreciation for the difference between ones that take 60 minutes versus 600 hours, and explaining such things tactfully and in human terms is an important highlight.)
That said, the thing I would personally place emphasis on is not letting yourself fall behind in the development world, both because (1) it's easy to let happen as you get busy, and (2) maintaining a solid understanding of what you're doing is crucial to efficiency in this capacity.
Disclaimer: personal experience derives from contract work
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#3I asked a similar question some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284742 not about the experience, but more about what to keep in mind when switching. Hope it helps.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#4I asked a similar question some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284742 not about the experience, but more about what to keep in mind when switching. Hope it helps.
The role of project management is very different from that of engineering management. For e.g., the former doesn't have any people management, whereas the latter does.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#5Learning to limit scope from both engineers “wouldn’t this cool new feature be great” and end users “we want this new feature we never talked about after agreeing on the MVP” has been a learning experience.
Also learning to explain how and why one feature is stupidly simple and another is exceedingly impossible has been an interesting challenge.
Otherwise nothing particularly revelatory, you will hear all of the typical “learning the people skills” stuff from me. Also people complain privately to their managers way more than you would think.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#6Answer from a different side of the fence:
As an executive who elected senior engineers into engineering managers three time in different companies, there are three challenging areas for even the most fit for the job engineers:
- understanding that soft skills and understanding company politics now matter not as much, but more than detailed technical skills. focusing on eliminating weaknesses in this area is that pareto-ean 20% of effort that makes the rest 10x easier. - it's now about eliminating weaknesses, not growing strengths: what you tolerate slows down and makes everything toxic, while what you preach is a second-order problem for a while. it evens out, and later on you can focus on growing strengths, but only after a while. - you own consistency of engineering culture, not your piece of code and responsibility, now. which makes figuring out internal feeling of "I'm doing it right" twice as hard.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#7I didn't like it, and after about a decade I went back to being a developer.
Management may suit you but, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, even if you're at a 'good' company you'll probably spend a lot of your time neck deep in politics. For me this just wasn't enjoyable or fulfilling, I could do it, my soft skills are ok, but it just wasn't for me. Arguing the toss with Sales or other non-technical people for 40 hours a week was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my working life.
Going back to being a dev was the best thing I ever did, I make the same money as I made in management without the hassle. I still manage dev teams sometimes, but make sure to keep away from the board room. I'm not ruling out ever going back into management but it would have to be a team and an idea I really cared about.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#8One side note I'll offer: don't view the change as a permanent one. I've bounced back and forth over the 10+ years of my career, and that's been a surprisingly good idea.
As an engineer, I have a better understanding of team dynamics, business needs, and other "big picture" items. As a manager, I don't have to worry as much about "losing my edge" technically -- I'll be back into code 6 months or a few years from now.
Best of both worlds.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#9The new role itself was not challenging, per se, except getting used to approaching unrealistic demands by non-technical people who have a say in the project. (There is a near constant influx of requests that are made without appreciation for the difference between ones that take 60 minutes versus 600 hours, and explaining such things tactfully and in human terms is an important highlight.) That said, the thing I wou…
I'm working as developer, now since approx 8 years. At my first job I had a boss with Engineering background but he worked a long time in Management as well. So this was quite nice and when he asked me implement things that would take a long time or would be risky to build, I'd tell him and he would prefer me doing other things. At other jobs this changed, I had to talk to more people but doing the programming mostly alone. Although I sometimes got help from other technical people. Ever since on a regular base I'm confronted with this 60 minutes vs 600 hours problem. Just that it's my problem to write these things myself. But I don't really see myself as anything close to Management.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
#10As a developer, I found that much of the programming I was doing was not very challenging or interesting. Hooking one API to another, optimizing some database routines, converting data efficiently... It felt more like "building" than "designing". Not sure it counts as pure management, but I've moved more into product design roll that needs to understand the business, what can be done in a given time, and set expectations. It's been far more challenging and interesting to me.
It's not exactly management roll, and it still requires a degree of tech skills, but it's another type of career move option you can make.