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Cause handling people and their issues is about 5000 times harder than handling code. Your code doesn't get cancer, run away with a coworker, go bankrupt, have opinions, lie, steal, needs to be told how to use a restroom, needs protection when it's layoff season etc etc etc
You seem to have a problem hiring the right people ;-)
This, at least has been the case for each of the SMBs that I've worked in which managers are purely non-technical and hired for their ability to manage people and projects (can't afford to not have Engineers doing engineering).
At one place, my direct sup was expected to wear both the manager and Engineer hat (being technical). The next two layers up were middle managers who only managed. Neither layer made more than anyone in engineering.
With that being said, why do managers get paid more? Think of it as parents versus kids. Who has the most responsibilities? Parents... who has collected the most data? Parents... who gets blammed when things go wrong? Parents... who pay the price when things go wrong? Parents.
That is why manager have a higher salary braket in general. Plus, they usually come from an IC path with a big hands-on experience. They’ve already nailed the IC salary range.
In good companies there are two career paths: - a management track - an IC (individual contributor) track There are different levels on the different tracks, and each is paid for that level. A super experienced IC will be paid more than a junior manager, and vice versa. So it doesn't have to be true that a manager earns more than an IC, and for example many ICs at Google are paid millions of $$, much much more than t…
There is no any such reason.
Current day managerial jobs descend directly from days of feudalism and aristocracy. Where the master had to be richer than the slaves to enforce his rule over the serfs.
All the best having a underpaid manager exercising control over overpaid ICs, it doesn't start, let alone work well. In short this is social sanction.
The reality is any set up which require a pyramid to exist, there will be pay grades, people down the pyramids will be paid no matter what miracles they will pull off. And people at the top will maintain political control to further their interests.
That is all there is to it. If we evaluated these 'managers' on merit. Then even being called a supervisor would be a lot for these glorified email routers and table fillers.
They often don't. But when they do, it's because of leveraged impact. If I'm a 10x engineer, then that's a huge individual contribution. However, if I'm a 2x manager with 12 reports, then my impact is greater than a 10x engineer. That is to say, if I can make my 12 reports twice as productive, then that's a huge benefit to the org. If I'm a 2x director with 4 managers reporting to me, then that 2x compounds through e…
It's hard to imagine a manager making people do 2x as much. But it's not so hard to imagine a manager making people work on something 2x as important.
Think of software for a moment. Has there every been a library, language, framework, etc that you absolutely love to use? The API is just right, the framework is the perfect level of opinionated vs. not opinionated, it just gets out of your way and lets you accomplish what you want, it's consistently reliable, it has fantastic backwards compatibility, it's error handling semantics are clear and the right level of verboseness, the internals are so well architected that it's also incredibly performant, etc.
It's just such a pleasure to work with. It's always just what you need, right when you need it, exactly how you needed it.
A company is a system, just like software. And a team is a submodule within that system. A 2x manager is the person that is able to make (and maintains) their team into the type of beloved system I mentioned above. How they do that is dependent on their expertise at comprehending, navigating, and influencing the larger system, and shaping their team to be precisely what that larger environment needs.
As hard as it is to do the above, it's really, really easy for a 0.1x manager to destroy that type of system/team. A few breaking API changes ("my team no longer handles those types of request you've been giving my team for years" vs "I've spoken with team x and it turns out they're more appropriately staffed to complete that work. Don't worry though, I've got a change management process in place and will ensure the handoff is seamless for you", refactoring some internal code that kills performance (i.e. losing important ICs without any risk mitigation/change management in place), etc can all tank the goodwill and community adoption of that once beloved system.
I switch between being an IC, a purely people manager, a functional manager (i.e. a team lead with people management and hiring/firing authority), and a "manager" (that's effectively an IC with a manager title so I have the organizational authority to execute the type of work I was doing). If you've never been a manager before, let me tell you: doing that shit right is exhausting. The biggest difference between being an IC and being a manager is that, as an IC, I'm able to ignore 90% of the bullshit around me and focus on my work. As a manager (whether doing IC work or purely people-managing), I can't ever tune out that organizational noise/bullshit/dysfunction/needs, because the more in tune I am with that the more likely that I can position my team to support the company, and in doing so ensure the peace of my team.
It's hard to image what a 2x manager is, because there's no single way to define one. But as an IC, having (or losing) a 2x manager will have a noticeable impact on you and your team's productivity over time, in any of a dozen or so different ways.
This doesn't always happen but when it does, assuming economic efficiency and perfect information, there are some good reasons: * Managers' actions take effect across the entire team, and therefore having a 1x manager vs a 1.1x manager on a 10 person team is like if any individual (assuming evenness in the team) goes from 1x to 2x. * It is harder to find someone who can effectively manage human beings than someone wh…
For the sake of conversation, let's loosely define a manager as someone who is responsible for enabling teams to succeed and assessing performance of their directs. Could you pay that manager equal or less than their direct individual contributors? How would the market respond?
I don't honestly think this is very rare. Certainly word on the street is that Netflix comp is fairly close on Senior ICs and Senior Engineering Managers, if not slightly tilted towards the former, but I don't know for sure.
At Microsoft, senior ICs (IC4 and above) make more than managers (typically M3s) in engineering teams but often the tables are reversed in services and sales teams, because managers in customer-facing teams have business targets with direct bearing on their unit/sub revenue.
I’ve been in both kinds of teams, and there is zero correlation between actual management skills and where HR rates them at, so YMMV.