131–140 of 235 posts
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
It sounds like you're not quite used to the political game that comes with getting ahead in the corporate world. If that is the case, do you honestly believe you would be happy in management?
You will have your first real "conversation" with your bosses, after you setup this project.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better fourth path is to transition to running your own business. You still get to write the code, and you remove the salary cap. People sweat about all the “Business Stuff” you have to do in addition, but I find it’s not really any more of your day than the normal boring admin stuff of being a rank and file developer. Certainly less than being a manager at a bigco. It also does away with ageism concerns.
So instead of going into management because you don’t like management and want to stay an individual contributor, you now become not only the manager of your own company, now you have to worry about marketing, finances, etc. I go to bed every night not worrying about whether my company remains sustainable. If they don’t, as long as it is a microeconomic issue (company failed) and not a macroeconomic issue (economy is…
Two. You're not going to multiply your salary by 2x-20x unless you start to take on more responsibility, like worrying about sustainability.
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
If you don't mind me asking, why do you want to be a manager ? Aren't there promotion opportunities in dev track ? PS: Please do go with the support plan route for your open source project. You wouldn't know how it will turnout unless you try.
But mind that there are more scenarios than "works out" and "doesn't work out". It might also for instance be that you get some customers, but too few to pay the bills, but too many to switch of the light. It might also be that suddenly paying customers demand the project to go a different route than you (and the contributing community) envision. Both of these can bring major tension to something, which had been fun before ...
Doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, but be prepared for it, to keep it on a track you're happy with.
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
Sometimes, your own managers don't know what you want, until it's too late! But I don't want to assume anything, so please do start a conversation if you're up for it!
I think it has a lot to do with wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Supposing you literally “just write code,” there’s a ceiling to how much impact you can have. One person can only hold so large of a program (or so many small programs) in their head, and if you are on a project that reaches a certain size you have to start working with other humans to maintain it, and thus the need for technical leadership and…
> Supposing you literally “just write code,” there’s a ceiling to how much impact you can have I'm don't see why a single person can't have a ton of impact merely as a coder. I mean, this whole website is dedicated to (mostly) discussing tech startups and how (mostly) software disrupts and help scale outdated business models. Isn't the software-making business model also ripe for that disruption, at least in a smalle…
Sort of, but:
1) Knowing what to build requires deep knowledge of that the other engineers in your company are struggling with. Figuring this out requires a lot of time spent meeting with people and doing other things that would be considered more management than coding.
2) If the thing you build is good, it's going to start getting a ton of feature requests. Your company will decide that it's worth investing in, and suddenly you're either managing a team or somebody else is managing you and running "your" project.
I cannot relate to this article at all. It's the polar opposite of my experience. I've been desperately trying to get into a management position for years. I started programming at age 14 and am now approaching 30. I created projects using basically every major programming language, created and maintained a complex open source project which now has over 5K GitHub stars and several tens of thousands of weekly download…
Thankfully, many if not most top tech companies in the valley realize this and have parallel management and IC tracks (at least for software engineers), with compensation the same. That said, even as an IC, at higher levels the scope of impact you're expected to deliver at some point exceeds what one person working alone can have, so there's still lots of people leadership skills needed to advance: working cross-func…
Yep, by L6 you're probably spending less than half your time coding even on the IC track.
I actually enjoy management even when it means more administration at sacrifice to writing code. What I don't like is when I am mentoring a junior on best practices or techniques to increase their performance or the performance of their code and they get defensive to the point of becoming an insubordinate ass. I understand there is a lot of defensiveness in development, but in the corporate world I expect everyone to…
It sounds like you're not a very good manager, unfortunately. One of the most important things a manager does is understand how to communicate productively with each of their reports. If you have reports whom you believe cannot "follow simple instructions", your first response should be to re-evaluate the way that you provide guidance to that person, not to decide that they're "an insubordinate ass".