Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path • Hacker News Board

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#51

Post by GordonS » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #3

This is bad advice. If you are hitting 40's, please do yourself a favor and go into management. Yes coding is fun but, 1. Not being able to change jobs because you can't invert a binary tree in 20 secs in leetcode hazing, is not fun. 2. Being managed by someone a decade younger than you with no family or responsibilities, is not fun. 3. Spending your weekends learning the latest JS framework because you don't want to…

There are any some senior tech roles that are not strictly "management": Technical Lead, Application Architect, Solution Architect, Enterprise Architect.

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#52

Post by waltertamboer » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

I can so much relate to the first paragraph. When you just start your career, you enter a junior role. It's than expected of you to grow to a medior role, a senior role and than somewhere along the line become a lead.

Well, that's the biggest BS there is. Not everybody is a good lead. It's a completely different job compared to engineering. It takes people skill, organizational skill and it requires you to approach engineering from a much higher abstract level.

Personally I was really unhappy being a lead and I decided to step down. I was doing more harm than good and no-one benefits from that. Not the company, not the team, and definitely not me.

FWIW, if you still have to work 50 more years before you can enjoy a retirement, you better learn what makes you happy and do what makes you happy.

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#53

Post by dominotw » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #42

dominotw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok. But You haven't answered my questions. Re that example, I was just using this famous tweet. https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 You don't get a job solving simple recursion problems. You have to solve hard leetcodes.

I don't know what "hard leetcodes" look like... even in my teens I failed to solve _some_ problems. But what I can tell you is that I switched jobs less than a year ago, I was given as part of the interview process a link to solve 3 problems online in 1h30m and solved them all in 1h. Now, were they rated "hard"? I don't know, honestly. Also, 2years ago (I think) I participated in Amazon TechO(n) challenge... I was 1s…

I can say you are def an exception, most ppl get slower at these in their 40's than in their 20's.

You seem to have gotten faster. For most people this knowledge tends to atrophy as they age. Maybe you are lucky enough to work at job that requires you to write algorithms from scratch ( embedded engg?).

What is your theory as to why that homebrew guy wasn't able to solve simple recursion problem ?

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#54

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #29

virgilp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending your weekends learning the latest JS framework because you don't want to be someone "who doesn't keep up", is not fun. It's not about JS frameworks, but if you don't keep up with technology _because it's fun_; and you also what to be promoted very high on the ladder (aren't happy with "just" an average job with average pay that lets you have a decent life outside work) by all means do yourself a favor and…

> It's a simple recursion. why wouldn't I be able to do it? I fully expect to solve algorithms & data structures questions into my 60s faster than the average 20yo can (because of my background. Point is, it doesn't correlate with age, if you can't do it at 40 you probably weren't great at it at 20). ok. I was being facetious with that (particularly famous) example. you are able to breeze through hard leetcodes in yo…

[deleted]

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#55

Post by sargram01 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

I don’t see why there is a technical vs management path at many companies, you want management to be a support for the product that’s being delivered and your teams should be skilled in and embody the product they’re making first. Management for management sake makes the product a 2nd goal otherwise. You could argue we can’t find people who can do that, fair enough, but there are plenty of companies that do and their performance is high because of it.

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#56

Post by LordHumungous » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

IMHO a good senior IC should be performing many of the same tasks as a manager: mentoring and helping junior engineers, setting the team's vision, meeting with stakeholders, and so on. On the other side of the coin, the best managers I've had were also ICs in terms of their code output.

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#57

Post by Jestar342 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

mi100hael wrote: post #47

The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier does a good job covering the various steps from technical individual contributor all the way up through the ranks of management and looks at questions like when to stop getting involved in technical decision making. Would recommend for anyone interested in pursuing a leadership role.

Yes, it's a great book and helped me to come to terms with my new responsibilities as a lead. The most important being when/how to relinquish control and trust your colleagues/delegates to do the right thing, with your support.

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#58

Post by Jestar342 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

jdauriemma wrote: post #39

I'm happy for the author, but did anyone else notice a lack of takeaways for the reader? It reads like a list of accomplishments rather than genuine advice for thriving in technical leadership.

Yes, very much so.

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#59

Post by LordHumungous » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #4

In my experience, many companies legitimately don't really know what to do with very senior engineering staff. And how many distinguished engineers or principal engineers or technical fellows do you really need for your relatively straightforward technical challenges anyway? The IC track often fails to work in practice for the simple reason that technical work at an extremely high level is just not needed at many com…

> But sometimes all you need is to be able to assign someone to a specific project that isn't all that glorious or interesting or hard but is valuable and needs to be done by a certain time

There's a lot of business value in certainty. The value of the senior IC is the certainty that your business critical project will get completed correctly and on time. Sort of like how you want a good electrician to work on your house even if the job isn't technically that "hard".

Re: Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path

#60

Post by xxpor » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

arnarbi wrote: post #45

lordfoom wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being a technical leader is a set of skills that is distinct from being a great IC Sorry if I'm being dim - what's an IC?

Individual contributor, i.e. a non-leadership role

A non-managerial role*

If you're a senior IC and you're not exhibiting leadership in some way you're probably not going to be around for very long.