291–300 of 309 posts
But in reality, promotion means doing more work that you've never seen before. Usually tedious paperwork. Ironically, you're a noob again and now with less time to do the stuff you're good at.
This is why I hate academe. The professor's tasks has very little to do with what a research student does.
As a non-technical professional (yes we also peruse HN), I can't stress enough the value of having career conversations early and often with your manager. It's not just HR mumbo-jumbo. OP's story is just one example of a potential benefit. Most organizations actively try to support internal mobility (admittedly with varied success). Companies invest resources in hiring, training, and keeping you. Your manager, as a r…
I don't know. For a sufficiently large change, it isn't necessarily in your company's best interest to try to keep you happy. You have banked knowledge and skill in X. You have limited skill in Y but wish to learn. The loss of some fraction of X is always going to hurt the company more than your gain in Y will benefit them, so they are going to try to keep you doing as much of X as possible for as long as possible. I…
> The hardest part for me has been getting used to working on code that lots of other people had worked on. This is probably the single most significant differentiator between skills academic CS or programming courses and real world development.
Good for you. I was in startups for 25 years, (except for a few years in an acquiring company), and I had this ongoing debate with myself and my bosses for many years: Should I stay on the technical side (developer, architect), or go into management? On one hand, I thought that I "should" go into management because ... that's what people do, right? On the other hand, I loathed management. Even as a team lead, meeting…
I'm looking at a career change (possibly to tech), and I can't help but wonder: is there a way to be one of these managers, but without being a coder first? Weird question, I know. But I'm an advanced beginner of a programmer who knows that I'd make a better manager than a SWE. Almost would prefer to just leap-frog to management since, as it is, I'm already looking at a career change and know my strengths.
It's about more than knowing how to program, but rather the ins and outs of development, architecture, technology.
Plenty of more typical Fortune 500 type companies and small, non VC funded companies let managers from non engineering backgrounds manage engineers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> demotion (n) - a reduction in rank or status But it is a demotion! I think perhaps we view that as a negative thing when it's done as a punishment, or due to factors outside one's control. But in this case, she chose it (indeed, worked for it!), so she must think it was worth it. Her rank is literally demoted. She went from being high on the job ladder ("Director") to low on the job ladder ("Associate"), reflecting…
I still disagree - I think there is too much of a conflation between managing people and rank/status. Once upon on a time master craftsmen were the pinnacles of their industries but mechanization has shifted the framing to place "doers" below "directors" - I don't think this is strictly accurate and prefer to think of people managers as peers that manage the interpersonal side of the business (which I think is quite…
Imagine if you didn't have managers, so you had to spend all day answering the phone and emails, sitting in boring meetings, getting interrupted to deal with people problems, making out TPS reports. You'd want to hire an assistant or secretary to do all that stuff for you so you could get some work done, right? Developers have that, we just call them manager or boss and they get the slot above us in the org chart.
That's not an insult, just a view of how things are different in development vs. traditional industry. A good manager is very valuable, and a lot of 'doers' wouldn't want that job even with the higher rank/status.
That is one of the great truths of development.
It is easier and more satisfying to build something from scratch. It's literally leveling up.
In the great scheme of things it doesn't happen as often.
Good for you. I was in startups for 25 years, (except for a few years in an acquiring company), and I had this ongoing debate with myself and my bosses for many years: Should I stay on the technical side (developer, architect), or go into management? On one hand, I thought that I "should" go into management because ... that's what people do, right? On the other hand, I loathed management. Even as a team lead, meeting…
Good for you. I was in startups for 25 years, (except for a few years in an acquiring company), and I had this ongoing debate with myself and my bosses for many years: Should I stay on the technical side (developer, architect), or go into management? On one hand, I thought that I "should" go into management because ... that's what people do, right? On the other hand, I loathed management. Even as a team lead, meeting…
I'm looking at a career change (possibly to tech), and I can't help but wonder: is there a way to be one of these managers, but without being a coder first? Weird question, I know. But I'm an advanced beginner of a programmer who knows that I'd make a better manager than a SWE. Almost would prefer to just leap-frog to management since, as it is, I'm already looking at a career change and know my strengths.
There is, but probably not in a Software company, since they tend to prefer promoting experienced programmers to managers based on their tech skills (for better or worse)
Companies that work in logistics, banking, engineering etc. and have in-house software teams, but don't ship software as their primary business are far more open to hiring non-programmers as software team managers (for better or worse). If you have any domain knowledge about the area they're operating in that often weighs much higher.
Good for you. I was in startups for 25 years, (except for a few years in an acquiring company), and I had this ongoing debate with myself and my bosses for many years: Should I stay on the technical side (developer, architect), or go into management? On one hand, I thought that I "should" go into management because ... that's what people do, right? On the other hand, I loathed management. Even as a team lead, meeting…
I'm looking at a career change (possibly to tech), and I can't help but wonder: is there a way to be one of these managers, but without being a coder first? Weird question, I know. But I'm an advanced beginner of a programmer who knows that I'd make a better manager than a SWE. Almost would prefer to just leap-frog to management since, as it is, I'm already looking at a career change and know my strengths.
Maybe you would be a great manager, maybe you would be a bad one. But you would not be nearly as good as a person who is just like you but has also worked as a developer. You literally will not know what you are talking about, and the people you manage will see this, and that creates an unfixable problem between you and your developers.
I mean, the classic "couldn't you just ..." is bad enough from a manager who at least was on the receiving end of that suggestion, at some point in his or her career. But from someone who hasn't had that experience, it is so much worse. Maybe you would never use that phrase, but the dynamic is unavoidable. Much of what you do and say will be second-guessed and devalued.