Is engineering management bullshit?

all that means is that you're making either the tech lead or your project manager the engineering manager. whoever is between business and the engineers, saying yes/no to the former based on the needs of the latter, is the EM

You are right. Running a business is nuanced and smart people are required for it.

Imo, the real problem is that engineering work is disproportionately difficult compared to management and yet, management gets recognition, visibility and power to control engineer lives. This happens in every step. Engineering interviews are insanely harder than management, engineering promos are opaque and need grinding for years as opposed to management promos in growing companies and these days, senior engineers have to manage politics as well. Engineering managers are not useful in any way but yet, get higher compensation and recognition. Why?

The only manager that engineers like are those who have previously been strong engineers themselves. It's the earned respect that lets people be ok with bosses. Not titles themselves. Certainly not people management or glorified assistants managing spreadsheets for upper levels.

Engineering management is not bullshit in my opinion. It is, and always been, an organization-specific role. This leads to the ambiguities that can be frustrating.

There are two distinct roles in an engineering organization: staffing, process and engineering resources (indirect), and product/project development and delivery (direct).

Relegating staffing, process and resource decisions to non-engineers (e.g. HR) is not the best solution. It takes experience and expertise to build a good staff and engineering culture. That is the job of engineering managers.

Do engineering managers act as mentors? Sure, and they can also provide technical input. But that’s just one of their many responsibilities.

Roughly 30 years ago, this same discussion was happening around something called a “matrix organization.” It was the same confusion of responsibilities under a different name.

Everything works fine when everyone stays in their lane (managers, I mean) and pushes in the same direction. It takes coordination, and it’s not something that people can reinvent on a daily basis.

In short: Make a plan for your organization, write it down, show it to everyone (over and over again like beating a drum) and then stick with it. For those who don’t comply, send them packing.

My take is like this: Engineering management works if EMs are good at their job.

According to this tweet: - Startups with managers 33% more likely to develop product innovations

- Firing a bad manager and replacing them with a top manager drops costs 5%, since you reduce turnover.

- In a car factory, replacing a bad manager with a top manager diminishes the hours needed to build a car by 30%.

- In the game industry - good managers means +22% in revenue

[1] https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1561408118906568704

Yeah, it goes both ways. Worse is when someone thinks that they're this magical unicorn that is always right when they're in fact more often wrong and correspondingly makes trouble for everyone else. They make you out to be the enemy when you're not. It's horrible when that person is a manager. But it's also horrible when that person is a developer. Or any other role. I've managed people that you just have to let go, after trying every method known to man, you can't fix their fundamental psychology and neuroticism. Some people are just broken and organizations unfortunately are not equipped to deal with that (would be nice if every organization could have an in-house psychiatrist, but that's not the reality we have).

I will concede this though. When that bad person is a manager, EVERYONE on the team can suffer, the entire culture can suffer. When that person is just a team member, others on the team can usually figure out how to just avoid that person so that the problem can be compartmentalized. Better still, a good manager will not tolerate the bullshit because they know that it can poison the team if not handled properly. When that person is a manager, there's no avoiding the problem and team policies and culture will be poisoned accordingly so that the best people leave and nothing good is left.