From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
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From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
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Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#2I've watched a colleague go from a good engineer, to a great engineering manager, to an awful project manager. I see him hating what his career has become and I feel terrible for him.
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#3Are there companies that would hire you as an engineer for a team lead position without much prior experience? Or is the only way to transition within the same company?
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#4And here I am, 12 years into my career as a software engineer, never, ever, wanting to be a manager. I just want to build things, I don't want to manage them. I see what it is like to be a manager as I work closely with them, and I just don't find it appealing at all.
As a senior engineer, my words also often matter, but I don't have the huge amount of responsibility that comes with being a manager, which is nice. I want less stress in my life, not more.
I guess my next 30 years in this career will be the same position I am in currently.
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#5[dead]
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#6And here I am, 12 years into my career as a software engineer, never, ever, wanting to be a manager. I just want to build things, I don't want to manage them. I see what it is like to be a manager as I work closely with them, and I just don't find it appealing at all. As a senior engineer, my words also often matter, but I don't have the huge amount of responsibility that comes with being a manager, which is nice. I…
Senior engineer is fairly low. At some point you may get tired of stagnating salary and being told what to do all the time.
They are higher technical positions that have no or very little management responsibilities (up to senior principal engineer, architect, etc). It depends also on the company and how much they value you.
Best I have seen is engineer with PhD and decades of experience be the research/architecture guru, no team, no direct reports, a lot of Matlab, and be "VP of technology" in a company of several hundreds.
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#7I started as an engineering manager (CTO of a small startup) a few years ago; my life has changed a lot, and for every aspect you love and hate, I share the same feelings.
My additional advice here is to meditate. For real. Sit quietly long enough for your brain to switch off before making essential and impactful decisions that could harm your people.
In the beginning, you become a kind of parent-to-child genius. You have to accept them and also understand their ways. The more controls you put in place, the less control you will have, as they will attempt to jump around and oppose the unnecessary bureaucracy (I'll do the same, honestly).
My second advice is to always behave as if you are going to leave tomorrow. This will prepare your team and your peers and even improve your lifestyle.
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#8And here I am, 12 years into my career as a software engineer, never, ever, wanting to be a manager. I just want to build things, I don't want to manage them. I see what it is like to be a manager as I work closely with them, and I just don't find it appealing at all. As a senior engineer, my words also often matter, but I don't have the huge amount of responsibility that comes with being a manager, which is nice. I…
I don't think the good takeaway is to "never be a manager", more of don't be a corpo manager of stuff that's someone else's vision. It's not the difficulty of the learning or necessarily the people but the circumstances that surround it.
I think having management perspective is excellent to understand the contexts behind what is being built and why things are seemingly inefficient and broken. Gives more insight into solutions and what may not be effectively communicated. Memes as usual.
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#9I’m a senior dev currently interviewing for a team lead position at a startup. While I consider myself highly technical, the things that frustrate me the most day-to-day are teamwork related. Lack of trust. Teammates who don’t want to talk to each other. Other seniors getting away with subpar work. Lack of clear team purpose and product vision. Lack of buy in on common engineering practices.
As a people manager these issues I care so much about would be within my sphere of influence and responsibility. For better or worse.
Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
#10And here I am, 12 years into my career as a software engineer, never, ever, wanting to be a manager. I just want to build things, I don't want to manage them. I see what it is like to be a manager as I work closely with them, and I just don't find it appealing at all. As a senior engineer, my words also often matter, but I don't have the huge amount of responsibility that comes with being a manager, which is nice. I…
Senior engineer is fairly low. At some point you may get tired of stagnating salary and being told what to do all the time. They are higher technical positions that have no or very little management responsibilities (up to senior principal engineer, architect, etc). It depends also on the company and how much they value you. Best I have seen is engineer with PhD and decades of experience be the research/architecture…
Stagnating salary? Every job change comes with around 20-30% raise usually, so I would not call it stagnant. Managers are also being told what to do, by those above them.
Since I do not work for FAANG companies, but rather small-to-medium (regular?) tech companies, they mostly never have principal/architect roles. My current role, in most cases, is actually the highest IC role there is.