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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

#21

Post by Gooblebrai »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #6
askonomm wrote: post #4

And 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…

> Senior engineer is fairly low. At some point you may get tired of stagnating salary and being what to do all the time

Or not. While I acknowledge that the mindset of chasing eternal growth and riches professionally is very common, is not hard to imagine a subset of people that are happy with staying in one rung of the ladder and get meaning from things outside their career.

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#22

Post by srvaroa »

t43562 wrote: post #18
grilledcheez wrote: post #9

I’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…

I felt this - a lot of the problems I've experienced with teams before could have been solved by the management. In practise now I find that I am a Team Lead and yet I have far less ability to influence things than I thought. There are a host of people including my boss who want to run everything and expect me to be a rubber stamp. In fact I get into shit more because I have to speak up for people in the team who are…

I don’t fully agree with all points but there are many words of caution to be spoken about the expectation that by moving to a manager role you get more agency on the things that frustrate you as a sw eng. “The managers path” is a good resource to expand on that. https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Grow...

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#23

Post by saiya-jin »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #17
askonomm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you remain 'senior software engineer' your salary will be constrained by the market range for that position. When you get to the top of the range your salary will only increase in line with inflation/market forces whatever you do. It's not possible to get 20-30% more every time you change job unless you've stayed a long time in your current job and they were taking advantage of you (in which case those 20-30% repr…

So what? Chasing money in life is utterly stupid long term strategy, if somebody told you this they were lying to you (or deeply unhappy people who went that way and instead of admitting the mistake they just drag others in same pit). Literally everybody who achieved anything serious in life says so. Yes it sucks when you don't have them at all, but once over that they should never be the top priority.

Do what you like, and for most normal humans (TM) moving to managerial position is moving to worse job while paid marginally better. More stress, far less interesting creative work and more baby-sitting/micro-managing incompetent folks, chasing other teams, processes, politics etc (if you don't do that you are not really a manager in any bigger company).

I am software dev for 20 years, my current full time employment net salary is over 20x compared to my first full time employment while doing largely the same job. You don't get good increases by moving up the ladder, you get it by switching companies and negotiating hard. That's it for the money part.

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#24

Post by manmal »

t43562 wrote: post #18
grilledcheez wrote: post #9

I’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…

I felt this - a lot of the problems I've experienced with teams before could have been solved by the management. In practise now I find that I am a Team Lead and yet I have far less ability to influence things than I thought. There are a host of people including my boss who want to run everything and expect me to be a rubber stamp. In fact I get into shit more because I have to speak up for people in the team who are…

Sounds like you need to be a pain sponge, like Tom said in Succession.

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#25

Post by thoughtspile »

yamrzou wrote: post #3

Are 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?

I haven't had any luck applying to leadership positions without prior experience. Your best bet is finding a fast-growing product: when the team triples, you'll need some new managers. I got to move around 2 months into my IC job, and now my team has grown to have another 3 leadership slots.

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#26

Post by mytailorisrich »

saiya-jin wrote: post #23
mytailorisrich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remain 'senior software engineer' your salary will be constrained by the market range for that position. When you get to the top of the range your salary will only increase in line with inflation/market forces whatever you do. It's not possible to get 20-30% more every time you change job unless you've stayed a long time in your current job and they were taking advantage of you (in which case those 20-30% repr…

So what? Chasing money in life is utterly stupid long term strategy, if somebody told you this they were lying to you (or deeply unhappy people who went that way and instead of admitting the mistake they just drag others in same pit). Literally everybody who achieved anything serious in life says so. Yes it sucks when you don't have them at all, but once over that they should never be the top priority. Do what you li…

My point is that if you want to remain IC then why limit yourself to stay close to the bottom of the pile when you could aim for better pay and more impactful and interesting work?

It's not about chasing money for the sake of it but in the real world more money always helps if you can get it. In this case this also goes with better job satisfaction.

A 20x salary increase in 20 years means either fantastic career growth up the ladder or so-called "developing country". No-one gets that kind of increase in a developed country just by moving company, or at all, really.

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#27

Post by ducktective »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #6
askonomm wrote: post #4

And 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…

>Best I have seen is engineer with phD and decades of experience be the research/architecture guru, no team, no direct reports

While we're at it, does anyone recommend going for PhD in EECS fields for someone who doesn't like at all to be in academia or do "research" (aka read pdfs, write proposal/papers, code up and run simulations)?

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#28

Post by thoughtspile »

mattlondon wrote: post #14

The biggest pain is the people. You'd be surprised how childish grown ups can be. FFS just be adults and get along. 80% of my stress as a manager is basically solving playground squabbles between people old enough and experienced enough to know better. Then of course the other 20% of the stress are your reports actively trying to undermine you, or publicly question your purpose/existence, or cut you out of decision m…

Well, it's well known that to become a team lead you must eat the previous team lead)

To be fair, some managers over-optimize to protect against people undermining them, not sharing knowledge and responsibility and even actively removing top performers with leadership ambitions

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#29

Post by thoughtspile »

Prcmaker wrote: post #2

I'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.

I've also seen horrible engineers whose code made entire teams miserable become amazing managers tho

Re: From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate

#30

Post by urthor »

warkanlock wrote: post #7

I 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…

> 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.

This is very good advice.

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