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

thoughtspile.github.io

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

#41

Post by t8sr »

thoughtspile wrote: post #38
t8sr wrote: post #16

I have been a manager four times, twice at FAANGs. I disagree with a lot that the author says: - The ladder isn’t really taller. Most EMs end up clustered at the equivalent of L6/staff engineer. Promotions to senior manager and beyond are situational and rare. Meanwhile, my peers on the engineering ladder get promoted when ready, without needing to wait for the stars to align. (I made it to senior manager, but I was…

Thanks for the feedback! I must say I've never worked in real big tech, and I've never worked with an IC beyond staff level. I'd imagine promotions to principal / fellow are quite rare as well? Besides, most "normal" companies don't have these grades, at all. By transferable, I mean skills that are useful outside of our big tech bubble. You might not want to go out as money is very nice, but still good to know you ca…

Ah right, I tend to think the tech bubble is the default context for stuff posted on HN, but of course that's just my bias.

I think staff engineers are slightly more common than first level EMs, but senior EMs are slightly more common than senior staff. Beyond that, it's small numbers and hard to draw conclusions. The nuance I've felt is that promotions to staff and up on the IC ladder are more in your control, while EM promotions are very much about being in the right place at the right time, in addition to being ready for the role.

I have worked at "normal" companies as well, and I think the EM role there is slightly different? To me it seemed like it's people management + technical, while in the tech bubble, that would be called "TLM". "Pure" EMs are mostly doing people management only, with strategy and XFN alignment. Does that sound correct to you?

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

#42

Post by namdnay »

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…

A manager does build things! It’s just that their tools are engineers :)

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

#43

Post by sorokod »

shubhamjain wrote: post #19
t8sr wrote: post #16

I have been a manager four times, twice at FAANGs. I disagree with a lot that the author says: - The ladder isn’t really taller. Most EMs end up clustered at the equivalent of L6/staff engineer. Promotions to senior manager and beyond are situational and rare. Meanwhile, my peers on the engineering ladder get promoted when ready, without needing to wait for the stars to align. (I made it to senior manager, but I was…

Another point: there many more senior+staff engineer roles than EM roles. Once you become an EM, it's much harder to make a switch, because: a) the roles are fewer b) companies are wary of bringing in an EM for a team (prefer to promote within the ranks, in my experience). c) switching from EM to a senior engineer role is hard both because it feels like a downgrade and because I see companies not that willing to offe…

companies are wary of bringing in an EM for a team (prefer to promote within the ranks, in my experience)

In Band of Brothers TV series there is a plot line where an NCO is promoted to be an officer. Soon after he is moved to a different unit because the Army has a policy to distance such promotions from their organic units.

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

#44

Post by whiplash451 »

sorokod wrote: post #43
shubhamjain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point: there many more senior+staff engineer roles than EM roles. Once you become an EM, it's much harder to make a switch, because: a) the roles are fewer b) companies are wary of bringing in an EM for a team (prefer to promote within the ranks, in my experience). c) switching from EM to a senior engineer role is hard both because it feels like a downgrade and because I see companies not that willing to offe…

companies are wary of bringing in an EM for a team (prefer to promote within the ranks, in my experience) In Band of Brothers TV series there is a plot line where an NCO is promoted to be an officer. Soon after he is moved to a different unit because the Army has a policy to distance such promotions from their organic units.

I’ve literally never seen this happen in the tech world

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

#45

Post by sorokod »

whiplash451 wrote: post #44
sorokod wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

companies are wary of bringing in an EM for a team (prefer to promote within the ranks, in my experience) In Band of Brothers TV series there is a plot line where an NCO is promoted to be an officer. Soon after he is moved to a different unit because the Army has a policy to distance such promotions from their organic units.

I’ve literally never seen this happen in the tech world

Neither have I but it is an interesting point to consider - to what extent is the EMs thinking biased by their previous experience of the team as an engineer.

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

#46

Post by fabianholzer »

asQuirreL wrote: post #39
t8sr wrote: post #16

I have been a manager four times, twice at FAANGs. I disagree with a lot that the author says: - The ladder isn’t really taller. Most EMs end up clustered at the equivalent of L6/staff engineer. Promotions to senior manager and beyond are situational and rare. Meanwhile, my peers on the engineering ladder get promoted when ready, without needing to wait for the stars to align. (I made it to senior manager, but I was…

A couple of other points that struck me as different from my experience, and maybe more a function of where this person is working rather than some fundamental difference between the roles: The idea that your word is taken more seriously as an EM rather than an IC when it comes to (for example) needing to test more. I have to admit that this may have been one of the reasons I felt the need to switch to a management r…

> The fact that you have to stack rank and pick an under-performer every half is just broken.

I've sworn to myself, that the moment that this idiotic idea get introduced in the "performance management" process at the place I work, will be the day that I'll start to send out resumes. Even if it were handled lottery style ("the short straw") I would not cut slack to either manager or company for such an indignity.

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

#47

Post by geraldwhen »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #26
saiya-jin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 grow…

Yeah. There’s no way I’m going to hit 1.6M annually when my first job was $80k/year.

I’d have to live somewhere with hyper inflation to do it on paper, but that’s just being dishonest with the numbers.

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

#48

Post by Prcmaker »

ssss11 wrote: post #32
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.

That’s a shame, he can always try changing it up again. I’m the opposite - engineer to manager, didn’t like people management side of it, changed to project management and loving it. I do miss technical work though.

I really hope they do, but I'd hate to lose him as a colleague. Unfortunately it's likely to be one or the other.

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

#49

Post by Xenoamorphous »

thoughtspile wrote: post #28
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

Something I’ve noticed in the company I work for is that team leads which still write code is that they will take for themselves the high visibility projects.
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