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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

#51

Post by thoughtspile »

t8sr wrote: post #41
thoughtspile wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good point on the control over your promotions, it's something I experienced when moving into an EM role. Banging my head until hitting an actual growth team.

I come from Russia, we're not exactly known for great people management, and I'd say management up to department head is expected to handle the tech part as well even in larger companies such as Yandex / VK. This fits your definition of normal companies perfectly.

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

#52

Post by csydas »

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 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 thjnk this has to do with where you’re testing your word as the power of a statement from anyone in an org from my experience has entirely to do with how much money is missed potentially by listening to someone’s opinion.

im quite far up the management chain in past orgs and while i could make calls like “no we aren’t hotfixing in a new feature the client wants in 2 days since it will never work well and that’s not enough time to properly smoke test this very involved feature.”

the rnd team loved this statement because they understood it and agreed with it and saw i took their concerns seriously.

sales management was pissed understandably as the client abandoned the negotiation because we didn’t meet their demands, no matter how right i thjnk we were to deny this request. but the argument got pretty far in the company despite the fact that everyone agreed it would be a disaster to do this.

it’s not really about power and position i guess, it’s how convincing you can be this is profitable for most companies. ego and power tripping are of course part of it but the ultimate decision is how well you can paint the financial prospects of it.

a similar request in the future was shit down faster as i asked the qa test to show on some mock code how many considerations we needed and the plain time for such a feature to be properly implemented — the financial impact was dire if we raced it out and that stopped the conversations very fast.

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

#53

Post by thoughtspile »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #49
thoughtspile wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I even think this is sometimes in good faith, as in "this is some serious shot, better handle it myself to avoid failure".

My favorite pattern is what I call "code sheriff" lead, who does all code reviews himself to prevent bad code from reaching trunk. Then proceed to complain how you can't go on a vacation because all processes stop.

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

#54

Post by askonomm »

namdnay wrote: post #42
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 :)

I already have daydreams about doing carpeting, as that would be something I'd actually do with my bare hands, so being a manager is 1 level even further removed from doing something with your hands. Manager building things is like saying politicians build countries. Technically not wrong, but not the kind of building I'm interested in doing.

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

#55

Post by ahartmetz »

yodsanklai wrote: post #36
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…

> The ladder isn’t really taller. In my company, I think it's roughly 2-3% at L7 or more. It takes really special skills to reach that level, not just years of experience. I don't know how it compares to EM though, but it's a tall ladder! > those of us happy to go back to IC roles have no trouble finding work My concern as an IC is ageism. I wish that I can say that when I'm 50+. I feel EMs are a little more immune t…

SWEs are generally speaking less respected (and compensated!) in Europe, but ageism is AFAICT much less prevalent. If I was in the US, it would be time for me to start worrying about it.

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

#56

Post by OJFord »

thoughtspile wrote: post #25
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.

But also make sure you're going to be happy if it doesn't work out. It's actually more likely at a larger company with established tracks IMO - hit the bullet points for next level/sideways move, say you think you've done so and that's what you want to do, be recommended for or apply internally for such thing. If you were considering leaving as an alternative plan then you presumably won't mind if that's in a different part of the org anyway.

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

#57

Post by jffhn »

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…

>IMO the best thing about being a manager is that you get to spend a lot of your time thinking about the future

In some places it's the opposite: domain-specific codebases far outlive the separate projects they are used for, and the devs are the ones thinking about what their product should be. Kind of like how Linux is a long-lived product made by devs, used in many short(er)-lived C-level projects.

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

#58

Post by yxhuvud »

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…

> 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 making processes, going behind your back and contradicting previous agreements, trying to short-circuit or subvert agreed processes etc etc for above childish reasons.

Frankly, this makes it look like you are indeed a problem that deserves to be questioned and bypassed whenever possible.

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

#59

Post by rusticpenn »

fabianholzer wrote: post #46
asQuirreL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I even asked my current employer if its there in the company. He said no. Its there under a different name. I realised why the team culture was so bad. I am sending resumes to other companies already.

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

#60

Post by quickthrower2 »

I have found EM positions (where you lead a team of 4-8 and your reports are ICs) to be way more stressful and don’t really pay much more. VPEngineering is where you get a meaningful pay increase.

In addition you need to keep up with the tech as you need to evaluate the skill level of people in your team plus they turn to you for advice.

And it is way more tiring. Keeping up with what many people are doing, at a technical level, plus all the people related stuff, bureaucracy etc. Needing to attend lots of meetings and sync up.

I agree it has a better career path for most, because technical career paths tend to either require a FAANG or maybe a ThoughtWorks or just massive IQ and effort to learn something like C++ HFT to rake it in. Or maybe be a sales engineer or growth engineer. Or founder.

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