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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

#71

Post by badpun »

geraldwhen wrote: post #47
mytailorisrich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

20x increase happened to me as well. My first full-time coding job paid around 2.5k PLN after taxes, while my highest paying job so far paid around 50k PLN after taxes. That was over the span of a bit over 15 years, with low inflation over entire timespan.

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

#72

Post by dchftcs »

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. 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.

This sounds like an anecdote tainted with confirmation and survivorship bias. Most SWEs get stuck at senior (especially at Google), getting clustered at L6 is already a privilege relatively speaking. Promotions to L6 are not super rare but less than a majority get them. Promotion to a L7+ is a struggle, if you say most of your peers get there naturally maybe you discounted those who left because they can't get promoted, or you just didn't happen to make many friends with people below your job level ? Or, as a senior manager, are you really sure you see that more than half of the team you manage reach L6+ and a good number to L7 just by waiting?

Now I do agree that the EM path doesn't open as many doors as some old school people think (especially since high level ICs tend to lead in some way too), but at least promotion opportunities doesn't seem to be thinner for EM than IC.

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

#73

Post by marcinzm »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #20
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…

Promotions on the engineering ladder " when ready without needing to wait for the star to align " is because very often those promotions only entail better title and pay. Periodic promotions keep people happy. But any promotions that entail a real step up in responsibility requires team/company growth for those positions to open up.

So you get paid more and have better career options without more stress... and you see that as a bad thing?

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

#74

Post by srirangr »

> So, if you're tired of keeping up with the latest hot thing in tech, a management role can provide a well-deserved relief. Do keep an eye on what's happening on the tech side of things, but there's no urgency, and no need to get real deep.

This is such a poor advice. In any company that has a dozens customers, your team is likely to face technical problems. When your team faces a problem and you are unable to solve it, your team will notice that and they will stop looking up to you. In fact, any engineer who solves the problem will be the hero everyone admires. The approach mentioned by the author makes you a good "boss", but not necessarily a good "manager" or "supervisor" or "leader".

> Life of an engineer is relatively relaxed. If you don't have anything urgent, you can go lay on the grass for half a day, thinking about the future of your project or something. You can miss a few meetings on short notice, no questions asked.

In which company does this happen, I wonder!

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

#75

Post by marcinzm »

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 :)

In a large tech company not really. The Product Manager or Staff engineers build things using other engineers. The Engineering Manager uses their blood and sweat to lubricate the corporate cogs to make that process a bit more efficient.

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

#76

Post by LtWorf »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #34

I’m a problem solver and big picture thinker. I like working out the solution and helping solve the obstacles. The role that has always fit the best is “architect”, but it seems to be going away as a title. No matter, the need for the work remains. But I’ve done a few of the other roles over the years. Team Lead/manager, Scrum Master, Product Manager (without the title). Here’s my take. A good manager requires a very…

In my experience most "big picture thinkers" are actually just saying things with no idea of what they mean, what the consequences are, how to actually do them, and why their idea is bad.

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

#77

Post by marcinzm »

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…

> If you remain 'senior software engineer' your salary will be constrained by the market range for that position.

The salary range is somewhere from $100k to $600k in the US depending on the company. So if you hit the cap at your current company just move to one that pays more. If you've hit that limit at a top tier company then you can start moving to higher IC roles such as Staff.

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

#78

Post by t8sr »

dchftcs wrote: post #72
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. 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. This sounds like an anecdote tainted with confirmation and survivorship bias. Most SWEs get stuck at senior (especially at Google), get…

The expectation that everyone should reach these career levels is easily dispelled by basic math. L6 and EM can by definition exist at a ratio of, at best, 1:6 to the people at more junior levels. Most engineers might be “stuck” at L5, but most potential EMs are stuck before they even become EMs, due to the same math.

But of the people at L6 on either ladder, who are ready to work at the next level, opportunities are definitely easier to find for ICs, than managers. An L7 IC, after all, doesn’t have to come with a team of 30-50.

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

#79

Post by Jnr »

Somehow I managed to read the title as "From engine to engineer".

I moved from engineer to manager some years ago hoping I would get access to new tools to be able to push forward some necessary innovations, but it seems like I was constrained even more. Currently moving back to engineering and thinking that I should probably start my own thing soon.

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

#80

Post by deutschepost »

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.

Also there is a comment by Major Winters that this is a stupid rule, because Lipton is one of the best and most respected platoon leads in the company.
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