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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

#91

Post by mattgreenrocks »

spangry wrote: post #65
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…

I'm similar to you - jack-of-all-trades big picture problem solver - and have arrived at the same conclusion after managing for a bit over a year: stress resilience is the key skill. If you're an IC you can develop your career by learning new skills, domains etc. If you're a manager, career development becomes increasingly about personal development - maturity, perspective, emotional resilience etc. I suspect this in…

> HN will hate this, and I say this as a confirmed bachelor myself, but I wonder if parents make better managers because they are less likely to lose perspective and become stressed over things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things?

Maybe! I've had good managers who were and weren't parents. I'm a parent, but don't enjoy managing.

> Weirdly I seem to do my best managing when I've become emotionally checked out.

A perspective approximating objectivity is exactly what techniques like CBT try to teach you: seeing things as they really are, without your emotions coloring it.

> I wish I could just float around the organisation fixing problems, streamlining processes and re-jigging work systems

That exists. See the solver staff engineer archetype. I suspect it exists more at larger orgs who can support the role effectively, though. But, I think that is me as well. I enjoy being dropped on stalled projects/difficult technical tasks, unblocking it, and moving to the next thing.

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

#92

Post by dz08dl »

My background is the opposite; I'm a mediocre software engineer but have quite good people skills. I'm experienced enough to know what takes time and which parts of the system are more critical than others. I have a few senior engineers whom I really listen to carefully and to whom I give a lot of trust and empowerment. I don't make design decisions, they do and I give input. I take responsibility when we fail (and learn from it) and give the team credit when we succeed. In my humble opinion, being a manager is more about people than anything else.

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

#93

Post by roland35 »

askonomm wrote: post #54
namdnay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I assume you mean carpentry, as installing carpet seems like a rough career, especially on the knees!

But even carpentry is hard on the body. Endless sawdust in your lungs, nonstop splinters, and of course spinning blades everywhere. We are very lucky that the biggest physical risk in software development is sitting down too long.

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

#94

Post by lkjdsklf »

marcinzm wrote: post #77
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…

> 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.

The only senior (L5) engineer making 600k TC is one that has been at senior for several years and stock appreciation brought their RSU value way up.

The high end for L5 is like half that.

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

#95

Post by aphexairlines »

t8sr wrote: post #78
dchftcs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've never seen a large company with more L7+ engineers than L7+ managers. Usually it's a ratio of drastically more managers hired/promoted into those levels than engineers, and some orgs don't have any engineers in those levels at all.

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

#96

Post by flappyeagle »

There are two ways to be a manager

You can think of yourself as a people manager agnostic to the org goals

Or you can think of yourself as the captain of a team leading them to victory

It’s helpful to know what someone means before trying to understand their thoughts on management

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

#97

Post by lkjdsklf »

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.

For 20 years ago the job market for software was a lot different.

It was right after the dotcom bust and before the FANG world.

30-40k was a fairly common starting salary for a software engineer (mine first job was 44k in 2003).

20x would still mean you're on the high end of engineer pay now, but it's not totally crazy.

but yeah unlikely we see that again.

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

#98

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

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 single most transferable skill I know in this industry is Linux internals.

I'm glad it's not just me who has noticed this!

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

#99

Post by thoughtspile »

dz08dl wrote: post #92

My background is the opposite; I'm a mediocre software engineer but have quite good people skills. I'm experienced enough to know what takes time and which parts of the system are more critical than others. I have a few senior engineers whom I really listen to carefully and to whom I give a lot of trust and empowerment. I don't make design decisions, they do and I give input. I take responsibility when we fail (and l…

I think that's the optimal EM career path TBH. It's a shame many companies don't have an official middle-to- manager switch mechanism.

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

#100

Post by mlrtime »

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

Note, almost happened to me. My team's EM left, I said I would take his place even though I had no real desire to become EM. I'd rather just do it than bring in someone from the outside because our team was great.

Well, as soon as HRBP found out I would become a EM, suddenly there were 2 other areas that needed EMs much more than our team. (As we were very functional).

I made a condition that I would become EM only for our team and did not desire to lead others I didn't know.

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