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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

#111

Post by t8sr »

varrock wrote: post #105
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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!

Would either of you mind expanding on this? What kind of roles have you held?

I have worked on security, databases, some distributed systems, a couple of video games, AR/VR and some ML systems, mostly connected to database and data pipelines. Knowing what the kernel is likely doing underneath has been useful in all those domains. More than that, being able to set up a production environment by yourself is hugely useful.

If you know the internals, the complexity of a lot of middleware kind of collapses, too. There are a million frameworks for doing threading, for example, but they basically all boil down to clone, a futex and some atomics. Similarly, you can figure out how almost anything works with strace. It demystifies so many things that you otherwise need years of experience to debug.

As a practical matter, you can always find a job as a competent DevOps type who can code and talk to SWEs.

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

#112

Post by ajmurmann »

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…

Beyond being in the right place at the right time, the higher EM promotions are also more obviously zero-sum, since there is a clear number of roles and only one person can get a role. Dynamics for ICs at higher levels are somewhat similar but not as clear cut

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

#113

Post by ajmurmann »

mlrtime wrote: post #100
whiplash451 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

I find it bizarre that HR would be involved in this at all. I'm glad I've only been a manager at places where HR pretty much functioned as a consultant available to management.

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

#114

Post by avensec »

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…

> senior management in many companies is basically a high school clique. Behavioral problems that would get normal people fired are sometimes tolerated in VP, C-levels, even directors sometimes, and working in such environments is trying.

I didn't see any other comments on this part, and want to give a huge +1. I use to wonder how overall cultures got so misaligned with what Sr. Leadership was saying in open sessions. The amount of contradiction in what they say in large groups, and what they *do* in reality, is the smart lower layers of the org seeing right through the BS. It was eye opening to be able to see behind the curtain.

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

#115

Post by mattlondon »

yxhuvud wrote: post #58
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 questi…

This sort of viewpoint is the perfect example - the short-sighted kneejerk "I know better" response that jumps to conclusions without taking into consideration (...or frankly even being aware of) any context or rationale or background info for why things are the way they are.

People like this cause problems and headaches for everyone as they are loose canons causing havoc, confusion, and wasted effort.

Congrats - you are very likely your manager's biggest annoyance.

If you think something is wrong or inefficient or whatever, talk about it with your manager or skip-level. Don't just take matters into your own hands and subsequently screw things up for loads more people by doing stupid things like entering into/cancelling agreements/commitments with other teams/customers etc because you think your manager is a bozo.

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

#116

Post by askonomm »

al_borland wrote: post #102
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…

How much your words matter as a senior engineer depend on your management. You’re in a good situation right now, but that can change. I was in a similar situation several years back. My boss liked me and had a lot of connections. He would make sure I was in the loop on everything, make sure I had a seat at the table when decisions were being made, and seek out my opinion on what direction we should go, and told me po…

I try to stay in the small-to-medium company bracket, and in this bracket, my opinion has been decently taken into consideration. Companies that have grown large enough where endless processes start to be introduced, layers of bs jobs get added between engineers and C-levels, I've just left for smaller companies. I don't make FAANG salaries, but I'm pretty happy.

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

#117

Post by askonomm »

roland35 wrote: post #93
askonomm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Carpentry yes, my bad! Oh yeah, it's less about carpentry in particular, more about the desire to do something tangible, with hands. Something that actually gets finished at one point. But yeah, software development is a very safe job, and we're lucky to get to do this.

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

#118

Post by paulcole »

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.

What do you think the guy doing carpeting daydreams about doing? It’s not digging ditches, I’ll guarantee you that.

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

#119

Post by Fripplebubby »

sorokod wrote: post #45
whiplash451 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't this seem like a useful bias to have?

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

#120

Post by coffeefirst »

shubhamjain wrote: post #11

> Suffering from front-end fatigue? Can't keep up with the newest shiniest frameworks and tools? Management's got you covered! The "hot new" agile / kanban / scrum methodologies are 20–30 years old. The basic meeting types (demos, dailies, 1-on-1s) have been developing for centuries. > Frankly, after 4–5 years of working in a particular tech area, you can solve the vast majority of practical problems well enough. If…

Yeah, and it's horrible advice. If you're an EM or higher, you still wind up making decisions with heavy technical impact, even if it's "this pitch from a Senior Engineer on my team is smart, let's do it."

You don't have to be the best programmer, but you need to be able to have thoughtful technical conversations with the in-the-weeds engineers, and represent their work to the wider org. If your mental model diverges with the day-to-day reality, your judgment breaks down along with it, and you're going to wind up being the problem instead of being an asset to your teams.

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