Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A career-ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 211 posts

Re: A career-ending mistake

#21

Post by hobs »

fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

As a person whose done it all, independent stuff, senior ic stuff, management stuff, the main thing that makes management terrible is simply that most companies have no support for middle managers.

You are a good IC? Sure let's promote you to management, but in 95% of cases, we're not even going to pair you with anyone or have a senior manager help you understand, build and grow - we're going to throw you in the deep end and have you sink or swim.

This often ends up with stressed out people used to doing well now approaching an entirely new problem with slow feedback loops and entirely different protocols than before, and the amount of burned out shitty middle managers I see is off the charts.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#22

Post by creer »

tschellenbach wrote: post #3

It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on. At Stream a lead is 80% technical, a director roughly 50% sometimes more. And even VPs and up are still somewhat technical. I think the idea of management without technical excellence track is just misguided. Small teams, technical excellence,…

> management without technical excellence track is just misguided

It's different technical excellence.

What's not given proper weight is that it's different technical excellence. Roles seen as "more management" demand system-level understanding and technical knowledge. And a technical knowledge that includes what many see as not technical such as awareness of people or finance dynamics. They can, should be seen as technical aspects. A more senior, "more management" role has different levers to use to make projects come through. And these are different higher level projects. A more senior role is also free to juggle reports who specialize in this or that. If you hate or you are bad at task scheduling, have someone do that for you. If you are not great at writing speeches, etc, etc.

Among the ways you can prepare for that: (1) find at least one mentor (someone at least two steps more senior who can guide you on what to think about and on how things work. If the people two steps up in your company are bros... your mentors don't have to be in your same company.) (2) Consider what's missing to your skillset - and that's not planning software but maybe it is.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#23

Post by coldcode »

I never intended to have a career as a programmer. I planned to work for two years, save a bit of money, and get a PhD in Chemistry. Forty years later I retired as a programmer. Every step was something new, I had 15 different employers (plus myself for 9 years starting two little companies). There was never a plan beyond finding a better/different/less irritating job, and constantly improving what I could do. I never gave any thought to what I wanted to end my career on. It actually ended entirely as my decision, I still was at the top of my ability, and my employer was happy to pay me, but I was tired of working.

While planning might work for some people, having a more short term view can work for others. The only thing I could ever control was what I was able to do, and when I was ready to move on. There are many optimizations available to succeed in life; not all are obvious.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#24

Post by mjr00 »

fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

> A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too.

IMO - managers are terrible at the same rate as ICs. But the damage a terrible IC can do is limited in most companies because there's guardrails like automated testing, pull requests, no access to the production database, etc. At worst they end up being a big timesuck for other team members until they get let go.

A terrible manager will sink a project or team single-handedly, though.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#25

Post by syndicatedjelly »

hcrean wrote: post #6

This article assumes a lot more self-determinism than is available in practice to most people. Beyond that many of us have been running on fumes for years, I can't lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family, so I can up-skill for a new variation on the same career with ultimately the same bull.

What kind of advice would have been better?

Re: A career-ending mistake

#27

Post by snozolli »

Sytten wrote: post #15

Maybe I am a pessimist but I really don't believe you can plan for 20y in the future especially in the tech sector. People fail to realize that we live in a world that changes not in a linear fashion but rather exponential. For all we know in 10y we will only need 1/5 of the coders we have and IC won't be viable, who knows.

IMO, there's no such thing as a career in tech, outside of maybe FAANGs (or whatever they're called now). It's just a series of jobs until accumulated wealth, ageism, or disability ends it.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#28

Post by snozolli »

foogazi wrote: post #18
hcrean wrote: post #6

This article assumes a lot more self-determinism than is available in practice to most people. Beyond that many of us have been running on fumes for years, I can't lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family, so I can up-skill for a new variation on the same career with ultimately the same bull.

What if it’s an article for self-determined people ? Or meant to plant a seed of thought in someone’s mind ? > I can’t lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family I hope you find the time to make it work for you. And , I don’t want to assume but so have found “I can’t” attitudes don’t work for effecting change in life. Maybe work on that aspect of your personality.

"Here, drink this Flavor Aid. If you don't like it, it's a personality defect in you."

Re: A career-ending mistake

#29

Post by andrewaylett »

fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

We train people in their technical role, but we (generally) don't train people to manage -- and years of poor experience don't count.

I'm not a manager, and I don't want to be. But I'm quite happy with the manager training that my employer puts people through before giving them direct reports.

One should always be negotiating expectations, though, even when one considers management to have our best interests in mind. And also remember that your manager is learning how to manage from you. You get to shape their experience of being a manager, and you get (to an extent) to guide them in how they grow as a manager.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#30

Post by kstrauser »

fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

I think that’s largely due to the weird notion that engineers will eventually “upgrade” to management, as though one is the advanced version of the other.

There are whole degree programs dedicated to managing and organizing people, but we’re like, “nah, Joe’s a good programmer so we should talk him into stopping that so he can supervise people instead”.

Fact is, there’s little relation between the two. A person may happen to be good at both, but expertise in one does not imply adequacy in the other.

Post reply on HN