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From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

humansinsystems.com

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Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#11

Post by esseph »

tekla wrote: post #9
1024core wrote: post #7

It is very sad to see that in many companies, great engineers are forced to take on management roles to keep progressing in their careers. It seems to be the only path forward in many big companies.

It's so sad to see great engineers limit themselves and refuse to take on large projects because they think that they can't do better.

lol

Let experts at something be fucking experts. The moment good engineers take their hands off the keyboard, their skills start to quickly drift and degrade. Their experience in many things they were previously an expert on starts to go out of date. The number of roles they can apply to in the future is greatly reduced.

"Up or out" is a goddamn cancer

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#13

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

analog31 wrote: post #5
jackblemming wrote: post #4

I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.

It reminds me of dictatorships referring to their officials as "revolutionaries."

Us Germans had a famous leader a while ago. It’s much less popular to call yourself a leader there c

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#14

Post by marcinzm »

tekla wrote: post #9
1024core wrote: post #7

It is very sad to see that in many companies, great engineers are forced to take on management roles to keep progressing in their careers. It seems to be the only path forward in many big companies.

It's so sad to see great engineers limit themselves and refuse to take on large projects because they think that they can't do better.

That’s called Staff engineer and not Manager.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#15

Post by bigfatkitten »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #8
jackblemming wrote: post #4

I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.

First a caveat - I’m not a manager. I am at the top of the tech tree in a large org, which carries with it “leadership responsibilities”. I’ve also worn many hats over the years in various employment, so I know a thing or two about management. I think you are generally wrong. Yes, ‘manager’ carries with it a certain amount of administrative and organisational responsibilities, not to mention the important ‘soft skill…

> The good managers I work with (and in my role I work with many) are definitely leaders in the traditional sense.

Good managers are leaders, but this is far from universal.

Most orgs have no shortage of managers who used be good individual contributors, and who were pushed into the management track due to seniority when the previous manager left, or who wanted the pay bump, but have no real leadership ability and have no business being there.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#16

Post by gonzo41 »

denkmoon wrote: post #6
jackblemming wrote: post #4

I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.

Leading us right over the parapet into the machine gun fire.

More like directing us over the parapet.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#17

Post by closeparen »

jackblemming wrote: post #4

I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.

When I was in high school, there was some quasi-curricular programming around "leadership" which I thought might teach me something about being in charge of a group of people or responsible for a collective outcome. Unfortunately it turned out to be a weird mishmash of personal virtue and volunteerism/activism. What I learned about delivering an outcome with a team, I learned stage-managing musicals.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#18

Post by crystal_revenge »

I find "engineer to manager" guides are fundamentally not possible to write. I've been a manager of a team 3-4 times now and each experience was entirely different from the previous.

But this post makes the biggest mistake, something I have struggled with in every management role: focusing on managing down.

Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril.

Managing up is, in practice, 100% of a manager's job. I've been on teams where this was so easy I didn't even realize it was something I had to do. Leadership liked me, I could do whatever I wanted and they were happy. I've been at places where this was an impossible task (and I saw multiple other managers/leadership hires get let go very fast if they didn't "fit in", despite being hired to "shake things up"). I've been at places where I started on the ground floor, management loved me, loved my work, my team consistently outperformed... but never in a billion years were going to allow me "into the fold" so to speak.

I used to admire strong technical managers that had a great vision for how to solve problems, but I also have admiration for great teaching professors. In practice the best managers care primarily about politics and growing their personal stake in the organization. I've found that the more clueless they are the better (just don't point that out).

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#19

Post by libraryofbabel »

1024core wrote: post #7

It is very sad to see that in many companies, great engineers are forced to take on management roles to keep progressing in their careers. It seems to be the only path forward in many big companies.

Huh? The staff+ IC track is well established at many large companies. There are several good books about it: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-staff-engineers/978...

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#20

Post by gerdesj »

jackblemming wrote: post #4

I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.

I personally find that calling out something works best by being respectful. I specifically avoid starting off with: "I find it funny that ...".

You seem to have an axe to grind and that is fine. Someone might have wronged you in some way but you don't really say how or why.

If you need to vent, then feel free - we are all friends here, within reason (but don't say names - it's best that way).

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