141–150 of 281 posts
I cannot be alone in feeling that titles (within "tech" in particular) are almost completely arbitrary? What constitutes a "senior", "lead", "principal" and "staff" X, respectively, has so much overlap that it really depends on the organisation. I myself have been called all of those things, but have honestly not been able to tell the difference: in some cases, I have had much more responsibility as a "senior backend…
I've been a staff engineer at Google and other companies, I have been an EM and a very senior IC at big and small companies.
If you're a very good IC, you can make a lot at a small number of good companies
If you're a relatively worse manager you can make a similar amount at many other companies
So the decision tree I would use is (focusing exclusively on compensation), if you're a very good IC, go somewhere willing to pay you >1M/year. If you can't get that you should be a manager
> It’s a bad time to move away from tech It continues to amaze me that becoming a manager of anything should mean moving away from it. The manager has to move away from the detail, but why should they move from the substance of the role. A legal partner has to stay up to date as much their staff, in fact a legal partner is often the only one who can answer complex questions. When I need complex advice on my statutory…
That sounds insane to me. I want my manager to be good and managing. If they are writing code, it's a misuse of their time and skills. If they are good at writing code and bad at managing, they shouldn't be a manager.
> The pace of change in the last year has been completely crazy, and it’s not stopping. > But even if you don’t give in to the constant FOMO - it’s impossible to argue that the way we worked hasn’t changed. Almost every part of our work looks different, and will continue to evolve. My experience is anecdotal, but this seems to be overblown. I'd say that almost every part of my work looks pretty identical to how it di…
Working at big tech these days I see EMs and directors playing with AI, building tools, contributing to codebase through AI agents. Today when there's less hiring and building the org, becoming EM doesn't mean moving away from tech
> The ladder is very competitive
Just like on IC path. You think that being a great builder will move you from staff to principal role? Nope. It's about setting direction, aligning people, finding opportunities. A set of skills that's very close to what managers do.
> The pay is lower
When you compare EM against staff engineers. Is EM and staff the same level? In some companies, yes. In some companies, EM is at senior or between senior and staff. So yes, on average it will be lower than staff, but EM is not a promotion, it's a change of career path.
In any case, if someone's wondering whether they should try EM role given a chance, I still say: go for it. Going back has never been easier, a lot of companies now cuts manager roles and allows people to move back to IC, so if you have a chance to become EM and are curious about it, give it a try.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When hiring, titles are basically ignored As a hiring manager, this is completely accurate. I don't look at your title, I look at your scope . Tell me what you did, for whom, and what was the impact. That's all I care about. We all know that Senior Principal Architect Engineer at 3-person startup is somewhere around junior to mid-level at a real company. Whereas some poor schmuck at a larger company with a title li…
Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around.
If you are reading this and you are thinking you want to become an engineering manager, I urge you to think long term what you want that to look like. I've seen too often that developers who want to become managers because they think it's the next inventible step aren't prepared for the people management and HR part of that role. And, as you move up to Director and beyond, those higher often have much less to do with…
I'm a former EM who would never go back in an AI age. EMs deal with friction and from my experience more output is more friction. You have org leaders and businessy people putting their foot on the gas because AI is so productive and then programmers shipping 2-3x more code. These two forces collide and you're stuck dealing with the friction so 10x the amount of initiatives you did before. The friction is like sandpa…
As an EM I don't get this. You are the sole responsible for quality. You are the sole responsible for what tools use. AI is voluntary to use. If AI produces code that no one knows and is hard to maintain, don't use AI in that way. If you can't make that decision, are you really the EM?
Sure, but now competitors are shipping like crazy (at their EM's sanity expense?). What to do?
> AI is voluntary
Until the company mandate. And also there 10 other EMs that I am competing with on my org tree alone, and their teams are all AI-heavy. Is that really a matter of choice?
If you are reading this and you are thinking you want to become an engineering manager, I urge you to think long term what you want that to look like. I've seen too often that developers who want to become managers because they think it's the next inventible step aren't prepared for the people management and HR part of that role. And, as you move up to Director and beyond, those higher often have much less to do with…