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Don't become an engineering manager

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Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#151

Post by jillesvangurp »

I have a few different reasons why you might think twice about this role.

- if you transition from a technical role into this, beware your technical skills need regular usage to stay relevant. Not a show stopper for this role and I've had good non technical managers.

- Be ready for a lot of relatively short lived jobs as a CTO or VP Engineering. Many startups create engineering manager type roles around the time they start scaling struggling a bit. Maybe the founder CTO wasn't so good at management or whatever. You'll inherit a mess. And they might not like you after all. I've had a few friends facing a lot of churn in this role. Just one company after another, do ungrateful work, and then move on to the next. It can pay well but it's not stable work. And quite stressful. Some people get lucky of course.

- Make sure that this is really what you want to do the rest of your career and see the above two points.

If you find the right employer, then this can be a great role of course. I've had a few excellent engineering managers (some of them retired now) in my career. But I have heard of people burning out or getting a rough deal, repeatedly trying to do VP Engineering roles in messy startups/scaleups as well. I know a few more of those.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#152

Post by Aurornis »

democracy wrote: post #105
Aurornis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that it really depends on the organisation. This is entirely it. Titles should be consistently ordered within an organization, but they are not portable from one organization to another. This is a lesson I’ve had to explain over and over to people at the beginning of their careers. I’ve been asked for advice about which offer to take from people thinking about leaving 10s of thousands of dollars on the table becaus…

>> I’ve interviewed so many “Prinicpal Staff Engineers” or even “CTO” people who would barely qualify as senior engineers at an average company Failed to design Quantum Lattice Bloom Cascade algorithm in 5 minutes?

More like: Couldn't cite anything they accomplished and had no real responsibilities.

For a good interviewer these people are obvious even without any coding tests.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#153

Post by drdec »

kubb wrote: post #150
etothet wrote: post #125

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…

On the contrary, my manager doesn't do much outside of the perf evaluation season, and takes home a higher salary than me. He also gets to take credit for pretty much everything that his team does, despite not contributing to it much. Sounds like a fairly easy job most of the time.

Until you are dealing with a difficult employee or struggling with whether to put someone on a PIP or being asked to deliver things you don't have direct control over or dealing with penny-pinching edicts from above etc. etc.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#154

Post by ljm »

kubb wrote: post #150
etothet wrote: post #125

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…

On the contrary, my manager doesn't do much outside of the perf evaluation season, and takes home a higher salary than me. He also gets to take credit for pretty much everything that his team does, despite not contributing to it much. Sounds like a fairly easy job most of the time.

On the front of it he's not a very good manager for the team then.

Once you get to leadership you're giving credit where it's due and soaking up the loss.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#156

Post by etothet »

kubb wrote: post #150
etothet wrote: post #125

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…

On the contrary, my manager doesn't do much outside of the perf evaluation season, and takes home a higher salary than me. He also gets to take credit for pretty much everything that his team does, despite not contributing to it much. Sounds like a fairly easy job most of the time.

Sorry to hear that. From that description this person does not sound like a good manager.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#158

Post by SkyPuncher »

kubb wrote: post #150
etothet wrote: post #125

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…

On the contrary, my manager doesn't do much outside of the perf evaluation season, and takes home a higher salary than me. He also gets to take credit for pretty much everything that his team does, despite not contributing to it much. Sounds like a fairly easy job most of the time.

I've jumped back and forth between IC and Management. The roles are measured on completely different things. Most of IC is about through put. Most of management is about building/doing the right thing (aka making money).

Sometimes, it can look like management is doing very little because you only see the tail end of their outputs to the team.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#159

Post by shmerl »

halper wrote: post #4

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…

Titles are arbitrary (as in people with different titles can do similar work), but compensation is tied to a title.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#160

Post by JaumeGreen »

kubb wrote: post #150
etothet wrote: post #125

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…

On the contrary, my manager doesn't do much outside of the perf evaluation season, and takes home a higher salary than me. He also gets to take credit for pretty much everything that his team does, despite not contributing to it much. Sounds like a fairly easy job most of the time.

Engineering Manager can be a social role with some tech aspects.

You attend meetings, negotiate deadlines, evaluate people, navigate project minefields, take decisions or force people to take them,... and the technical aspects are quite minimised.

Depending on the company this is not an upgrade, it's a lateral move. I have people under me who earn more than me, and I agree with that.

The job it's not easy, it's different. Spending 5 hours on meetings it's easy, but exhausting. Giving credit to your people but taking the blame (which is what should be done) it's easy, but demoralising. Not having a peer group of people with whom easily socialise makes the job feels lonely, when you talk with other managers it's 99% work related, and you can't make your people like you as a person.

Most days I'd love to have a clear objective.

One of the worst is the strange feeling that you have because you've studied for a long time some skills, and worked using them, and now those are hardly used. You need to use a set of skills that you haven't trained for, and haven't used as much (depending on your personality/skillset, of course).

Being a manager is not for everyone.

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