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Don't become an engineering manager

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Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#161

Post by _blk »

crims0n wrote: post #148
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…

Everybody wants a manager that has engineering experience, but nobody wants to be that manager.

I'm a freelance interim EM and I do it for the same reason the article explains: I genuinely enjoy it.

I love engineers and I love tech. I still code daily but I'm not the guy that delivers at the pace of some of the amazing engineers that I had the privilege to work with. I love putting others ahead of myself wherever I can and it's never cost me anything, so I'm not afraid to do it again. I love telling the engineers how what they do actually matters because they're too focused on the work to sometimes see why changing goals doesn't mean their work and efforts were wasted and I also love shielding them from the corporate mess upstairs (that I somewhat masochistically don't even dread being part of)...

So, yeah, I really love my job and if one of my guys (or gals) wants that too, the more of a joy it is to me to mentor them into that process.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#163

Post by rm30 »

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 really a trap cannot reveal the real work, everything it's related to the size of company, type of organization and sector.

A "top" position in a small company could be a mid one in a big tech but with a narrow field compared to the small one when sometimes you need to refill the coffee machine. At same time the flexibility of small one helps to solve problems of big ones.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#164

Post by fogzen »

andy_ppp wrote: post #157

I genuinely think everything would work far better without management, from what I’ve seen most managers make organisations need more managers…

Yeah. There's always such a lack of realpolitik in these discussions. They turn into endless bike shedding about what a manager is supposed to do according to some ideology of management, rather than the reality of the decisions managers are actually in control of and their actual tangible outputs.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#165

Post by kubb »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #158
kubb wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He doesn't get much say about what thing gets done. He's just kind of there.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#166

Post by kubb »

etothet wrote: post #156
kubb wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had worse!

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#168

Post by elevatortrim »

Swizec wrote: post #136
democracy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around.

> Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around. Maybe. That's why you need to put your scope on the resume :) I had a CTO title 15 years ago. The complexity of what we were building was a joke compared to what I own now as a lowly "tech lead manager". And in fact back then I wouldn't even be able to comprehend how complex things can get.

That may be your anecdote but CTO at a 30-50 person scale up would typically have much more management/accounting/signature/high-stake conversation/... experience than a senior developer at google.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#169

Post by ashutoshstark »

True 100 %

A lot of strong engineers move into EM roles expecting deeper technical impact, but end up spending most of their time on coordination, hiring, performance reviews, and cross-team alignment. That’s valuable work — just very different from building systems. More orgs should invest in strong IC tracks (Staff/Principal) so people can lead technically without managing people. Not everyone who’s good at engineering wants to optimize calendars and org charts.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#170

Post by keeda »

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.

Here's how I see it: Ideally a manager / reportee relationship is a symbiotic relationship. A manager becomes more successful by making their reportees more successful, and both roles grow together. And repeating this across teams, the whole company grows as well.

There's a lot of nuance but here's a simplistic overview: a manager tries to land a big project for their team, which lets the team stretch their abilities and grow, which over multiple successful deliveries results in promotions / raises for everyone involved AND the cachet to ask for bigger projects (and more headcount!)

The manager's role is the hustling and jockeying in landing the project, ensuring their team is executing and getting any mentorship needed (directly or indirectly) and protecting them from disruptions ("shit umbrella") -- which includes managing everything around the team including stakeholders and dependencies and escalations -- and then making the case for promotions / raises / PIPs based on their performance.

I've never been a manager, but having been involved in all these aspects, I can tell you none of this is easy. All of these can get very contentious, even in the best-run of companies; in the rest, a lot of pathologies spring up (like politics and empire-building) that cause even more nastiness.

So it may seem like they're taking credit for your work, but that's literally part of the arrangement, and it's only unfair if you're not seeing any upside. If you feel that way, this is 100% something you should bring up (very tactfully!) in a 1:1 or (even more tactfully!!!) a skip-level.

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