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Don't become an engineering manager

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Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#181

Post by siva7 »

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 meaningless. Many tech ICs at top companies have more influence and responsibility as well as pay than managers at low tier companies.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#182

Post by laalshaitaan »

The IC vs EM debate always skips the third option: neither. Start something. You end up writing code, managing people, doing sales, and shipping product in the same week. Way harder, but you never have to wonder if the ladder is worth climbing because there is no ladder

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#183

Post by Illniyar »

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…

Engineering titles at least have a few things that are nearly universally shared (such as actually needing to code, expecting to mentor).

Product manager titles can have completely disjoint scopes of work between organizations - in one org they might be what was once systems designer role - getting requirements and writing specs, in another they might basically be doing UI or UX (even creating pages in figma), in others they are basically project managers.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#184

Post by lazyasciiart »

elevatortrim wrote: post #168
Swizec wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But that's nothing to do with the comparison he made, which was "at 3-person startup"

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#185

Post by Illniyar »

alephnerd wrote: post #137
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…

This. EM is a terminal position that does not own the product roadmap (Product Management) nor the underlying implementation (Staff/Principal Engineers). They primarily own delivery and execution because orgs can't be bothered to hire program managers anymore. If you are great at managing upwards and ensuring delivery by hook or by crook, you will make a great EM. But the next jump after EM is extremely difficult bec…

Are you saying principal engineers and tech minded PMs make lateral moves into director level manager without going through being entry level EMs first?

I've never heard of something like that. Usually the requirement for being director level manager of engineers is to at least have managed people as an EM for several years before.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#186

Post by mrbonner »

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…

I am also not surprised that many P.E. have become Political Engineer as opposed to Principal Engineer.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#187

Post by jimnotgym »

mkehrt wrote: post #144
jimnotgym wrote: post #43

> 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…

> The manager at my structural engineers can still calculate a beam size, he is better at it than his staff. 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.

And that confuses me. There are so many posts on hn complaining about managers and the bs they bring, 1:1s you didn't ask for etc.

What does a manager even do in this world where they are non technical? I have never managed a large sw team tbf, but in smaller teams I did manage I had to do project management stuff. In my normal profession I manage a large team, but one of my big roles is being there to advise technically and make the big decisions. I can see why people find these EM jobs boring, you must have to invent things to do!

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#188

Post by deet »

It is a precarious time to look backwards on the definition of the roles of an IC or an engineering manager and make any extrapolations to what those will look like in the future.

In my own team, I have seen ICs increasingly function like engineering managers, and even suffer some of the pitfalls of the role switch, as they change from reasoning about creating code to delegating to teams of software agents.

Increasingly, ICs are needing to understand the product roadmap more deeply, figure out how to spec a problem and constraints on a solution in the right way to get their subordinates to produce reasonable output, and be the communication bridge between other jobs functions and the entities actually producing the code.

I've also heard concerns of skill atrophy, as these team members spend less brain energy on language syntax, low level logic, etc, and more on interpreting abstract strategies to solving a problem and pattern matching those strategies against their software engineering wisdom.

If anything, ICs should consider that the skills that will make them successful managing agents might be the ones that have made first-level engineering managers successful: the ability to coordinate with other job functions, map implementation strategies to product and organization needs, and deliberately and carefully delegate and coordinate work of others writing the actual code.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#189

Post by zelphirkalt »

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.

Well, what do you even mean by "put your scope on the resume"? Do you mean literally "Scope: blabla" for each occupation? Or do you mean something more implicit?

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#190

Post by jimnotgym »

roncesvalles wrote: post #128
jimnotgym wrote: post #43

> 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…

It's because the software EM function in tech companies doesn't have parallels to managers in other professions. The technical decisions are made by the high-level SWEs. The product decision and customer-facing work is done by the PMs. The EM role only exists to hire, evaluate, promote, and fire SWEs. It's very light on the "engineering" and very heavy on the "manager". It's almost an HR-type role. In my career, all…

That is a great description, thanks.

The question really is why does American tech organise itself this way, a completely different way to other professions?

> The EM role only exists to hire, evaluate, promote, and fire SWEs

I can see why some people would find that unfulfilling. I work in one of those other professions and if I did just the hr bit I would be bored out of my mind! Do SWEs value the input of their EM? Does it really add value, or a bunch of busy work?

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