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Don't become an engineering manager

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Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#191

Post by jimnotgym »

alephnerd wrote: post #48
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. So why in software should an engineering manager move away from tech... Because a manager at a structural engineering company is essentially acting as the equivalent of what a Product Manager or Forward Deployed Engineer is in the tech industry, because they are expected to be a technical domain expert and own…

> it's the codification of business logic that does.

Isn't that what product/project managers and architects do though?

Other comments describe EMs as just HR mangers

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#192

Post by rvz »

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 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.

All the responses here won't admit that it is entirely made up, and designed to be built around a structured hierarchy which rule followers and obedient servents to the system to get closer to the $$$ printer.

It takes a lot of back-stabbing, office politics, credit stealing and dishonesty to get to "the top", which is what the replies won't tell you.

> I have recently interviewed for a number of roles with titles like CTO, engineering manager, tech lead etc and there is so much overlap that they seem to be one and the same. Have worked at companies on three continents, in organisations ranging from 6 people to 10k+, so have seen a few titles.

Here is a case study, would you interview at Meta today and work under someone far younger than you and has a more 'senior" role than you? You do understand that the "title" was made up and "created" for a particular position?

Heck, you could even build your own startup and give yourself that title if you wanted to. But the majority here will not and will work for companies like Meta under EMs that have no idea what they are doing.

Therefore it is all made up. With some "staff", "leads" and "principals" are making it up as they go along and coasting as the low rankers hold the fort as the ship sinks.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#193

Post by Swizec »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #189
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.

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?

> Do you mean literally "Scope: blabla" for each occupation?

No I mean

> Tell me what you did, for whom, what was the impact.

It's really that simple. Just tell me what you did at your job. What was it that you worked on. Why did it matter. Did you own a workstream (or 5), code monkey all day, own a critical service, play code janitor, ... what did you do?

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#194

Post by generic92034 »

tomgp wrote: post #176
saghm wrote: post #116

> 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…

Yes. Also there's a weird thing going on where the claims are simultaneously that these tools are super easy to use and everyone and their dog is going to be using them to create awesome software and that it's only going to get easier to do so BUT ALSO that you have to immediately start using them or you'll get left behind. Why should we start now if they're going to be more powerful and more accesible in a years tim…

It is just so that the CEO can claim they are an "AI first" company and the shareholders might believe that the company is not being eaten by AI but profits from it. Check the claims of the software vendors whose stocks have fallen by some 30% in the last few months, without any reason in the fundamentals.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#195

Post by rvz »

jghn wrote: post #99
adamwk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think companies look at your past titles when you apply for a job?

They may, but the amount of information they're getting is low. As a hiring manager I'll look at progression of titles *within a company*. This shows a track record of upward mobility. But if they go from "senior" in one company to "principal" in another, I find it meaningless.

> As a hiring manager I'll look at progression of titles within a company. This shows a track record of upward mobility.

That's quite shallow for those who are 'Member of Technical Staff' which does not have this which is why titles are meaningless for experienced candidates.

Someone can give themselves that title, all because they know the founders; thus it can be exploited.

So instead, I get the candidate to exactly explain to me what did they actually build / do and how much money did they make / save the organization and it must be in the millions to qualify or did they build side-projects that contributed to this or not.

In this era, "titles" aren't enough and you need verifiable proof of work with monetary returns in the millions and I favour those who just build things that make money without asking permission from a manager.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#196

Post by aranelsurion »

coredev_ wrote: post #117
jf22 wrote: post #71

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?

> AI is voluntary to use.

> If you can't make that decision, are you really the EM?

You'd be served well as an EM by this part of the Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Depending on your organization, odds are high that AI use is one of the things you cannot change. Perhaps not even something you're ought to change. If your team is delivering x% more, "it makes my job x% more difficult so don't do that" won't fly neither upwards nor downwards.

> If AI produces code that no one knows and is hard to maintain

I think you're making an assumption here that the main problem with AI use is necessarily quality.

OP wasn't even talking about AI producing bad code, just that it creating more code, and enabling more things to happen. More things going on at the same time, means you'd have more friction points and more things that can go wrong. Whenever those happen, the EM is pulled in.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#198

Post by dangus »

Bad advice. You want to have at least one managerial role on your resume before you turn 40/45/50 so you can get hired as you age, and being offered one is something that doesn’t happen often. It’s far easier to go back to IC than to hope someone offers you an EM role later. I say take it while the offer is there.

There’s far less age discrimination when you’re looking for management and strategy oriented roles. Those roles want experience, not the raw energy, output, and fresh skills of a younger IC.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#199

Post by ozim »

Retric wrote: post #174
elevatortrim wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you swap between 9 hats, you don’t get meaningful experience at any of those roles. Instead you become a generalist which is only really needed at tiny organizations.

Big organizations need generalists too.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#200

Post by [deleted] »

Swizec wrote: post #107
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…

> 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…

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