Don't become an engineering manager

Expertise gains value when it can’t be subdivided. A doctor needs to know a who lot of related skills to be a heart surgeon, it doesn’t work to split it into two less demanding roles. However two generalists can sub divide the workload of a generalist with a lot more experience because experienced generalists aren’t particularly skilled at anything.

The last 3 months of using Claude Code has convinced me that in order to have a job in software very soon you will have to a both a coder and an engineering manager.

It takes both of those skills to effectively manager AI, and managing AI teams is all it will be about within 2 years. Problem is if you dont understand coding, its hard to see the traps AI falls into. They are both amazingly smart, and incredibly dumb at the same time. Just like people!

"At other startups" is the important bit here. I assume 'startup' means less than 100 people, at which point it switches to 'scaleup', but whatever definition you use the question should really be 'When does an EM actually start being useful?'

Startups don't really need EMs because they don't really need managers at all. There is a strong expectation in a startup that the staff there are capable of managing themselves, plus there are usually fewer business functions that developers need to work with. Where an EM is useful is in a larger business that has many competing demands of engineering teams: features, roadmaps, BAU, KTLO, tech debt, compliance, etc ... it's a long list. There's a necessity for someone to manage that, and support the teams to be doing the right work at the right time, without letting standards slide, and to support the team to navigate and negotiate the political maze of multiple stakeholders wanting their thing to be priority #1.

I've been an EM for a few years and I would not recommend someone takes an EM role in any company that has less than 70-100 staff (assuming about 1/3 is engineering). Once you get to that scale I think the role starts getting interesting, and valued, but if the company is smaller it should be managing those processes fairly easily already. If it isn't then that's a signal there's problems with the way the business works that an EM probably can't solve because they're rooted in the business's leadership culture.

But big companies would definitely love to have to pay a single salary for someone who does 401k and when this job is done administrates databases then in between reviews tweets searching for mentions of the company. Exaggerated example but I hope clear.

That already shows up with everything getting „Ops” obviously DevOps but I already have seen DataOps, SalesOps and MarketingOps.

Both are great career choices but lately being an EM means spending over 6 hours a day in meetings and having very little agency over your time. Your whole job is basically being in meetings and being a human router for information between people.

This changed when BigTech redefined the roles of an EM. Back in the days, the EM would naturally be the best engineer in the team that wanted to stay technical and grow the team. Since 2010, Bigtech has decided that EM should especially NOT be technical. They should do "People things" only. I think that was a turn for the worse in our industry,

As an IC I have way more control over my time. I can decide when I work.

That being said it depends what I want to optimize for. I think if your goal is to climb up the ladder you will do that more easily as a driven EM than a driven IC.

As an EM if you are driven and put the hours in and play the game well, you could get promoted to Director/Sr. Director. The skills here are not especially difficult. Getting promoted is all about being at the right time at the right place and playing the right game. If you are an EM in a growing company, you will almost certainly grow with the compant and get more scope.

As an engineer it feels way more difficult to get promoted past Staff. After Staff you are competing with people that are absolutely cracked coders and dedicated 12+ hours a day working. Most of them have a talent level that is almost unmatchable.

But really, if you want to manage your time, don't become an EM.