I recently naturally grew into a management role due to seniority and churn. I cannot wait to get back to becoming an IC again. All these meeting are tiring and unrewarding. Growing team members is pretty rewarding, but I don't have to be a manager for that.
Disagree with OP on giving up control of the code base. You are still responsible for the quality the team delivers and in many companies your seniority will mean you'll still code review. You just no longer have the time to actively steer. Not a nice position IMO
What you give up by moving into engineering management
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Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#12I can resonate with this a lot as I am a newly minted Staff Engineer. You really need to block the times to focus, so you hopefully still get to solve some interesting things. Most of my time is spent on setting the direction, cross team collaboration, managing different stakeholders in the higher, backlog refinements and pre-refinements. I tend to pick up small 1 point story tickets which are not on the critical pat…
Loved your phrasing here around “ground reality”. I do the same partly because I miss coding but mostly because I don’t want the code base to get away from me.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#13I quit managing because I couldn't stomach the language managers are required to speak. The cliches, the obfuscation, the outright lying when relaying the c__p coming from above, the list goes on.
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Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#14surprisingly I didn’t see anything in here about managerial responsibilities of big decisions involving company $$. budgeting, vendor & contract negotiation, build vs buy, etc. I found this to be one of the starkest differences and all a bit unnerving when I made the transition from staff IC to manager. will say that having a good boss and mentor helped a lot with the feelings of imposter syndrome.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#15"What you give up when moving into engineering management" = your soul.
That’s a little dramatic. As a manager you deal with people. As an IC you also deal with people but to a smaller degree. If you can handle dealing with people you stand to make more money. It’s a job.
Luckily management is not the requirement for more money nowadays.
Most Staff/Principle and even Senior engineers are on equal footing (and often more) with managers in terms of salary.
At least in my country.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#16I quit managing because I couldn't stomach the language managers are required to speak. The cliches, the obfuscation, the outright lying when relaying the c__p coming from above, the list goes on.
This was one of the hardest things for me as a manager too. You have to own the company’s message to your reports (and others) even if you disagree with it or don’t know how it came to be.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#17I quit managing because I couldn't stomach the language managers are required to speak. The cliches, the obfuscation, the outright lying when relaying the c__p coming from above, the list goes on.
This isn't particularly different from any leadership role, even technical ones. To some extent, you have to own decisions you had say in making. If you just whine about upper management or their decisions, you demoralize your team. So, you have to do the opposite: cheerlead for the new status quo. Depressed people aren't going to get any work done. The situation you disagree with probably has no real day to day consequences. So you have to be positive about it. I guess you could quit if you really feel strongly, but in this economy? It would have to be more than a tooling decision you didn't agree with.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#18"What you give up when moving into engineering management" = your soul.
For me, it was the exact opposite. It was a feeling of "finally, this is what I'm supposed to be doing". It takes all sorts, as they say.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#19The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind.
You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly, you'll be afraid to disagree.
Your only job as a manager is to protect and develop the team under you. You must actually like people and have a fundamentally benevolent worldview. You must be willing to say "I don't know" 10x more than as an IC. You must believe deep down in your core that ordering a human being to do something is a sign you must introspect about your failure as a manager, and commit to fixing the problem.
You must be prepared to tell your own manager to go kick rocks. Ambiguous situations are one thing, but you must never, ever knowingly do the the wrong thing. Everyone will know when you do it, and that will be the beginning of the end of your own happiness.
All other approaches will lead to you failing to deliver results, failing to retain, and a drag on the org.
The error I have seen most engineers-turn-manager make is they had a deep dissatisfaction with other terrible managers, so now its their chance to make the right decisions and do things their way.
Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management
#20I quit managing because I couldn't stomach the language managers are required to speak. The cliches, the obfuscation, the outright lying when relaying the c__p coming from above, the list goes on.
The best managers I've worked with don't do much of that stuff. They do use the cliches and obfuscation, but only upwards. They talk to the team in the team's language. As for the crap coming down from the leaders, if anything, the best quality in a manager is understanding what is crap and what's actually useful, and deflecting the crap stuff before it gets anywhere.