101–110 of 120 posts
If you draw a Venn Diagram, with one circle being technical skills and the other circle being leadership skills, the intersection is engineering management. Unfortunately this is not a natural combination for most people, and it’s why there are so many bad engineering managers out there.
I've done it when necessary, though, in my own companies. But it's No Fun. I see many jobs around me and think "I don't understand why anyone would want to do that, but I'm happy that someone does", and management positions are among them.
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A manager should have a view about the business, and they must work to give their team the evidence and method of thinking to grasp why that view is correct. Only then will the team properly focus on the goal and execute effectively. This is part of developing the team. "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and e…
> If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. And yet, actual shipbuilding operations look, and have historically looked, much more like the former than the latter.
And boom! That someone is a manager.
To do otherwise ensures that if the ship gets built at all, it will sink in short order.
The 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 must be willing to say "I don't know" does not sound like any manager i ever knew
To be honest, if anyone, in any role, never says "I don't know", I begin to question their abilities.
To be frank? long term employability and short term job security. The lower levels of management are terrible because you don't actually manage much, and become just a glorified bellboy for upper management, passing messages back and forth. At the same time, due to disuse, your technical skills atrophy. So, it soon becomes a race to climb the corporate ladder or die.
> ...it soon becomes a race to climb the corporate ladder or die... Oh man, i'm at the dying stage (metaphorically). I made the mistake long ago of moving to management, and have regretted it for years. But, its somewhat weird for me in that any and all of my direct reports throughout all of my decades actually love me as a technical leader...they all really like working for me, stated that they're the most productiv…
And man, have you ever considered coding again as a side gig? maybe start your own business on the side?
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I worked for 5 years at an American company in Australia and I heard this multiple times per day from my US colleagues - my conclusion after heard it said to the most basic questions was that it’s mostly a filler phrase used to buy time while the respondent thinks up an answer.
It's a culture thing, I had a similar experience after the company I worked at was bought out by an American company. In any exchange with the US, any question asked was responded to with, "That's a great question!". It was probably just filler but definitely came across as incredibly patronising to our ears.
The 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,…
> The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. The biggest thing they give up is having to do leetcode interviews.
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Seriously, no knows anything about parenting. Properly considered, it is the most difficult and intellectually challenging task conceivable. “Here, take this tabula rasa child and, over the course of many years, with virtually no timely feedback about the impact of any of your actions, raise a fully formed rational adult capable of effectively dealing with the problem of human survival on a planet incredibly hostile…
Most children grow up to be decent human beings despite parents having no clue. I don't think you can do much for them, they do it all by themselves... just don't destroy them by being a horrible person and treat them with respect, even knowing you have all the power in the relationship.
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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.
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> the higher you get in the ladder, the more people are obsessed by "just following the process" This is definitely not universally true, and it's a red flag if you're hearing it a lot. The tricky part is understanding whether it is subtle feedback from skilled leaders (I can think of a half dozen reasons why this feedback might legitimately be given), or whether you are dealing with muppet leadership who are leaning…
> This is definitely not universally true, and it's a red flag if you're hearing it a lot. not hearing it, seeing it. people don't really have time, will to change processes. In private settings they comment and complain about the inefficiencies, but no one spend time rethinking how things are done. (this is literally what pushed me to go higher in the ladder, so i could change that attitude and environment) > This c…
Moving up the ladder means dealing with requests that may be ill informed from a ground-level perspective, your job as a manager is to reconcile those things. It's impossible to make an accurate read on the situation based on what you're posting here. On one hand, maybe your boss is incompetent and not doing his job, on the other hand maybe he's making a reasonable ask and it's you that's failing to see the big picture and how to navigate the situation. Either way, you should be getting on the same page privately. Make your case 1:1, but if you're not able to influence then you have to disagree and commit.
What doesn't help is to air your dirty laundry publicly—either within the team or anonymously in a public forum like HN. It might feel good to vent in the moment, but it doesn't help morale of the team, and ultimately it does not help improve the situation so the team can do their best work.