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Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

charity.wtf

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Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#111

Post by RugnirViking »

wiz21c wrote: post #87

Management is about having authority. That is, you're a vector: you must defend the company's values (which you may disagree with) in front of your team (which may disagree with them too). So you'd better be very aligned on those values to be happy in the job. (for example, when I was a manager, my manager's goal was to "show the rest of the company we can make websites much faster", which meant putting pressure on e…

That sounds like a terrible attitude. Management is about providing value to the company, and usually the best way to do that is by shielding your team from the worst of what's coming down by being an advocate for your team and what they do, and communicating the real situation as well as possible. You work with adults, if they know what they are doing and why they will prioritize well

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#112

Post by TylerE »

andirk wrote: post #88
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #31

I am sick and tired of pressure to get into management once you get older and lack of other opportunities to be rewarded. If I can do job of 5 other people, I can be compensated like two others and the company is still ahead. Or if that's just my arrogance talking, there can be an objective system to measure work accomplished and set rewards accordingly. Instead all of my questions about advancement are met with dema…

A couple jobs ago, when I realized I was doing all of the non-trivial front-end work at about the workload of ~4 of the other engineers, I just went golfing half the time. That way I was getting paid the same but for half the time at work! And a job before that, my boss told me that I was making the other engineers feel dumb so she wanted me to do less. So I started crocheting at my desk. She helped me with my techni…

One of the best parts of WFH is not having to do a bunch of performative theater.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#113

Post by unicornmama »

scottLobster wrote: post #67
baz00 wrote: post #29

A finding I had when I took a management role was that it's really hard actually getting anyone to do a good job of something. This is utterly frustrating. So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that the teams usually divide into functional elites that do the work unattended and I'm dea…

It's an issue of incentives, and sadly my experience is it's often not the immediate management that's the problem, it's structural issues with the company that low-level managers have little if any say in. Speaking for my own experience, program-level and above management often doesn't put their money where their mouth is. Maintenance is chronically under-funded, well-articulated and respectful feedback is ignored w…

> It's an issue of incentives

Please do not just oversimplfy a challenging problem into just "incentives".

Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do.

It's not just a matter of incentives. If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, you will not get results.

The right approach here is to avoid hiring these peoples (not a perfect science). In absence of that, provide feedback expetations to provide a resaonable opportuntiy to change their behavior, then move them to other projects or terminate them.

And there are organization where non of this is possible - like government and many corporate IT.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#114

Post by falcor84 »

re-thc wrote: post #108
rjtavares wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually been in HR discussions telling people managers are overrated and we need to value ICs more. It's really difficult to explain to HR people that managing people isn't[1] a higher responsability job than being an expert at doing something... [1] Of course, sometimes it is. It depends on the team size and seniority, but also depends on the expertise. I'm just saying that a manager does not have to always ha…

> and we need to value ICs more Maybe start by getting rid of the silly term - "IC". What's the difference between a product, project, sales and a people manager? They all manage something. It's people's egos and lust for power that makes this distinction.

I'm against euphemisms in general and don't think we should be changing this word either.

As I see it, an IC is anyone whose main contribution is through artifacts or other actions they perform directly, and a manager is someone whose main contribution is through coordinating the actions of others. As such, I'm absolutely ok with "project manager" and "product manager" even if people don't report to them directly.

If you have a better term, do go ahead and propose it, but let's not throw out this useful term just yet.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#115

Post by mordae »

nullc wrote: post #79
baz00 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really easy. The problem they have is finding technically competent people in the desired budget.

Disagree. Openly offer a million dollars a year and the extra competent people you get will be buried under a neigh uncountable number of additional pretenders. So no matter what you pay it's never easy .

AND then the HR sociopaths filter out anyone not neurotypical who wouldn't have any issues doing the job, but is otherwise weird.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#116

Post by wiz21c »

resolutebat wrote: post #102
wiz21c wrote: post #87

Management is about having authority. That is, you're a vector: you must defend the company's values (which you may disagree with) in front of your team (which may disagree with them too). So you'd better be very aligned on those values to be happy in the job. (for example, when I was a manager, my manager's goal was to "show the rest of the company we can make websites much faster", which meant putting pressure on e…

Good management goes both ways: you need to defend your team, convince the higher-ups of its worth and ultimately help define those values. Of course, it's always possible to end up with a boss who refuses to listen or just doesn't understand, and then you're in trouble.

I was with a boss who refused to listen, that's for sure. Not the whole company, just him. This ended in me burned out and him gotten fired (I think I have been the one too many).

Retrspectively, the guy created the conditions of a failing project and I was too unexperimented/weak to say "no" (it's pretty hard to say "we can't do it" when everythign around you ask for "we can do it"). Big lesson learned: have the courage to say no.

Fortunately, the company noticed and dropped in some additional management and the projcet went on. But it was too late for my health :-(

So, yeah, you can say it's nothing to do with company's core values but nevertheless, I got that feeling. And eventhough I may not be a great PM, I trust my feelings pretty much.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#117

Post by agos »

somethoughts wrote: post #21
pixelatedindex wrote: post #8

I don’t know about the part where Charity mentions it’s really really easy to get an Eng job than a manager one. As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way. And the skills not being transferrable? How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not. Finally the credit/blame - managers and peo…

My observation has been that unless you are amazingly charismatic or a force of nature, as an engineering manager much of your value is in your ability to understand your specific companies unspoken intricacies such as: * who the different personalities are within the specific organization in order to get things done and who's opinion you need to take into account and who you can safely ignore * who you can escalate…

very accurate. I would humbly add:

* handling the sheer amount of times that somebody says something is going to happen and then the complete opposite happens, because they lied/they didn't have information/they were projecting their desire/they are out of touch with reality

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#118

Post by BlargMcLarg »

unicornmama wrote: post #113
scottLobster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an issue of incentives, and sadly my experience is it's often not the immediate management that's the problem, it's structural issues with the company that low-level managers have little if any say in. Speaking for my own experience, program-level and above management often doesn't put their money where their mouth is. Maintenance is chronically under-funded, well-articulated and respectful feedback is ignored w…

> It's an issue of incentives Please do not just oversimplfy a challenging problem into just "incentives". Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do. It's not just a matter of incentives. If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to…

>If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people,

Then you didn't offer the right incentives and opportunities. GP simplified it correctly.

Most people aren't lazy or malicious in the face of good rewards, they just realize there's no point working 5x for 1.1x the income after putting in 3x the effort fighting for that 10% raise. If you can't filter them out through hiring practices or termination, you're doing something wrong or you're experiencing the downside of supply/demand.

The only non-trivial thing here is the owners pushing the downside of that market back onto the managers to magically solve, because we all know saying "that's not possible" is going to make you the target of 'disciplinary actions' instead. Welcome to the catch-22 that is management, enjoy your stay.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#119

Post by wiz21c »

RugnirViking wrote: post #111
wiz21c wrote: post #87

Management is about having authority. That is, you're a vector: you must defend the company's values (which you may disagree with) in front of your team (which may disagree with them too). So you'd better be very aligned on those values to be happy in the job. (for example, when I was a manager, my manager's goal was to "show the rest of the company we can make websites much faster", which meant putting pressure on e…

That sounds like a terrible attitude. Management is about providing value to the company, and usually the best way to do that is by shielding your team from the worst of what's coming down by being an advocate for your team and what they do, and communicating the real situation as well as possible. You work with adults, if they know what they are doing and why they will prioritize well

I think I was overwhelmed with pressure. Actually, the team was also overwhelmed (a few people went away).

In the beginning of the project, I tried reorganize things, etc. And it went well for a month then pressure from the customer mounted again. And although I explained that things would be more expensive than planned, nobody wanted to listen. And ultimately, nobody stepped up to say "it won't work as expected", all the eyeballs were looking at me to say it. Which was difficult for me.

I should have realized that my boss was wrong and that I had to reach for help to someone else. I think I was too inexperienced to understand that soon enough.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#120

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

I'm an experienced engineer that's been a manager for three years. I'm now returning to an engineering role.

Having been a manager and having learned what it means to scale your ability to have impact and to land impact purely through leveraging others, I feel far more equipped to be the kind of engineer that I would like to manage.

More than that, one of the best experiences I've had as a manager is to be able to dissuade myself of many of the misconceptions and stereotypes that are rife in this thread.

I'd strongly advise non-managers in the thread to read Charity's other blog posts such as the Engineer/Manager Pendulum too.

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