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Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

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Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#131

Post by rjtavares »

willcipriano wrote: post #128
rjtavares wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the problem is the "merely". Sports stars are ICs and they're well paid.

I've only seen people get upset when others act like ICs on sports teams. "Ball hog" and the like. I don't think that's a example of one.

That's a misunderstanding of what IC means: "an employee responsible for performing specific tasks or functions within an organization without the authority to manage other employees". Keyword is authority, not leadership or teamplay.

Perhaps we need a better term, but the concept itself is fine.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#132

Post by another-dave »

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…

> 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 technique a couple times too.

It's funny, I think I'd feel more dumb if the person beside me was crocheting half the time but still more productive than me!

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#133

Post by sph »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #107
KirillPanov wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.

> There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking. What are these ways (besides founding a startup or something similar)?

Working for oneself is how we're meant to work, not to be a cog in someone else's machine. It is sad that for the past ~100 years it has become the norm and we idolize entrepreneurs, as if they are mythical creatures.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#134

Post by oytis »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #127
higeorge13 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once they reach the director/vp/c levels it’s even easier to do so, independent on their achievements. They always throw the classic ‘grew the team from x to y people, and from i teams to k teams’ and get an offer.

Why would it be easier? The higher up you go, the less positions are available, and the competition for them is stronger.

There are fewer positions, but as usual people who already reached the required level have a hard priority. So it's only harder if the total number of management positions is shrinking faster than total number of engineering positions (which might we'll be the case now though).

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#135

Post by quetzthecoatl »

psd1 wrote: post #90
re-thc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The chance of 5 people deciding to leave all at once is exponentially lower than a chance of 1 person. And the chance of 5 random people producing something compared to the 1 you know is a huge contributor is exponentially lower too. > Business likes predictability. That's great. Then they should actually stick with it i.e. reward the 1 that's been contributing rather than gamble on something that might not work. I…

Counterexample: sports teams that improve when they replace their star player. Football doesn't have great players in an absolute sense. For the last decade, the greatest player, depending on which tiresome fan you ask, had been either Ronaldo or Messi. Messi didn't pull up any trees at PSG, and Ronaldo's second stint at MU was underwhelming. In both cases, that's because the team tactics had to be shifted to accommo…

Both Messi's and Ronaldo's last stints were underwhelming because they are well past their prime. They are in their late thirties, and they started their professional first team career at extremely young ages (15/16). It's a testament to modern medical science that they are still not retired. Most professional striker/midfield players either retire by 32/33 or drop deep, or go to US/Middle east for a good pay day that isn't very physically demanding. The other players who started playing along with them retired years ago or moved to less demanding leagues (Rooney, Fabregas, Van persie, Robben all retired years ago. Even iniesta who started years after these, is in Japan for the last few years). Ronaldo didn't help at all acting like a primadonna instead of showing age and leadership in his second stint at MU, but that is him.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#136

Post by lizknope »

15) Meetings.

I look at my director and senior directors schedule in Outlook. It is 6 to 10 hours of meetings per day. They often start at 6am and might go until midnight because the company is worldwide. Meetings with people in India, China, Singapore, Israel, Europe, east and west coast US.

I get annoyed if I have more than 2 hours of a meetings a day. I get really annoyed when they interfere with my personal life outside of normal work hours.

I may be working from home at 6am or 11pm mostly to monitor jobs and check results. But I don't want to have a meeting at those times.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#137

Post by j-bos »

krapp wrote: post #123
j-bos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article uses struggly words like sociopaths and losers, but defines them very differently from common use, often the 'losers' have the most fulfilling and rounded lives, i.e. true winners - The "chronic nervous person that is paralyzed by impostor syndrome" - clueless - The "i find more problems than solutions" guy - clueless - The "i'm here to socialize, make friends, maybe get married" - loser - The "i gave up…

>The article uses struggly words like sociopaths and losers, but defines them very differently from common use, often the 'losers' have the most fulfilling and rounded lives, i.e. true winners They're "losers" from the point of view of capitalism and corporate hierarchy. If you're not committing your life to ruthlessly climb the ladder to grasp at wealth and power by any means and you don't buy into the game or its r…

yes.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#138

Post by sirsinsalot »

lizknope wrote: post #136

15) Meetings. I look at my director and senior directors schedule in Outlook. It is 6 to 10 hours of meetings per day. They often start at 6am and might go until midnight because the company is worldwide. Meetings with people in India, China, Singapore, Israel, Europe, east and west coast US. I get annoyed if I have more than 2 hours of a meetings a day. I get really annoyed when they interfere with my personal life…

Unless I am paid by the hour, there's nothing making me do more than 8 hours per day.

Even if I am paid hourly (I am) ... it's rare.

I am not sure what kind of people do that, but if it's managers, then EM/Lead is as far down that path I want to go.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#139

Post by noufalibrahim »

I was a technical IC for the majority of my career and apart from leading small teams technically, didn't do much management.

However, i picked it up when i started my own company and it has considerably changed my pov. Hard conversations, managing time, developing people, building the organisation, delivering value to clients and a ton of other things which i couldn't dream of doing as an IC have been possible and extremely rewarding.

I think the article makes a few good points but on the overall, I feel that an younger, immature and less clued in me would resonate with it more than me now.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#140

Post by bl4ckm0r3 »

To me there are 2 main reasons:

1) ownership - the manager does not really own the way the team works, in most cases it's just applying processes defined somewhere else (career progression, expectations, OKRs, sdlc, internal processes and the way the team works)

2) the eternal doubt - managing teams and people is not a science (that's why there are thousands of books claiming they have found the formula) and people are always different (different motivators, interests, personalities), and usually managers don't get proper training, and if they do it's more about facilitating discussions and giving feedback than anything else. This creates a lot of uncertainty over the actions that a manager take as the results, often, arrive later in time than, let's say, building a feature.

And the reality is that it's a complete different job than being an IC and most people don't realize this until they are deep into it.

ps to people talking about meetings, the reality is that this depends a lot on company culture and organization...in general the more the meetings the worse the culture (because it means that there aren't really good processes to share status updates and people don't take advantage of async communication as much as they should, but still want to be on top of everything so there isn't really much delegation and trust).

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