Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#141

Post by whywhywhywhy » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:06 PM UTC

baz00 wrote: post #46

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks. Isn't it more accurate to say they hire anybody making duck noises assuming they are wolves? Technical interviews in no way identify the skills developers are going to use in their daily work.

Finding technically competent people is easy. Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.

Used to be "You can pay people to show up but you can't pay people to care" now it's more "You can pay people... they might show up"

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#142

Post by benreesman » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:16 PM UTC

It’s possible that I’m misreading sarcasm or something.

But point 6, “engineers can be little shits”, about how asking if the person in charge of you understands the work going on is mildly offensive for the obvious reasons, and extremely offensive for how fucking stupid it is.

Knowing how to do something is not an absurd ask of being responsible for that thing being done.

I only ever got up to 3 dozen-ish reports as an EM, but to the extent I ever lapsed in being able to read a diff, that was me just failing.

EMs should know a lot about engineering. That’s what “Engineering” and “Manager” mean. Like, in the dictionary.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#143

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:25 PM UTC

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…

For me there was a fork in the round around age 30 when I was pushed to take on managerial tasks/roles. This was at a company in traditional industry with basically no technical ladder, developers were line-work and the only way to climb was management. I stuck through it as an IC and at 45 I’m still not in management. I enjoy being an IC and hope to be for another 20 or 25 years. My only fear is that I have grown stuck in the company because seeking a developer job at 45 or 50 is probably subject to ageism more than a program/product manager job would.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#144

Post by pyrale » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:27 PM UTC

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…

Defending the company's goals is not necessarily an adversarial thing. Many teams have a very local observable area, and giving them context for the company's decisions and facilitating their alignment to these decisions, if well done, is enough. Not every company has a sketchy business model or anti-social ethics (hello Google), so in many companies, alignment issues are not quintessential, and solving them can be done pacifically.

In other words, sure, management is about authority, but there are many things from which authority can be derived: the authority of a respected teacher is very different from the authority of a coercitive cop.

Also, from a sociologic perspective, values are an outcome. If someone has to defend "the company's values", that means they are wishes, not values.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#145

Post by Rexxar » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:35 PM UTC

matrix_overload wrote: post #40

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…

Business likes predictability. The chance of 5 people deciding to leave all at once is exponentially lower than a chance of 1 person. Hence, unless you are the owner/founder, your replaceability will be valued more than your performance.

It would be true if leaving probability were uncorrelated but in reality they are correlated so it's not such a big improvement than people usually expect.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#146

Post by DuctTapeAI » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:35 PM UTC

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…

I work in a small company, but I've found that when I'm uncomfortable supporting one of the companies values to my direct reports that is powerful fuel to push the c-suite to change things. Of course, it took a lot of building trust to get there, and it is important to have some core of truly shared values, but I've found that work has payed off.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#147

Post by JackMorgan » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 12:44 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #17

jddj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata, but I've found it much easier to replace managers compared with engineers. Measured qualitatively in terms of 6 months performance

The single fastest hire my department did recently was for an EM position. Took something like under two weeks from opening the position to signed offer. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

I have found that hiring engineers often is done with strict objective criteria: do they know the language and tools well and can demonstrate that live in front of a bunch of peers. Also they are measured on subjective "does everyone on the team like then enough to go out for a beer with them?" I've seen Sr. engineer positions stay open for years with 50+ candidates interviewed.

Hiring managers tends to be done with subjective criteria like "did the CTO get a good vibe from them in a 15min call?" I've seen engineering managers hired by just being the first friendly person through the door.

That said, I've met so many former engineering managers who just can't find work and now haven't written code in years. There's a lot of competition for a few jobs, and no real way to distinguish yourself. They are a very sad lot, and the biggest reason I left the management track to become an IC again. After talking with the 30th sad former manager who can't write an if statement I saw the writing on the wall and got back into engineering.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#148

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

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…

> 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 rules, you're basically a defective cog, a useless part of the machine.

You have too narrow a definition of capitalism and of corporate hierarchy. What you describe is one outworking of them, but not the outworking.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#149

Post by fatnoah » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:18 PM UTC

KnobbleMcKnees wrote: post #120

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 di…

I made the move to full-time management after about 16 years as a hands-on Engineer & tech lead. As a high-level Engineer, I was very much into mentorship, influence, architecture, and process, so it felt natural to go into management. After a few years, I moved back to being an IC because it was very hard to not "control my own destiny" through hands-on contributions.

As it turns out, going back to being hands-on made me realize that I'd kinda been-there, done that in terms of the things I wanted to get done myself. I really missed a) playing an integral role in the career growth of others and b) the strategic level thinking of being an upper-level manager, so I went back to full-time management. There are times where I still think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but then I have those moments where someone on my team or in my org will thank me for supporting them or how that X that I've done has reduced the hassle of their day.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#150

Post by BowBun » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

noufalibrahim wrote: post #139

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 e…

Your experience is very, very different than what the article was about. Starting your own company means you have ownership and pride of everything going on in the business. That motivation and entrepreneurial spirit will obviously paint everything in pink, at least for a while.

Imagine having those responsibities, but nearly no decision-making power. All those messy human behaviors are now coming at you from above and below.

What's tough is that to do management well, you need a level of freedom like what you experience as a founder. However, most managers with their own bosses will never get that level of freedom and have to somewhat conform to existing culture/process.