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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)

#151

Post by BowBun »

benreesman wrote: post #142

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…

That's just not reality. Many EMs are not necessarily proficient or even knowledgeable in the stack. It depends on the company.

EM doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Last week I applied to an EM role that was 100% people management where my tech experience did not matter much. I also applied to one that was still a majority technical/architecture design, that some would consider a 'tech lead' or something like that.

Being offended by it is kind of funny. You'll probably have a boss like that eventually.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#152

Post by s_dev »

bbsimonbb wrote: post #93

> Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. Software is a new industry, we're only just starting to get it right, and put behind us a litany of failed projects and methodologies. Every decision in a software company has a technical aspect. I personally am absolutely over non-technical managers and the aberrant strategies and directions…

> > Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird.

I don't see the problem here either. Sounds like somebody overheard that comment and had no real answer hence "they're a shitbird".

I want to take instruction from managers who have literally done the thing they're asking for.

There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are former players I don't see why that should be different from software -- even those managers who didn't play professional football often have a pro background in another team sport.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#153

Post by mdgrech23 »

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…

Companies will say look at all the money we're saving by by hiring people in India/China/whereever meanwhile the managers are stuck taking calls at all hours of the day. The saving are really enabled by the manager working these extra hours to support international teams.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#154

Post by BowBun »

jareklupinski wrote: post #5
zgluck wrote: post #3

(Context: Northern Europe) Switching jobs is quite hard as an (engineering) manager, at least if you're a bit introverted like me. Often you depend on the number of people who trust you from their experience working with you that have switched companies and have come into a trusted position there. My career: ages 20-30: Individual contributor. ages 30-45: (Engineering) manager, running product development teams of va…

thinking about making a move towards management, for a similar reason: I really enjoy programming, but after slinging code for 8 hours at work, I can't justify working on my hobby projects when I come home anymore... hoping that by using more of my "soft skills" and thinking about architecture at work, I'll be able to come home and work something like a solitaire solver without feeling like it's "non-productive"

Super funny, I went through the same swing.

I was able to eventually cool off on technical burn out as a manager and went back to working on some personal projects. Eventually though, sitting in meetings all day for 12+ months had the same mental effect and I lost motivation and burn out increased. I'm back as an IC now and balancing my time better.

I think the better solution may be to find a way to pace yourself at work so you aren't slinging code for 8 hours. It's unlikely many of your coworkers are doing the same. I think it's important to find a sustainable pace at work and to just say no to the rest. Hopefully your company supports that.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#155

Post by tomtheelder »

s_dev wrote: post #152
bbsimonbb wrote: post #93

> Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. Software is a new industry, we're only just starting to get it right, and put behind us a litany of failed projects and methodologies. Every decision in a software company has a technical aspect. I personally am absolutely over non-technical managers and the aberrant strategies and directions…

> > Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. I don't see the problem here either. Sounds like somebody overheard that comment and had no real answer hence "they're a shitbird". I want to take instruction from managers who have literally done the thing they're asking for. There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are…

> There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are former players

The reason there is nepotism. It’s insanely difficult for anyone without preexisting connections to get any sort of coaching opportunity. I definitely think ex players make worse coaches, generally speaking. They just have an almost insurmountable leg up.

I do think eng managers should be technical, though. Not because I think you need to have done a job to manage it, but because they are frequently asked to make what amount to being technical decisions.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#156

Post by Draiken »

sph wrote: post #133
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I hard disagree here. That's what capitalism wants us to evolve into: individual enterprises. But no, there's nothing inherent in the universe or human nature that determines individualism as the true way of working.

You don't have to go far to see people contributing to bigger causes that are not owned by someone else. Open source is a great example of this.

The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual. There's a reason society today wants everyone to be an "entrepreneur", but it's not some higher meaning. It's just capitalism.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#157

Post by havblue »

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…

While I think people who organize these meetings might have a benefit of being able to keep track of everyone, I'm usually surprised how much dead time there is when people discuss what they're working on and there are only 2 or 3 people who are involved in the discussion while 20 or so other people are on the clock doing nothing. The manager might reply that everyone should know and care about everything happening but this is never the case.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#158

Post by hajile »

mook wrote: post #66
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…

Remember that all the people up the chain deciding compensation are managers. It's natural that they would perceive the management track as more important, because they're on it.

If management didn't pay well, qualified people simply wouldn't do it or you'd be limited to people who felt emotionally compensated by getting more power over other people (which is already bad enough).

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#159

Post by cowsandmilk »

adwn wrote: post #99
hintymad wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up reading all kinds of articles and books about how engineering itself is a career track and I believed it. However, when I looked at the great engineers, it seems they eventually turned into executives. Jeff Dean, for instance, is one the greatest engineers. He has deep technical skills. He is versatile, as we can see that he made key contributions in storages, distributed systems, and machine learning. Yet…

I suspect the reason for this is that even great engineers don't scale indefinitely: At some point, if you want to increase output, you have to delegate some part of your work. To increase output even further, you have to delegate even more. That also doesn't scale indefinitely, so you have to start delegating the delegating. And before you know it, you're an SVP and not really directly doing any technical work anymo…

In Amazon terms, great engineers “are right a lot”. That is key in SVP type roles. An SVP isn’t typically managing ICs, they have a very different role than the manager role described in Charity’s article.

Re: Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

#160

Post by harimau777 »

Personally, I don't so much want to be a manager as I want to get away from the BS of being an individual contributor.

I'm tired of having my warnings about things like tech debt and code quality ignored; only to be expected to fix everything and maintain deadlines when everything falls apart.

I'm tired of being compared to engineers who get things done quicker because they cut corners and build up tech debt.

I'm tired of caring about my craft when managers just want people who churn out slop.

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