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A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

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Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#171

Post by nostrademons »

michaelochurch wrote: post #169
nostrademons wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure a lot of what you said about Google isn't true. I personally know at least one Principal Engineer who works on the Search team in Google NYC; it's possible he was promoted after you left, but even then, he would've been Senior Staff and highly regarded. Also, upper management in Search is still on the engineering ladder. These are folks with 2000+ and 500+ folks reporting to them, one of whom reported dir…

There were Senior Staff SWEs at Google NYC when I was there. It's not surprising that there's a Principal SWE now. You're talking about anecdotes with regard to those highly-compensated engineers. They exist, but I don't think that anyone entering Google at 2015 has any real chance of becoming one of those 9-figure engineers from a SWE-3 start.

Growth is everything in both tech and careers. I don't think someone coming in to Google as a SWE-3 in 2015 has a realistic chance of being a 9-figure Distinguished Engineer while rising through the company. I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy. I think someone coming into Google as a SWE-3 in 2015 who then quits after a year or two and either joins a fast-growing startup or founds their own has an excellent chance of being re-acquired in 5-10 years as a 8/9-figure VP.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#172

Post by o_nate »

sarwechshar wrote: post #141
gadders wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a CIO in a large company, your life is more about managing budgets than doing anything technical.

I don't remember the last time I saw a company with a "CIO". It seems to be a dying trend. Interesting fact: CIOs are also known as Chief Investment Officers (mainly in finance) and play an integral role to the company, perhaps in importance second only to the CEO.

At many finance shops, the CIO can even outrank the CEO, in reality if not on paper. For instance, during his glory days at PIMCO, Bill Gross was CIO while others, such as Mohammed el-Erian filled the CEO role, even when Gross was basically calling the shots.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#173

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jazzyk wrote: post #156
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been places where I was there for the 8:00 PM bug (or later). At most of those places, my manager/supervisor was still there, too, trying to help us figure it out. If nothing else, they were there for encouragement and food runs. (If your engineers are working through dinner, feed them .) Doing management right doesn't mean that you no longer are there at 8 PM. It means that you're there at 8 PM more often than…

Doing management right means your team does not have to work until 8pm every day.

True. But it doesn't mean that your team never has to work until 8 PM.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#174

Post by illuminek »

eitally wrote: post #51
illuminek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I am an MBA(IT)[+ Mechanical Engg.], and right now I am managing some 15+ people engg team. I can very confidently say that being an MBA has helped me a lot. It gave me an insight in being a leader and made my job of managing a engineering team easy. However I started my career as developer and have spent 7+ years in developing complex systems. The one difference I could always notice was leadership/initiative d…

Counterpoint: I'm not an MBA but I have a BA in history and a MEng in Industrial, and I spent the first 5 years of my career as a programmer before moving into management. I steadily moved up and am reporting to the CIO and managing 115+ folks. As my old boss said, you can learn the key skills of an MBA on your own, but you can't learn emotional intelligence or how to lead without practical experience. I'm not saying…

Agreed. MBA just helped me a bit, but I guess most of my career is a result of coding & sitting with fellow programmers spending nights and learning vudu tricks.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#176

Post by eastbayjake »

michaelochurch wrote: post #83
ryandrake wrote: post #79

The day I decided to make it a goal to switch from developing software to management: I was sitting at my desk at 8:00 at night fixing some bug and I looked across the sea of gray half-height cubicles at a someone 30 years older than me doing the same thing with the exact same job title, probably not making much more than I. At 95% of companies, there is zero career development and advancement once you become a "Seni…

Worth noting is that it's not just about titles. Titles matter, but they can also become a joke. It's easy to imagine a company, realizing that its best seniors are underpaid, inventing a new title to justify paying them only 10% more instead of the 30% they should get. The bigger problem is that most companies view "engineer" as "implementor of ideas that come from the business". Hence, all that Agile/Scrum bullshit…

> The bigger problem is that most companies view "engineer" as "implementor of ideas that come from the business"

This is exactly what I tell people when they ask why I'm applying to business school instead of being a career software engineer. Engineers will almost always just be implementers of other people's strategy decisions -- and they will be largely fungible -- but the strategy decisions are where you can have a real lever effect on organizations as an individual.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#177

Post by michaelochurch »

nostrademons wrote: post #171
michaelochurch wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were Senior Staff SWEs at Google NYC when I was there. It's not surprising that there's a Principal SWE now. You're talking about anecdotes with regard to those highly-compensated engineers. They exist, but I don't think that anyone entering Google at 2015 has any real chance of becoming one of those 9-figure engineers from a SWE-3 start.

Growth is everything in both tech and careers. I don't think someone coming in to Google as a SWE-3 in 2015 has a realistic chance of being a 9-figure Distinguished Engineer while rising through the company. I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy. I think someone coming into Google as a SWE-3 in 2015 who then quits after a year or two and either joins a fast-grow…

I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy.

You think so? Why do you think Google will be dead in the next few years? I'd bet on it being around, in some form, even 50 years from now.

A halfway competent manager at Google will make Director in 5 years and VP in 10. That might be, in part, because Google has so few competent managers that a "5" or a "6" is a local 9.75. And (for as much as I trash Google) I think the odds are that Google will be around in 10 years.

All of that said, I'd imagine that there are plenty of VPs and Directors at Google who are not making 8- or 9-figure packages. You can get VP on seniority alone at Google, just by not making mistakes once you're on the management ladder, but the 8-figure RSU packages require a bit of luck.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#178

Post by nostrademons »

michaelochurch wrote: post #177
nostrademons wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth is everything in both tech and careers. I don't think someone coming in to Google as a SWE-3 in 2015 has a realistic chance of being a 9-figure Distinguished Engineer while rising through the company. I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy. I think someone coming into Google as a SWE-3 in 2015 who then quits after a year or two and either joins a fast-grow…

I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy. You think so? Why do you think Google will be dead in the next few years? I'd bet on it being around, in some form, even 50 years from now. A halfway competent manager at Google will make Director in 5 years and VP in 10. That might be, in part, because Google has so few competent managers that a "5" or a "6" is a local 9.7…

I don't think Google will be dead in the next few years. I think it will be dead in about 15-20 (because that is the typical lifespan of a tech company - witness Sun, SGI, DEC, Apple if Steve Jobs had not returned, Compaq, Microsoft, and many others). I also think that the average manager at Google will never reach Director, and indeed a SWE3 has a better chance of making Distinguished Engineer than a manager does of making Director.

The reason I believe this is simple numbers. Assume a Director is responsible for a department of about 120; he has 5-6 direct reports (all managers), who average 2 managers and a handful of direct reports. In total, the department has 15 managers, one director, and about 100 ICs. In a steady-state company (one that is not growing, which I think will increasingly describe Google in the near future), the only way for an existing manager to get the director job is for the director to vacate it. When will that happen? The competition for the spots the director would want to move upwards into (VP positions) is just as tight, and they are often filled externally. The competition for the CEO spot is non-existent; there is about zero chance that Larry will step down during his lifetime. So every single manager has to wait for the Director to retire or leave the company, and even then, he has only 1/15 chance that he'll be the one selected.

Things were different when Google was doubling in size every year; when a company grows that fast, it's ready for a new level of management every 2-2.5 years, and instead of multiple people fighting for the same spot, everybody on the team could be made a manager and a new level of fresh recruits placed under them.

On the engineering ladder, at least, promotions are not zero-sum. You can get promoted for building a system that has high impact, without having to displace anyone on the org chart. The problem is that "high impact" is hard to define for promo committees, and so they often fall back on metrics they're familiar with like "number of people on the team" when assessing promo cases. But the number are not against you the way they are when climbing the management ladder.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#179

Post by anotherdatem »

msravi wrote: post #39
anotherdatem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a VP at a mid-sized ($100mm revenue) startup. I report to the CTO, and am his probable successor. I make slightly less than our highest paid engineer. I would recommend finding a company with a true parallel track, rather than dedicating yourself to a job that you don't want, and thus likely won't ever be great at.

An honest question: Does the highest paid engineer know that (s)he makes slightly more than you? If so, does (s)he know of it in an official capacity or has (s)he sort-of figured it out? Oftentimes, I've found that management operates from a position of informational advantage, while a person on a parallel technical track at the same level has access to a lot less information. Hence the question.

They don't have any formal way of knowing my salary, and I don't know what they think I make.

I'd share the details of the managerial bands if they were considering a switch, but to date they've been very clear that they're happy staying technical.

Re: A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

#180

Post by anotherdatem »

maxxxxx wrote: post #73
anotherdatem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a VP at a mid-sized ($100mm revenue) startup. I report to the CTO, and am his probable successor. I make slightly less than our highest paid engineer. I would recommend finding a company with a true parallel track, rather than dedicating yourself to a job that you don't want, and thus likely won't ever be great at.

What industry is that? In companies I have seen it's a matter of principle that an engineer can't make as much money as managers. They would lay off the best engineer in the world before giving him as much money as they make.

It's a b2b tech company. I've had at least one direct report who made more than me for my entire tenure.
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