191–200 of 319 posts
Strong no from me on (2). Production coding takes tiime and focus and would eat into manager’s management work.
On the other hand, managers at all levels should actively engage with the output of their org. For the direct manager of a development team, that means periodically running the build, maybe coding on weekends (which I do) to explore ideas and prototypes, etc.
Yes, because in a downturn managers get cut first and you never know when you will need to be an IC again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you want them to come to work and do their job, then go home and waste their nights and weekends doing a variation of your job? How about, a proportion of their work day must be allocated to keeping up to date with the tools behind the thing they're attempting to manage?
> waste their nights and weekends doing a variation of your job Why is that a waste? I'm an EM and code both at work and on nights/weekends. During the work day, I spend most of my time helping other people directly (code review, talking through designs, 1:1s, xfn collab, etc.) To build larger things, I do them nights and weekends. It's not a waste. I'm better as an EM because of it. And being a better EM gets me mor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If your boss has a reasonably-sized team but is spending their day writing code They dont need to spend all day writing code, they need to spend their nights and weekends making sure their skills dont rust.
So you want them to come to work and do their job, then go home and waste their nights and weekends doing a variation of your job? How about, a proportion of their work day must be allocated to keeping up to date with the tools behind the thing they're attempting to manage?
No. This would be a person who already happens to spend their nights and weekends coding. There are plenty of people who like building things, whether it’s woodworking or software.
> How about, a proportion of their work day must be allocated to keeping up to date with the tools behind the thing they're attempting to manage?
Maybe, but it would need to be solving a real problem the team has, not just leetcode or some random thing. Part of sharpening the saw is the struggle, and subsequent overcoming, which requires solving a real problem.
But you also don’t want a manager owning a critical path project as the developer. Part of a manager’s effectiveness is being available. That doesn’t work in crunch time when a project needs head down coding all week to meet a deadline.
But if a manager is building a trading bot or chess engine on their own time, they will encounter all kinds of real world challenges.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> waste their nights and weekends doing a variation of your job Why is that a waste? I'm an EM and code both at work and on nights/weekends. During the work day, I spend most of my time helping other people directly (code review, talking through designs, 1:1s, xfn collab, etc.) To build larger things, I do them nights and weekends. It's not a waste. I'm better as an EM because of it. And being a better EM gets me mor…
How are you a better EM because you code nights / weekends? Genuinely curious, as I have to choose managing or continuing as an engineer pretty soon
Steve Jobs on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVKcxK_tVBM Summary: Managers who know how to manage, but don't know how to do anything are not the best managers. The best managers are the great individual contributors who never ever wanna be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.
There's a third option that's missing from that dichotomy: people who are OK individual contributors but who are actually really good at managing people. These are the best managers, because they have the disposition/skills to be a good manager , but also aren't going to make dumb engineering decisions. IC's who become reluctant managers are generally terrible managers because it's not what they're good at and not wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> waste their nights and weekends doing a variation of your job Why is that a waste? I'm an EM and code both at work and on nights/weekends. During the work day, I spend most of my time helping other people directly (code review, talking through designs, 1:1s, xfn collab, etc.) To build larger things, I do them nights and weekends. It's not a waste. I'm better as an EM because of it. And being a better EM gets me mor…
How are you a better EM because you code nights / weekends? Genuinely curious, as I have to choose managing or continuing as an engineer pretty soon
[0] https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum...
[1] https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pe...
Reading these arguments are funny to me. By now there should be decades worth of research on this topic, all we seem to do is give anecdote after anecdote with no conclusion. Either no is doing this research or no one trusts the conclusions. Other topics like this are WFH or RTO, 4 day WW or 6 day WW. We as a profession seem to never come to a consensus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a third option that's missing from that dichotomy: people who are OK individual contributors but who are actually really good at managing people. These are the best managers, because they have the disposition/skills to be a good manager , but also aren't going to make dumb engineering decisions. IC's who become reluctant managers are generally terrible managers because it's not what they're good at and not wh…
let me add a fourth then: ICs who had really great managers and became great as a result, and when given the opportunity decided to then become the next great manager and mentor the next group of great ICs.