Don't become an engineering manager • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#221

Post by gajjanag » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #136

democracy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around.

> Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around. Maybe. That's why you need to put your scope on the resume :) I had a CTO title 15 years ago. The complexity of what we were building was a joke compared to what I own now as a lowly "tech lead manager". And in fact back then I wouldn't even be able to comprehend how complex things can get.

> That's why you need to put your scope

The problem is, "scope" is often equated to "how many people worked in my empire" rather than "how much business value did my work X generate".

The two things are vastly different, and I have seen the distinction/oversimplification play out over and over in my own career as well as many others around me.

As an extreme on the "individual technical expert side", there are things out there that can pretty much only be accomplished with a few people around the world who possess the dedicated expertise. These results can't be replicated by a cobbled together team of 10 or 100 people even though the latter sounds more impressive for "scope".

Some organizations do a decent job of recognizing these different "archetypes", many don't.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#222

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #135

ahtihn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I have to choose between firing an EM or a SWE When does this choice ever come up? My experience is that most engineers are seen as interchangeable while most EMs aren't. Only time I've seen EMs fired for economic reasons is when a larger amount of engineers were also laid off.

> When does this choice ever come up Fairly often, but we usually manage them out so that line-level engineers don't get paranoid and jump ship. When an EM is suddenly shifted to work on another project, or all you ICs are suddenly talking to other managers or staffed on other projects, that's us as organizations managing out the malcontent and messaging to them that their time is up.

[deleted]

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#223

Post by icedchai » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #192

halper wrote: post #4

I cannot be alone in feeling that titles (within "tech" in particular) are almost completely arbitrary? What constitutes a "senior", "lead", "principal" and "staff" X, respectively, has so much overlap that it really depends on the organisation. I myself have been called all of those things, but have honestly not been able to tell the difference: in some cases, I have had much more responsibility as a "senior backend…

> I cannot be alone in feeling that titles (within "tech" in particular) are almost completely arbitrary? What constitutes a "senior", "lead", "principal" and "staff" X, respectively, has so much overlap that it really depends on the organisation. All the responses here won't admit that it is entirely made up, and designed to be built around a structured hierarchy which rule followers and obedient servents to the sys…

It's all about perception. People love fancy titles, even though it's ultimately meaningless. I worked with several "directors" that made much less than I did as a staff+ level engineer.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#224

Post by Swizec » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:34 AM UTC

calculatte wrote: post #210

Swizec wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Which is why it's important to put scope on your resume. I can't know you ran a 30 person scale up unless you tell me. It doesn't have to be in those words exactly, usually it's tied to ARR or rounds raised or something you can easily talk about that translates across companies. I've seen resumes with titles like "Lead Engineer" who under that title put something like "Hired 45+ people to run at ". That person h…

An unverifiable line item on a resume gives you real insight on an individual's experience and skills? I think your system is flawed.

It gives me more insight than a blank resume with just job titles.

The rest we can hash out in interviews, reference checks, and reaching out to mutual network connections at higher levels. Nobody gets hired just off their resume.

That is to say: All line items are verifiable if we care enough. Tech is small :)

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#225

Post by Swizec » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

gajjanag wrote: post #221

Swizec wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around. Maybe. That's why you need to put your scope on the resume :) I had a CTO title 15 years ago. The complexity of what we were building was a joke compared to what I own now as a lowly "tech lead manager". And in fact back then I wouldn't even be able to comprehend how complex things can get.

> That's why you need to put your scope The problem is, "scope" is often equated to "how many people worked in my empire" rather than "how much business value did my work X generate". The two things are vastly different, and I have seen the distinction/oversimplification play out over and over in my own career as well as many others around me. As an extreme on the "individual technical expert side", there are things…

I agree. What counts as a positive signal for "scope" really very much depends what you're hiring for.

When looking for a manager type, people under management are a decent proxy. When looking for the world's greatest postgres optimization expert, some version of queries-per-second is prob the metric you want.

Or realistically if I needed the world's greatest Postgres expert (and could afford them), I would go talk to experts in the field and ask "Who's the best postgres person you know?" and work from there. At that point your resume is but a formality.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#226

Post by notepad0x90 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:49 AM UTC

coredev_ wrote: post #121

notepad0x90 wrote: post #91

Unpopular opinion: either you manage people or you manage work/processes, you shouldn't do both. if you're an engineering manager, either you manage your people and let them be engineers, or you don't manage any people and you focus on engineering solutions and managing the solutions themselves.

Why unpopular? Sounds about right to me. I understand that some people take the manager path for the title/pay and never understands that the role is about handle people - not the tech. But they will not be very appreciated or it's a very small shop.

Because being a manager is the only way you can move up in most companies. And engineers who end up being engineering managers don't really want to let go of their former life, they'll end up managing people and doing the work at the same time causing all manners of issues. Of course there are exceptions, and the environment plays a factor as well.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#227

Post by marcus_holmes » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #107

Aurornis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that it really depends on the organisation. This is entirely it. Titles should be consistently ordered within an organization, but they are not portable from one organization to another. This is a lesson I’ve had to explain over and over to people at the beginning of their careers. I’ve been asked for advice about which offer to take from people thinking about leaving 10s of thousands of dollars on the table becaus…

> When hiring, titles are basically ignored As a hiring manager, this is completely accurate. I don't look at your title, I look at your scope . Tell me what you did, for whom, and what was the impact. That's all I care about. We all know that Senior Principal Architect Engineer at 3-person startup is somewhere around junior to mid-level at a real company. Whereas some poor schmuck at a larger company with a title li…

I think that engineering at a large organisation and engineering at a startup are two completely different disciplines with very little crossover.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#228

Post by alephnerd » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:52 AM UTC

ilc wrote: post #215

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree at the first-line manager level (which this article is about), it's tough to get hired from outside, so getting the same position somewhere else after a layoff will be a tough job search. My comment was more on the next levels - there seemed to be about as many high-level technical roles as managers (paid similarly) where I worked in biotech (that might be a different situation for software-only companies.) A…

I think you over estimate how valuable really good Principal level talent is when you have AIs that can take over for entire teams. As an older and higher up engineer, I worry more for the youngsters than myself. I'll find a spot. I'm using AI, I'm doing things at rates that are pretty crazy. That's all powered by decades of good decision making practice. Youngsters don't have that. They don't have the painful lesson…

> I think you over estimate how valuable really good Principal level talent is when you have AIs that can take over for entire teams.

I think you mean underestimate.

A good principal engineer (and they almost always are good) is someone who can understand both business requirements as well as the architectural foundations that underlay the product itself.

Principal (and Principal track Staff, Senior, and early-career) SWEs aren't going anywhere. In fact in an LLM-driven world, their domain experience is much more critical.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#229

Post by alephnerd » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

DDerTyp wrote: post #179

alephnerd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my experience staff engineer positions are even rarer then EM positions. Where do you work?!? If you are in Western Europe then the blogpost is irrelevant for you. The Western European market is weird.

Can you elaborate more about this? Why is it irrelevant in Western Europe?

Western Europe has a very different hiring market for SWEs due to how traditional industries like financial services, media, law, government, pharma, chemicals, and automotive are overrepresented.

In these kinds of organizations, software is viewed as a cost-center and as such the only way you as a SWE can protect yourself is to climb up the management chain as soon as possible.

Re: Don't become an engineering manager

#230

Post by foobarbecue » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:04 AM UTC

halper wrote: post #4

I cannot be alone in feeling that titles (within "tech" in particular) are almost completely arbitrary? What constitutes a "senior", "lead", "principal" and "staff" X, respectively, has so much overlap that it really depends on the organisation. I myself have been called all of those things, but have honestly not been able to tell the difference: in some cases, I have had much more responsibility as a "senior backend…

I just got a new job, hired as level 5 with official title Software Engineer (Mid-career) although my boss tells me I'm Chief Engineer. All the level 2 people on my team seem to be Senior Engineer or Lead Engineer.