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What you give up by moving into engineering management

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Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#91

Post by tukantje »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #7

I've actually given up all of these things years ago, and I'm an IC. Maybe I'd be fine as a manager. I give zero shits about placating my ego by being the smartest person in the room. I want everyone else on the team to make their own decisions, learn lessons, and be actively contributing in all ways. And honestly, most problems and imperfections are fine. Let people do something in a crappy way. It will eventually h…

I used to call this "putting myself out of a job", to be a bit cheeky. People were happy with it - you should give it a shot.

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#92

Post by tukantje »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #23
simonw wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen Charity Majors call this the "pendulum" model, where you swing back and forth from IC to management multiple times during your career. I really like that: in my experience, ICs who have been managers make better ICs and vice-versa. https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum...

I found this really hard in my career though - you move into an IC role and then the assumption is you won't be happy in a management role ever again. You move into a management role and somehow there's an assumption that you have been lobotomized and know nothing about the hands-on work any longer. It's not fair, but it can really create complications as you attempt to move your career into new directions or attempt…

Eh, people will find a reason to judge you anyways. I am jarred to the point of thinking none of it matters, usually the person has an opinion of me before I even meet them anyways.

Conversely, trying to move into relatively in demand things where supply / demand curve is bent out of shape helps. You can't discriminate for willy nilly reasons if you can't find enough candidates.

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#93

Post by seanhunter »

abtinf wrote: post #19

The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly,…

You certainly didn't invent the term careerism. It even has its own wikipedia page.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careerism

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#94

Post by jimmydddd »

opportune wrote: post #48
abtinf wrote: post #19

The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly,…

As an IC, I’ve had about 8 managers in my day. Sadly, I failed to recognize and appreciate great managers due to my own lack of maturity at the time and not understanding the manager role. Earlier in my career, I had a manager who I initially had pegged as disengaged - he wasn’t, he was just actually delegating and managing without getting bogged down in the IC work he entrusted to his reports. At the time I thought…

Thanks for this great post. I wish 20-year-ago IC me could have read it then. :-)

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#95

Post by svilen_dobrev »

i also read that Manager's path book, when finaly moving into managerial role, and the thing that struck me was: you cannot be friends with (your) people anymore.

initialy i thought - WTF?

Sadly, it is true. Any friendship you form - or had - would be misinterpreted, by someone.

ah

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#96

Post by chasd00 »

latte wrote: post #43

The majority of the content and comments on HN tell about the benefits of remaining an IC and not moving into management. Why do people need to convince each other _not_ to move into management by content like this? To get a balanced view - what are the advantages of becoming a manager? What are the rewarding parts of managing people?

many companies see it as a natural progression and you begin to get pressure to make the jump. I don't want to bring up the ageism boogieman but as you get older the expectation to be a manager goes up as well. Being a good manager is very hard though and a vanishingly small subset of the skills that make a good swe or even team lead apply in management. It's almost like starting a new career.

I'm in the process of making the jump, my title is even Sr. Manager which at the consulting firm i'm at is pretty high up the food chain. I still serve as architect, TL, and the last point of escalation for dev teams in projects though.

For me, it's just the pay increase that keeps me climbing the ladder. It's all management form here on up where i'm at unfortunately. However, my firm has very VERY nice golden handcuffs so it's not so bad. I still write tons of code with my hobbies and kids so i get to scratch that itch.

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#97

Post by bl4ckm0r3 »

dasil003 wrote: post #41
bl4ckm0r3 wrote: post #27

I have been a swe for most of my life then transitioned into a manager (corporate and small/mid startups) for a while and am a director now (scaleup unicorn). The politics is something that always bothers me, the higher you get in the ladder, the more people are obsessed by "just following the process", and there's always so many inefficient processes that are applied in environments that definitely do not require su…

> the higher you get in the ladder, the more people are obsessed by "just following the process" This is definitely not universally true, and it's a red flag if you're hearing it a lot. The tricky part is understanding whether it is subtle feedback from skilled leaders (I can think of a half dozen reasons why this feedback might legitimately be given), or whether you are dealing with muppet leadership who are leaning…

> This is definitely not universally true, and it's a red flag if you're hearing it a lot.

not hearing it, seeing it. people don't really have time, will to change processes. In private settings they comment and complain about the inefficiencies, but no one spend time rethinking how things are done. (this is literally what pushed me to go higher in the ladder, so i could change that attitude and environment)

> This comment is a sign of immaturity

thanks for the free judgment.

> Every manager needs to make a decision on how to best spend their time, and delegation is a critical piece of that.

I am not saying i want to code, and I am not saying I am the saviour of the team. I am saying having to deal with things like your manager asking you to force your team to come to work becase he wants to see the office alive, but not bothering to take the responsibility on the decision. I have had colleagues (managers) taking every day note on who would go in the office and who wouldn't (precovid).

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#98

Post by bl4ckm0r3 »

blackshaw wrote: post #44
bl4ckm0r3 wrote: post #27

I have been a swe for most of my life then transitioned into a manager (corporate and small/mid startups) for a while and am a director now (scaleup unicorn). The politics is something that always bothers me, the higher you get in the ladder, the more people are obsessed by "just following the process", and there's always so many inefficient processes that are applied in environments that definitely do not require su…

Isn't "scaleup unicorn" a contradiction?

why?

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#99

Post by bl4ckm0r3 »

opportune wrote: post #50
bl4ckm0r3 wrote: post #27

I have been a swe for most of my life then transitioned into a manager (corporate and small/mid startups) for a while and am a director now (scaleup unicorn). The politics is something that always bothers me, the higher you get in the ladder, the more people are obsessed by "just following the process", and there's always so many inefficient processes that are applied in environments that definitely do not require su…

Has that happened at all your workplaces and from manager to director? This sounds almost identical to how an IC would experience a bad manager. It just sounds like you have or have had bad managers yourself. I’m but a lowly leaf node in the corporate hierarchy ATM but I’m curious about the “do things because they can’t be bothered actually doing them” - isn’t delegation down the tree like the entire point of being a…

Every workplace, 5 different companies. Definitely the bad manager part happened, but it's very common and it's easier to name managers/companies/projects/teams that don't have this environment than the opposite!

Re: What you give up by moving into engineering management

#100

Post by mxuribe »

elzbardico wrote: post #82

To be frank? long term employability and short term job security. The lower levels of management are terrible because you don't actually manage much, and become just a glorified bellboy for upper management, passing messages back and forth. At the same time, due to disuse, your technical skills atrophy. So, it soon becomes a race to climb the corporate ladder or die.

> ...it soon becomes a race to climb the corporate ladder or die...

Oh man, i'm at the dying stage (metaphorically). I made the mistake long ago of moving to management, and have regretted it for years. But, its somewhat weird for me in that any and all of my direct reports throughout all of my decades actually love me as a technical leader...they all really like working for me, stated that they're the most productive in their lives working with me, havce felt happy coming to work, yada, yada, etc. But man, do i ever hate being management. So, over the years i thought that maybe what gives me happiness is not coding, but maybe solving problems in other ways...so i pivoted to project manager and product manager roles. Nope! While product manager roles come closest for me to get intellectual fulfillment, there's nothing more satsifying to me than coding and managing complex systems. So, then i tried coding again on the side...but unfortunately the languiages and systems that i love to play with (python and linux) are not the ones that tend to be used by the corporate companies that i jhave been employed at. So, i tried getting jobs at smaller firms...and honestly its really hit or miss. Either its some startup that i have no clue if they will survive (and hey i have bills to pay, dont have time to play games)...or its a small business where the senior leaders don't respect the value of what technology brings to an org., etc. Of course, i can always quit my jobs, and start at the bottom again, and code for peanuts...and if i get hit by a layoff, i'm not so proud that i won;t do what i must for my family...but, wow, i wish i can go back to an IC role that is more coding and managing complex systems, and less people management...for someone like my age (pushing 50).

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