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.
Don't become an engineering manager
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Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#92Earlier 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…
100% This is complicated during acquisitions… you have a new company coming in and leveling them is hard because it’s a mass title migration exercise, and nobody wants to be down-titled. In the 2 examples I’ve seen gone wrong: -the people at the parent company look at the acquisition’s team and think, “there’s no way this idiot should be a director.” -the people at the startup think they’re geniuses because they got…
In pretty much any software startup acquisition by a much larger company, even if they do technical due diligence up front they have to assume that all the code will need to be rewritten within a couple years. It's good to keep a few key technical resources around during the transition period but otherwise a high attrition level is acceptable.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Titles for ICs matter for two reasons: comp, and perf reviews. At bigger companies the amount of RSUs for Staff versus Senior can be substantial. At a startup where equity is worth nothing and salaries are in a tight band anyways it doesn't make a difference. For perf reviews your title dictates the rubric you get evaluated against, but in fact your manager is probably trying to fit a curve and then work backwards to…
They matter within a company for the reasons you cite. They mostly don't matter between companies however.
You don’t think companies look at your past titles when you apply for a job?
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#94The arguments: * It's a bad time to move away from tech As a manager your role isn't to be the "best technical person" anyway. You still need to understand fast-changing capabilities of course. But you are managing people now, and the required skills are different. See below. * The ladder is very competitive It's always competitive, and in my experience it was the exact opposite - there were far fewer VP-level techni…
I think you underestimate the job mobility that is lost when you transition from being an individual contributor into someone on the management track. The reality is, there are very few EM and above jobs, and job security is tough - if I have to choose between firing an EM or a SWE, I'd fire the EM first because I can always find another replacement or split their responsibilities across multiple individual contribut…
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.) And there were more Directors/VP's than Principals/Fellows for sure. So at some point the "ladder width" crosses over.
And if you get laid off as a senior IC, good luck getting hired into another IC position. Age discrimination is real. The robust network is a must for anyone, manager or IC, in this case.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#95I 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…
> titles (within "tech" in particular) are almost completely arbitrary
It wasn't like that some years ago.
Senior back in the days is probably your lead / staff of today.
The problem isn't just the companies but people and their expectations. You have people crying about not being made "senior" for having 2 years of experience and the world is blown apart now.
So is every company evil or broke or the social media culture these days expecting instant feedback etc?
You used to work 10+ years as an engineer and just that and it was fine.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#96One thing I will say is: I wish I had had some EM/hiring experience before starting a startup.
My technical skills served me very well in year 1/2, but once we started hiring enough people I could definitely feel my lack of experience.
Maybe big tech EM experience wouldn't have helped me a lot, the context is definitely very different, but at least it would have been some sort of baseline to draw from.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#97If you're reason to not become an engineering manager is because you live so much under a rock you're unaware of a glorified MCP ensemble tool blowing up as number one, then you're not really fit to be an engineering manager in the first place, and obviously not a very enthusiastic engineer at that.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#98I don't get this argument: don't do it, you have better otptions, but it is good for me because i enjoy it.
This article periodically surfaces in some shape or form. There's this idea that there's a "dual ladder", and the IC ladder offers just as much respect and compensation as the management one. This is a lie, and the sooner we stop telling it to the young generation - the better. Human societies have always rewarded and valued those who built hierarchies more than those who built things. If you focus on building a thin…
I think some places pitch the dual ladder a lot morethan they actually support it, but it's still there.
EM vs IC are totally different jobs though. The whole thing where you're a good IC, so you get "promoted" to being an EM is insane. There's some overlap, I guess, every job has pieces of managing other people even if it's not in the job description, but...
Just because EM offers higher positions in the hierarchy (and salaries etc to go with it) doesn't mean that accepting a "promotion" to being an EM is going to make your life better. Personally, I hated being an EM; I don't like the work, and I don't like that when I do a bad job, it directly impacts the careers of my reports.
I don't mind being a cog in someone's big project; but even if I did, I don't see how being an EM avoids it, unless you start your own thing, which I absolutely do not want to do.
I'm pretty sure I did well enough for myself in the IC track. I could have gotten bigger compensation as an EM, I suppose, but diminishing returns wouldn't have justified the additional stress. Obviously, that may depend on individual factors, everyone's path is their own and I got a lucky draw.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
They matter within a company for the reasons you cite. They mostly don't matter between companies however.
You don’t think companies look at your past titles when you apply for a job?
They may, but the amount of information they're getting is low.
As a hiring manager I'll look at progression of titles *within a company*. This shows a track record of upward mobility. But if they go from "senior" in one company to "principal" in another, I find it meaningless.
Re: Don't become an engineering manager
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article periodically surfaces in some shape or form. There's this idea that there's a "dual ladder", and the IC ladder offers just as much respect and compensation as the management one. This is a lie, and the sooner we stop telling it to the young generation - the better. Human societies have always rewarded and valued those who built hierarchies more than those who built things. If you focus on building a thin…
> There's this idea that there's a "dual ladder", and the IC ladder offers just as much respect and compensation as the management one It is not a lie. It is true IF you live and work in the Bay Area, Seattle, and TLV - which represent the bulk of tech industry employment. Companies where the underlying stack is a revenue generator and not a cost center are companies where these kinds of dual tracks exist, but these…
>It is true IF you live and work in the Bay Area, Seattle, and TLV - which represent the bulk of tech industry employment.
Is that actually true (the bulk of people in the tech industry are working in "big tech" or startups)?
I don't know if there's any hard data around this, but my understanding has been that people working for these types of companies are maybe a single digit percentage of all tech workers (if that).
People working for those companies are certainly the most vocal online, though, which maybe skews perception.