9 ms·

Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)

248 points by lornajane 3y ago

brycewray 3y ago
(2019)
zgluck 3y ago
(Context: Northern Europe) Switching jobs is quite hard as an (engineering) manager, at least if you're a bit introverted like me. Often you depend on the number of people who trust you from their experience working with you that have switched companies and have come into a trusted position there. My career: ages 20-30: Individual contributor. ages 30-45: (Engineering) manager, running product development teams of varying sizes (up to about 50 people), being all over the architecture/system design. Not really coding in a focused way. ages 45-now: Individual contributor, coding most of the time. I was really concerned I wouldn't be able to keep the interest in actual coding all day long when I went back to that, but lo and behold, I'm actually finding it more fun and rewarding than the management roles. Stress is down too. You too can recover from being a manager :).
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  thinking about making a move towards management, for a similar reason: I really enjoy programming, but after slinging code for 8 hours at work, I can't justify working on my hobby projects when I come home anymore... hoping that by using more of my "soft skills" and thinking about architecture at work, I'll be able to come home and work something like a solitaire solver without feeling like it's "non-productive"
  - zgluck 3y ago
    It will depend lots on the product/project. In my case the product we built went gangbusters for a decade. I ended up abusing/building Lego kits as form of mindless therapeutics while watching very-easy-to-digest sitcoms to wind down. I have quite the collection now. Most products/projects aren't like that that though - but perhaps the pressure is still there?
  - frabcus 3y ago
    I think over the years it's healthy to switch back and forth between management and IC, and sometimes inbetween as a tech-lead manager. Being recently hands on with the technology helps coach and assess reports and means you know the real situation of the software. Being a manager, if you carve out enough space, lets you make a highly productive, happy, successful team, and sometimes you might be the best person to do that. I think I'd find only doing one forever more a bit tiring!
  - pillefitz 3y ago
    Funny, I thought the same before switching to a product role. Reality is, it's a lot more demanding than my previous engineering role and I do a lot less private coding than before.
  - BowBun 3y ago
    Super funny, I went through the same swing. I was able to eventually cool off on technical burn out as a manager and went back to working on some personal projects. Eventually though, sitting in meetings all day for 12+ months had the same mental effect and I lost motivation and burn out increased. I'm back as an IC now and balancing my time better. I think the better solution may be to find a way to pace yourself at work so you aren't slinging code for 8 hours. It's unlikely many of your coworkers are doing the same. I think it's important to find a sustainable pace at work and to just say no to the rest. Hopefully your company supports that.
eclectic29 3y ago
Also see this comment of mine to get the full picture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36697404#36700085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36697404#36700085
yardie 3y ago
Was nearly fired once for telling the truth. Made me realize I'm not sociopathic enough to laud power over people nor do I kiss enough ass to be coddled by higher ups. I'm quite happy with my IC/senior role. I am running into the situation where pay bands are tied into titles. Once you reach the upper end of your pay band you have to gain a new title. So you'll be pushed into management track or pushed out the company. I'm pretty sure I'm headed for the latter.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > I'm pretty sure I'm headed for the latter. and what is your playbook for this given job market is not good.
  - yardie 3y ago
    Work on my MVP and travel to extend burn rate. My employer will be myself. Another reason I don’t want to be in management. Email and Slack ruin your life.
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
Lots of good points in the article. I would add the language that managers are required to speak is mind-numbing. It is Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" come to life.
pixelatedindex 3y ago
I don’t know about the part where Charity mentions it’s really really easy to get an Eng job than a manager one. As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way. And the skills not being transferrable? How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not. Finally the credit/blame - managers and people above them get paid much more than a lowly engineer. Sometimes you get blamed and then paid handsomely, lol. The hard conversations and emotional drain is true though. But generally, if you love writing code and interfacing with people equally, it’s hard not to be drawn to the appeal of the management position.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  >As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way. Managers are not having any easier of a time finding jobs right now.
- gochi 3y ago
  >How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not. Managers are viewed the same way engineers are when it comes to skill transfer, in that their "expertise" is limited to the field. Which is why it's rare to find managers who made leaps that way across fields, as they always get overlooked in favor of someone who's either already in the field or is ok with switching from a technical role into a managerial one.
  - pixelatedindex 3y ago
    I did not know that, but should have expected it.
- youngtaff 3y ago
  > he mentions Charity is not a man!
  - pixelatedindex 3y ago
thenerdhead 3y ago
> And also, the people who excel at all those management tasks, the ICs who would actually make great managers but don't want to do it? They make the best ICs. Literally a dream. They make my job so much easier in so many ways. Wouldn't trade them. Ah the cliche Steve Jobs quote. Any driven person who wants to make change at an organization knows that they have to become a manager to scale. These are all day-to-day reasons that distract from why people get into the role in the first place.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  At the current FAANG I work for, managers are so consumed by organizational overhead that there’s plenty of room for IC (ie staff engineer) to influence direction. Not sure if this applies at the VP level.
  - inhumantsar 3y ago
    This is exactly why so many companies have staff+ levels in the first place. Managers are there to handle the people and politics which gives the ICs space to do the technical side of departmental leadership.
havblue 3y ago
The fact that management doesn't directly do the work is definitely a problem. They're ultimately recycling other people's opinions to evaluate performance, perpetually out of the loop, yet they still have to be the bad guy if a project is behind schedule or there are performance problems. They are also in trouble when it comes to actually helping people finish problems: aside from buying licenses or equipment, all they can do is say, "go ask this person".
- Zetice 3y ago
  This view takes for granted the effort required to figure out who should do what and when.
marcinzm 3y ago
As I see there is an advantage for managers in terms of rising up the corporate ranks. Management titles form a strict hierarchy. So if your company grow from 10 engineer to 100 engineers then someone needs to be a Director because you "can't" have EMs report to other EMs. You can, however, have a Senior Engineer be a tech lead or help provide broader architectural plans.
danielovichdk 3y ago
When adults can't be responsible for themselves they need to be managed. When adults can be responsible they need more than one other adult to address issues and challenges with. To learn from and to teach to. Management is a industrial and corporate construct. Its put in place to force labour intense industries to tell others what they need to do. Tell is often a monologue. There is indeed need for adults to be around other adults with a sane understanding of responsibility. That's not management though. Management is often a bleak blank cover to compensate for what I would call being professional. Most often management does not work because the construct is that one (the manager) gets to rule more than the other, even though the manager might be completely wrong. Some management must be in place otherwise things will stagnate. Most management is a big fucking joke being mostly about looking good upwards. Politics. More wine...
- gundmc 3y ago
  This comment reads like something #6 from the OP would say.
  - singron 3y ago
    I think it's actually agreeing with a lot of points from #11 and #16. Obviously this is an article about why you shouldn't be a manager, so it doesn't have any reasons why you should be a manager or why management is important. They alude to the fact that someone has to do performance reviews, fire people, and resolve conflicts. The less edgy and more academic version of this is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y.
- badpun 3y ago
  The managers I've most worked with are mostly concerned with what will be built (and that is discussed with other managers as well as other stakeholders external to the team), and don't care that much about internal team dynamics. They trust the team to have enough professionalism between its members to do the work as needed, self-organise etc.
riku_iki 3y ago
One of my reasons: as an engineer you maintain much stronger "makes things done" skills, and have much better opportunity to build side business with high pay reward: it could be android/macos/windows app/saas you sell, or mvp which will attract investments.
smitty1e 3y ago
> 12) Joy is much harder to come by. Joy is an internal energy, orthogonal to the (tangentially) flat Earth that sits external to us. We might take pleasure or find satisfaction in our work, but joy is a mystical thing derived from one's faith. Whether a manager or Individual Contributor, one's capacity to find joy in the most suck-tacular experiences is the key to the next iteration of One Little Victory => https://youtu.be/o_dzB1EX_2I https://youtu.be/o_dzB1EX_2I
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  That is an amazing comment, but this is a much better upload: https://youtu.be/rMYDuPWHFAo https://youtu.be/rMYDuPWHFAo
skakagrall 3y ago
Wow, I sure hope no one who manages anyone agrees with this person.
- seattle_spring 3y ago
  Why, specifically?
baz00 3y ago
A finding I had when I took a management role was that it's really hard actually getting anyone to do a good job of something. This is utterly frustrating. So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that the teams usually divide into functional elites that do the work unattended and I'm dealing with micromanaging the rest and trying to educate them. I've spoken to managers in other sectors and it's the same for them too.
- zgluck 3y ago
  Making software is a bit special in that you can't really make use of people like that. In e.g. a supermarket you can.
  - baz00 3y ago
    That is exactly the problem. Business assumes highly technical people are fungible. They are not. There are very few highly competent people on the market. Not enough to cover realistic requirements for business. So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks.
    - lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
      > So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks. Isn't it more accurate to say they hire anybody making duck noises assuming they are wolves? Technical interviews in no way identify the skills developers are going to use in their daily work.
      - baz00 3y ago
        Finding technically competent people is easy. Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.
        whywhywhywhy 3y ago
notjustanymike 3y ago
Being a manager happens organically to some of us because the challenge of getting a system of people to work is an organic next step from getting a system of circuits to work. People create such interesting, unique, and unpredictable problems compared to systems that have become quite predictable after a number of years of experience. Really nailing a people problem gives me that same high a successful compile used to.
cat_plus_plus 3y ago
I am sick and tired of pressure to get into management once you get older and lack of other opportunities to be rewarded. If I can do job of 5 other people, I can be compensated like two others and the company is still ahead. Or if that's just my arrogance talking, there can be an objective system to measure work accomplished and set rewards accordingly. Instead all of my questions about advancement are met with demands for me to write PRDs and nag people who refuse to do work to do it, but without me actually having authority to make them. I finally decided to just not sweat over it, do work that matches my pay in 2-3 days a week and spend the rest of my time teaching better programming skills to whoever is willing to learn and has a good attitude about it. With focus on general skills that they can take to their next job rather than internal proprietary tech. I don't care that I am not getting paid extra for that, at least it feels good to be in office.
- jader201 3y ago
  > met with demands for me to write PRDs > spend the rest of my time teaching better programming skills Are you an engineer or a product manager? If you’re a PM, sounds like you should switch roles. If you're an engineer, sounds like your manager/peers don’t know that. :) But in seriousness, it sounds like there may be a mismatch somewhere.
  - rhtgrg 3y ago
    It doesn't look like a mismatch to me. Looks like L6+ engineering work.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  Business likes predictability. The chance of 5 people deciding to leave all at once is exponentially lower than a chance of 1 person. Hence, unless you are the owner/founder, your replaceability will be valued more than your performance.
  - Rexxar 3y ago
    It would be true if leaving probability were uncorrelated but in reality they are correlated so it's not such a big improvement than people usually expect.
politelemon 3y ago
What can I as a little shits engineer, do to encourage and motivate managers?
- baz00 3y ago
  As a manager we like people who actually build a house out of something other than shit and straw as we have to present that to people who don't like us and we just want a peaceful life too. So keep it simple, quality and don't get distracted by shiny things.
  - gautamdivgi 3y ago
    I’ve had the opposite situation. I’m a PE that works with a director. Problem is he’s been a lot more keen on the “shiny” than I am. After more than 25 yrs being an IC I’m definitely over the shiny. I can smell shiny tech debt miles away. Problem is trying to get the managers out of the technical path.
  - evandale 3y ago
    Sometimes I need the distraction and want to try out the shiny things. I really should find a new job because my manager has your attitude and it drives me crazy. I'm at a big corp and I can't stand the "just deal with it, there's processes and they suck but it's for the best" attitude that everyone has. I keep having the delusion that this year will be different because there has been small improvements.. but ffs. We run a Java stack and VisualVM is something I should be able to download without all the hoops. Nobody wants to help you jump through the hoops either, they just tell you to do it, and expect you to succeed.
    - baz00 3y ago
      I think you misjudge the situation. And I'm not that manager. If there's an enabler I'll help you get it out and keep the politics away from you. That's my job. But most stuff out there isn't moonshot project work. It's boring ass maintenance and minor function changes. What I don't want is when someone is asked to change a web form to find a whole fucking ReactJS stack pulled in because someone is bored or it looks good on their résumé. This does happen.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Reason number 1: I don't want to manage stuff. It's not my forte. I want your hardest problems and devise technical solutions for it. I want to write code. I don't to manage a bunch of developers. Or stakeholders, annoying everybody every day for an update.
tjmc 3y ago
Only 2019 reasons? Surely there are more
charles_f 3y ago
I just did the move back from management to ic and boy does that resonate with me. I agree with every single reason. There are some that might push you to be an manager though, and I've had some fun time with that in the past. The two main ones to me are 1. The technical side of managing, things like how do you organize work for the best, process, etc. 2. Helping people grow - which you can have as an IC but is your main goal as manager. That system of taking a step back when someone asks a question, and figure if it's a problem of skill or clarity. Both of these cannot be done when most of your energy is sunk into useless bureaucracy, as is often the case in large companies.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Manager: more stress, and roughly the same pay.
wiz21c 3y ago
Management is about having authority. That is, you're a vector: you must defend the company's values (which you may disagree with) in front of your team (which may disagree with them too). So you'd better be very aligned on those values to be happy in the job. (for example, when I was a manager, my manager's goal was to "show the rest of the company we can make websites much faster", which meant putting pressure on everyone. I disagreed with that, making things faster just to "show it can be done" at a very high human price, didn't look like a good idea. So I suffered.)
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Good management goes both ways: you need to defend your team, convince the higher-ups of its worth and ultimately help define those values. Of course, it's always possible to end up with a boss who refuses to listen or just doesn't understand, and then you're in trouble.
  - wiz21c 3y ago
    I was with a boss who refused to listen, that's for sure. Not the whole company, just him. This ended in me burned out and him gotten fired (I think I have been the one too many). Retrspectively, the guy created the conditions of a failing project and I was too unexperimented/weak to say "no" (it's pretty hard to say "we can't do it" when everythign around you ask for "we can do it"). Big lesson learned: have the courage to say no. Fortunately, the company noticed and dropped in some additional management and the projcet went on. But it was too late for my health :-( So, yeah, you can say it's nothing to do with company's core values but nevertheless, I got that feeling. And eventhough I may not be a great PM, I trust my feelings pretty much.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  That sounds like a terrible attitude. Management is about providing value to the company, and usually the best way to do that is by shielding your team from the worst of what's coming down by being an advocate for your team and what they do, and communicating the real situation as well as possible. You work with adults, if they know what they are doing and why they will prioritize well
oytis 3y ago
Anecdotally I haven't observed managers having more difficulties job hopping than engineers. In fact managers are often the first to jump the ship in stormy weather.
- higeorge13 3y ago
  And once they reach the director/vp/c levels it’s even easier to do so, independent on their achievements. They always throw the classic ‘grew the team from x to y people, and from i teams to k teams’ and get an offer.
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    Why would it be easier? The higher up you go, the less positions are available, and the competition for them is stronger.
    - oytis 3y ago
      There are fewer positions, but as usual people who already reached the required level have a hard priority. So it's only harder if the total number of management positions is shrinking faster than total number of engineering positions (which might we'll be the case now though).
bbsimonbb 3y ago
> Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. Software is a new industry, we're only just starting to get it right, and put behind us a litany of failed projects and methodologies. Every decision in a software company has a technical aspect. I personally am absolutely over non-technical managers and the aberrant strategies and directions they set out on. In my jaundiced view, any software company not led by developers is just waiting to be blown out of the water. But don't let that detract from an intelligent, heart-felt and thought-provoking article :-)
- oytis 3y ago
  The thing that makes best managers IMO is the lack of ambition to be leaders. They understand their role as helping engineers do their job and grow and do that well. Whether you need technical expertise for that is an open question. In my career I've seen bad managers both with and without technical background, while good managers all had some experience as engineers - but my sample size is quite small.
- s_dev 3y ago
  > > Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. I don't see the problem here either. Sounds like somebody overheard that comment and had no real answer hence "they're a shitbird". I want to take instruction from managers who have literally done the thing they're asking for. There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are former players I don't see why that should be different from software -- even those managers who didn't play professional football often have a pro background in another team sport.
  - tomtheelder 3y ago
    > There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are former players The reason there is nepotism. It’s insanely difficult for anyone without preexisting connections to get any sort of coaching opportunity. I definitely think ex players make worse coaches, generally speaking. They just have an almost insurmountable leg up. I do think eng managers should be technical, though. Not because I think you need to have done a job to manage it, but because they are frequently asked to make what amount to being technical decisions.
gigatexal 3y ago
Holy smokes this was a timely post... I am strongly considering moving into a team lead role with the idea that I might move into engineering management afterwards. What's the trend w.r.t mgmt in healthy companies? I have seen the atherosclerosis-like effect of many many fiefdoms at the current "${JOB}" and the crushing burden of too many middle managers. Will the successful companies of the future (today?) have fewer managers and many more engineers? Anecdotally I am seeing many more managers being laid off on my personal LinkedIn timeline than ICs... One reason I'd like to get into leadership/mgmt is to have a greater say in team culture, tech choices, what gets done and what gets sidelined, etc. I feel currently very little power. Sure I could become a staff level or higher engineer and have some pull but it'll only be something that: "gets taken into advisement" rather than some edict given/decided by a manager or managers. Is my thinking completely wrong?
svilen_dobrev 3y ago
well, i think i did my 2 years term (eh) trying to be CTO/head-of-eng in not-that-organised setup.. and heh, was never given the manager powers/tools. But got things like deciding over my head and workarounding me. before i started, i read the Managers Path of Camille Fournier... REALLY good book - and the only thing that did not match with me was "you cannot be friends with them (below) anymore". Which, sadly, is mostly true. But i did not expect the other parts. Politics that is not called politics. So, yeah, looking for Mentoring/ Principal/ Staff/ Whatever-you-call-that - in my 35years making software i have-been even life coach (of few chosens) but seems not a Manager (of whoever run-of-the-mill is there) ah. have fun. www.svilendobrev.com edit: and the lesson is: you can only be a proper manager if you have proper "manager" above..
KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
I'm an experienced engineer that's been a manager for three years. I'm now returning to an engineering role. Having been a manager and having learned what it means to scale your ability to have impact and to land impact purely through leveraging others, I feel far more equipped to be the kind of engineer that I would like to manage. More than that, one of the best experiences I've had as a manager is to be able to dissuade myself of many of the misconceptions and stereotypes that are rife in this thread. I'd strongly advise non-managers in the thread to read Charity's other blog posts such as the Engineer/Manager Pendulum too.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  I made the move to full-time management after about 16 years as a hands-on Engineer & tech lead. As a high-level Engineer, I was very much into mentorship, influence, architecture, and process, so it felt natural to go into management. After a few years, I moved back to being an IC because it was very hard to not "control my own destiny" through hands-on contributions. As it turns out, going back to being hands-on made me realize that I'd kinda been-there, done that in terms of the things I wanted to get done myself. I really missed a) playing an integral role in the career growth of others and b) the strategic level thinking of being an upper-level manager, so I went back to full-time management. There are times where I still think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but then I have those moments where someone on my team or in my org will thank me for supporting them or how that X that I've done has reduced the hassle of their day.
T3RMINATED 3y ago
[dead]
lizknope 3y ago
15) Meetings. I look at my director and senior directors schedule in Outlook. It is 6 to 10 hours of meetings per day. They often start at 6am and might go until midnight because the company is worldwide. Meetings with people in India, China, Singapore, Israel, Europe, east and west coast US. I get annoyed if I have more than 2 hours of a meetings a day. I get really annoyed when they interfere with my personal life outside of normal work hours. I may be working from home at 6am or 11pm mostly to monitor jobs and check results. But I don't want to have a meeting at those times.
- sirsinsalot 3y ago
  Unless I am paid by the hour, there's nothing making me do more than 8 hours per day. Even if I am paid hourly (I am) ... it's rare. I am not sure what kind of people do that, but if it's managers, then EM/Lead is as far down that path I want to go.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  Companies will say look at all the money we're saving by by hiring people in India/China/whereever meanwhile the managers are stuck taking calls at all hours of the day. The saving are really enabled by the manager working these extra hours to support international teams.
- havblue 3y ago
  While I think people who organize these meetings might have a benefit of being able to keep track of everyone, I'm usually surprised how much dead time there is when people discuss what they're working on and there are only 2 or 3 people who are involved in the discussion while 20 or so other people are on the clock doing nothing. The manager might reply that everyone should know and care about everything happening but this is never the case.
- cvhashim04 3y ago
  Those managers sound like pushovers.
  - lizknope 3y ago
noufalibrahim 3y ago
I was a technical IC for the majority of my career and apart from leading small teams technically, didn't do much management. However, i picked it up when i started my own company and it has considerably changed my pov. Hard conversations, managing time, developing people, building the organisation, delivering value to clients and a ton of other things which i couldn't dream of doing as an IC have been possible and extremely rewarding. I think the article makes a few good points but on the overall, I feel that an younger, immature and less clued in me would resonate with it more than me now.
- BowBun 3y ago
  Your experience is very, very different than what the article was about. Starting your own company means you have ownership and pride of everything going on in the business. That motivation and entrepreneurial spirit will obviously paint everything in pink, at least for a while. Imagine having those responsibities, but nearly no decision-making power. All those messy human behaviors are now coming at you from above and below. What's tough is that to do management well, you need a level of freedom like what you experience as a founder. However, most managers with their own bosses will never get that level of freedom and have to somewhat conform to existing culture/process.
  - noufalibrahim 3y ago
    Thanks. That's a useful perspective. I read it as a general screed on managers in general. Not on improperly structured environments that don't enable managers to do good work which I understand is what you read from the article.
    - BowBun 3y ago
      Unfortunately you did not understand what I read from the article. Thanks for the attempt though. Maybe "an younger, immature and less clued in me would resonate with it more than me now" :eyeroll:
      - 3y ago
bl4ckm0r3 3y ago
To me there are 2 main reasons: 1) ownership - the manager does not really own the way the team works, in most cases it's just applying processes defined somewhere else (career progression, expectations, OKRs, sdlc, internal processes and the way the team works) 2) the eternal doubt - managing teams and people is not a science (that's why there are thousands of books claiming they have found the formula) and people are always different (different motivators, interests, personalities), and usually managers don't get proper training, and if they do it's more about facilitating discussions and giving feedback than anything else. This creates a lot of uncertainty over the actions that a manager take as the results, often, arrive later in time than, let's say, building a feature. And the reality is that it's a complete different job than being an IC and most people don't realize this until they are deep into it. ps to people talking about meetings, the reality is that this depends a lot on company culture and organization...in general the more the meetings the worse the culture (because it means that there aren't really good processes to share status updates and people don't take advantage of async communication as much as they should, but still want to be on top of everything so there isn't really much delegation and trust).
benreesman 3y ago
It’s possible that I’m misreading sarcasm or something. But point 6, “engineers can be little shits”, about how asking if the person in charge of you understands the work going on is mildly offensive for the obvious reasons, and extremely offensive for how fucking stupid it is. Knowing how to do something is not an absurd ask of being responsible for that thing being done. I only ever got up to 3 dozen-ish reports as an EM, but to the extent I ever lapsed in being able to read a diff, that was me just failing. EMs should know a lot about engineering. That’s what “Engineering” and “Manager” mean. Like, in the dictionary.
- BowBun 3y ago
  That's just not reality. Many EMs are not necessarily proficient or even knowledgeable in the stack. It depends on the company. EM doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Last week I applied to an EM role that was 100% people management where my tech experience did not matter much. I also applied to one that was still a majority technical/architecture design, that some would consider a 'tech lead' or something like that. Being offended by it is kind of funny. You'll probably have a boss like that eventually.
  - benreesman 3y ago
    I’ve known lots of people who aren’t technical to the level of an engineer but still crazy smart and high-value in teams. They’re usually called project managers. Calling them engineering managers and acting like it’s good to have EMs who can’t code is an anti-pattern. Just call them PMs and let them do all the high value stuff they do.
harimau777 3y ago
Personally, I don't so much want to be a manager as I want to get away from the BS of being an individual contributor. I'm tired of having my warnings about things like tech debt and code quality ignored; only to be expected to fix everything and maintain deadlines when everything falls apart. I'm tired of being compared to engineers who get things done quicker because they cut corners and build up tech debt. I'm tired of caring about my craft when managers just want people who churn out slop.
karaterobot 3y ago
Some more: * The politics and alliance building required to get anything done is both absurd and exhausting. * You get it from both sides: leadership is pissed off because of X, individual contributors are pissed off because of Y. In both cases they are pissed off at you, or at least pissed off at something and using you as a pin cushion. * You have to pretend to care about things. A good individual contributor can get away with an attitude of "I'll work on whatever you want me to work on, but this is just a job to me", whereas a manager is expected to be a loyal and excited booster of whatever stupid shit the company is up to. * Generally I worked harder as a manager than as an IC, and the work was more stressful. The pay bump was not as significant as the stress bump. I've also worked at places (like my current job) where ICs make more than PMs. I am an IC here, and have no idea why anyone would ever take a PM job here. Sure enough, we can't keep them around. * Do you like to consider all options and really think through a decision before you make it? Well, get used to being asked for definitive, snap judgments all day, every day.
zapregniqp 3y ago
Being a manager often involves additional time commitments, including meetings, administrative tasks, and mentoring employees. Some people may prefer to prioritize their personal time or work on other projects without managerial responsibilities.
moonbunR 3y ago
Not everyone aspires to climb the corporate ladder or take on higher management roles. Some individuals may be content and fulfilled by pursuing specialized expertise or contributing in other ways.
spektom 3y ago
I used to think that it's much harder to find a manager job than a dev job. Eventually I learned that this is not the case - quite the opposite. There is obviously lack of good managers. After reading "Peoplewhare" I understood why. There are two main manager objectives: 1) Advance the project 2) Advance the people. I can't even imagine how one finds a symbiosis between people's ambitions and project needs. Someone has to get hurt.

248 points by lornajane 3y ago

(2019)

(Context: Northern Europe) Switching jobs is quite hard as an (engineering) manager, at least if you're a bit introverted like me. Often you depend on the number of people who trust you from their experience working with you that have switched companies and have come into a trusted position there. My career: ages 20-30: Individual contributor. ages 30-45: (Engineering) manager, running product development teams of varying sizes (up to about 50 people), being all over the architecture/system design. Not really coding in a focused way. ages 45-now: Individual contributor, coding most of the time. I was really concerned I wouldn't be able to keep the interest in actual coding all day long when I went back to that, but lo and behold, I'm actually finding it more fun and rewarding than the management roles. Stress is down too. You too can recover from being a manager :).

jareklupinski 3y ago
thinking about making a move towards management, for a similar reason: I really enjoy programming, but after slinging code for 8 hours at work, I can't justify working on my hobby projects when I come home anymore... hoping that by using more of my "soft skills" and thinking about architecture at work, I'll be able to come home and work something like a solitaire solver without feeling like it's "non-productive"
- zgluck 3y ago
  It will depend lots on the product/project. In my case the product we built went gangbusters for a decade. I ended up abusing/building Lego kits as form of mindless therapeutics while watching very-easy-to-digest sitcoms to wind down. I have quite the collection now. Most products/projects aren't like that that though - but perhaps the pressure is still there?
- frabcus 3y ago
  I think over the years it's healthy to switch back and forth between management and IC, and sometimes inbetween as a tech-lead manager. Being recently hands on with the technology helps coach and assess reports and means you know the real situation of the software. Being a manager, if you carve out enough space, lets you make a highly productive, happy, successful team, and sometimes you might be the best person to do that. I think I'd find only doing one forever more a bit tiring!
- pillefitz 3y ago
  Funny, I thought the same before switching to a product role. Reality is, it's a lot more demanding than my previous engineering role and I do a lot less private coding than before.
- BowBun 3y ago
  Super funny, I went through the same swing. I was able to eventually cool off on technical burn out as a manager and went back to working on some personal projects. Eventually though, sitting in meetings all day for 12+ months had the same mental effect and I lost motivation and burn out increased. I'm back as an IC now and balancing my time better. I think the better solution may be to find a way to pace yourself at work so you aren't slinging code for 8 hours. It's unlikely many of your coworkers are doing the same. I think it's important to find a sustainable pace at work and to just say no to the rest. Hopefully your company supports that.

eclectic29 3y ago

Also see this comment of mine to get the full picture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36697404#36700085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36697404#36700085

yardie 3y ago

Was nearly fired once for telling the truth. Made me realize I'm not sociopathic enough to laud power over people nor do I kiss enough ass to be coddled by higher ups. I'm quite happy with my IC/senior role. I am running into the situation where pay bands are tied into titles. Once you reach the upper end of your pay band you have to gain a new title. So you'll be pushed into management track or pushed out the company. I'm pretty sure I'm headed for the latter.

riku_iki 3y ago
> I'm pretty sure I'm headed for the latter. and what is your playbook for this given job market is not good.
- yardie 3y ago
  Work on my MVP and travel to extend burn rate. My employer will be myself. Another reason I don’t want to be in management. Email and Slack ruin your life.

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

Lots of good points in the article. I would add the language that managers are required to speak is mind-numbing. It is Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" come to life.

pixelatedindex 3y ago

I don’t know about the part where Charity mentions it’s really really easy to get an Eng job than a manager one. As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way. And the skills not being transferrable? How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not. Finally the credit/blame - managers and people above them get paid much more than a lowly engineer. Sometimes you get blamed and then paid handsomely, lol. The hard conversations and emotional drain is true though. But generally, if you love writing code and interfacing with people equally, it’s hard not to be drawn to the appeal of the management position.

marcinzm 3y ago
>As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way. Managers are not having any easier of a time finding jobs right now.
gochi 3y ago
>How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not. Managers are viewed the same way engineers are when it comes to skill transfer, in that their "expertise" is limited to the field. Which is why it's rare to find managers who made leaps that way across fields, as they always get overlooked in favor of someone who's either already in the field or is ok with switching from a technical role into a managerial one.
- pixelatedindex 3y ago
  I did not know that, but should have expected it.
youngtaff 3y ago
> he mentions Charity is not a man!
- pixelatedindex 3y ago

thenerdhead 3y ago

> And also, the people who excel at all those management tasks, the ICs who would actually make great managers but don't want to do it? They make the best ICs. Literally a dream. They make my job so much easier in so many ways. Wouldn't trade them. Ah the cliche Steve Jobs quote. Any driven person who wants to make change at an organization knows that they have to become a manager to scale. These are all day-to-day reasons that distract from why people get into the role in the first place.

jnwatson 3y ago
At the current FAANG I work for, managers are so consumed by organizational overhead that there’s plenty of room for IC (ie staff engineer) to influence direction. Not sure if this applies at the VP level.
- inhumantsar 3y ago
  This is exactly why so many companies have staff+ levels in the first place. Managers are there to handle the people and politics which gives the ICs space to do the technical side of departmental leadership.

havblue 3y ago

The fact that management doesn't directly do the work is definitely a problem. They're ultimately recycling other people's opinions to evaluate performance, perpetually out of the loop, yet they still have to be the bad guy if a project is behind schedule or there are performance problems. They are also in trouble when it comes to actually helping people finish problems: aside from buying licenses or equipment, all they can do is say, "go ask this person".

Zetice 3y ago
This view takes for granted the effort required to figure out who should do what and when.

marcinzm 3y ago

As I see there is an advantage for managers in terms of rising up the corporate ranks. Management titles form a strict hierarchy. So if your company grow from 10 engineer to 100 engineers then someone needs to be a Director because you "can't" have EMs report to other EMs. You can, however, have a Senior Engineer be a tech lead or help provide broader architectural plans.

danielovichdk 3y ago

When adults can't be responsible for themselves they need to be managed. When adults can be responsible they need more than one other adult to address issues and challenges with. To learn from and to teach to. Management is a industrial and corporate construct. Its put in place to force labour intense industries to tell others what they need to do. Tell is often a monologue. There is indeed need for adults to be around other adults with a sane understanding of responsibility. That's not management though. Management is often a bleak blank cover to compensate for what I would call being professional. Most often management does not work because the construct is that one (the manager) gets to rule more than the other, even though the manager might be completely wrong. Some management must be in place otherwise things will stagnate. Most management is a big fucking joke being mostly about looking good upwards. Politics. More wine...

gundmc 3y ago
This comment reads like something #6 from the OP would say.
- singron 3y ago
  I think it's actually agreeing with a lot of points from #11 and #16. Obviously this is an article about why you shouldn't be a manager, so it doesn't have any reasons why you should be a manager or why management is important. They alude to the fact that someone has to do performance reviews, fire people, and resolve conflicts. The less edgy and more academic version of this is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y.
badpun 3y ago
The managers I've most worked with are mostly concerned with what will be built (and that is discussed with other managers as well as other stakeholders external to the team), and don't care that much about internal team dynamics. They trust the team to have enough professionalism between its members to do the work as needed, self-organise etc.

riku_iki 3y ago

One of my reasons: as an engineer you maintain much stronger "makes things done" skills, and have much better opportunity to build side business with high pay reward: it could be android/macos/windows app/saas you sell, or mvp which will attract investments.

smitty1e 3y ago

> 12) Joy is much harder to come by. Joy is an internal energy, orthogonal to the (tangentially) flat Earth that sits external to us. We might take pleasure or find satisfaction in our work, but joy is a mystical thing derived from one's faith. Whether a manager or Individual Contributor, one's capacity to find joy in the most suck-tacular experiences is the key to the next iteration of One Little Victory => https://youtu.be/o_dzB1EX_2I https://youtu.be/o_dzB1EX_2I

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
That is an amazing comment, but this is a much better upload: https://youtu.be/rMYDuPWHFAo https://youtu.be/rMYDuPWHFAo

skakagrall 3y ago

Wow, I sure hope no one who manages anyone agrees with this person.

seattle_spring 3y ago
Why, specifically?

baz00 3y ago

A finding I had when I took a management role was that it's really hard actually getting anyone to do a good job of something. This is utterly frustrating. So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that the teams usually divide into functional elites that do the work unattended and I'm dealing with micromanaging the rest and trying to educate them. I've spoken to managers in other sectors and it's the same for them too.

zgluck 3y ago
Making software is a bit special in that you can't really make use of people like that. In e.g. a supermarket you can.
- baz00 3y ago
  That is exactly the problem. Business assumes highly technical people are fungible. They are not. There are very few highly competent people on the market. Not enough to cover realistic requirements for business. So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks.
  - lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
    > So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks. Isn't it more accurate to say they hire anybody making duck noises assuming they are wolves? Technical interviews in no way identify the skills developers are going to use in their daily work.
    - baz00 3y ago
      Finding technically competent people is easy. Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.
      - whywhywhywhy 3y ago

notjustanymike 3y ago

Being a manager happens organically to some of us because the challenge of getting a system of people to work is an organic next step from getting a system of circuits to work. People create such interesting, unique, and unpredictable problems compared to systems that have become quite predictable after a number of years of experience. Really nailing a people problem gives me that same high a successful compile used to.

cat_plus_plus 3y ago

I am sick and tired of pressure to get into management once you get older and lack of other opportunities to be rewarded. If I can do job of 5 other people, I can be compensated like two others and the company is still ahead. Or if that's just my arrogance talking, there can be an objective system to measure work accomplished and set rewards accordingly. Instead all of my questions about advancement are met with demands for me to write PRDs and nag people who refuse to do work to do it, but without me actually having authority to make them. I finally decided to just not sweat over it, do work that matches my pay in 2-3 days a week and spend the rest of my time teaching better programming skills to whoever is willing to learn and has a good attitude about it. With focus on general skills that they can take to their next job rather than internal proprietary tech. I don't care that I am not getting paid extra for that, at least it feels good to be in office.

jader201 3y ago
> met with demands for me to write PRDs > spend the rest of my time teaching better programming skills Are you an engineer or a product manager? If you’re a PM, sounds like you should switch roles. If you're an engineer, sounds like your manager/peers don’t know that. :) But in seriousness, it sounds like there may be a mismatch somewhere.
- rhtgrg 3y ago
  It doesn't look like a mismatch to me. Looks like L6+ engineering work.
matrix_overload 3y ago
Business likes predictability. The chance of 5 people deciding to leave all at once is exponentially lower than a chance of 1 person. Hence, unless you are the owner/founder, your replaceability will be valued more than your performance.
- Rexxar 3y ago
  It would be true if leaving probability were uncorrelated but in reality they are correlated so it's not such a big improvement than people usually expect.

politelemon 3y ago

What can I as a little shits engineer, do to encourage and motivate managers?

baz00 3y ago
As a manager we like people who actually build a house out of something other than shit and straw as we have to present that to people who don't like us and we just want a peaceful life too. So keep it simple, quality and don't get distracted by shiny things.
- gautamdivgi 3y ago
  I’ve had the opposite situation. I’m a PE that works with a director. Problem is he’s been a lot more keen on the “shiny” than I am. After more than 25 yrs being an IC I’m definitely over the shiny. I can smell shiny tech debt miles away. Problem is trying to get the managers out of the technical path.
- evandale 3y ago
  Sometimes I need the distraction and want to try out the shiny things. I really should find a new job because my manager has your attitude and it drives me crazy. I'm at a big corp and I can't stand the "just deal with it, there's processes and they suck but it's for the best" attitude that everyone has. I keep having the delusion that this year will be different because there has been small improvements.. but ffs. We run a Java stack and VisualVM is something I should be able to download without all the hoops. Nobody wants to help you jump through the hoops either, they just tell you to do it, and expect you to succeed.
  - baz00 3y ago
    I think you misjudge the situation. And I'm not that manager. If there's an enabler I'll help you get it out and keep the politics away from you. That's my job. But most stuff out there isn't moonshot project work. It's boring ass maintenance and minor function changes. What I don't want is when someone is asked to change a web form to find a whole fucking ReactJS stack pulled in because someone is bored or it looks good on their résumé. This does happen.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

Reason number 1: I don't want to manage stuff. It's not my forte. I want your hardest problems and devise technical solutions for it. I want to write code. I don't to manage a bunch of developers. Or stakeholders, annoying everybody every day for an update.

tjmc 3y ago

Only 2019 reasons? Surely there are more

charles_f 3y ago

I just did the move back from management to ic and boy does that resonate with me. I agree with every single reason. There are some that might push you to be an manager though, and I've had some fun time with that in the past. The two main ones to me are 1. The technical side of managing, things like how do you organize work for the best, process, etc. 2. Helping people grow - which you can have as an IC but is your main goal as manager. That system of taking a step back when someone asks a question, and figure if it's a problem of skill or clarity. Both of these cannot be done when most of your energy is sunk into useless bureaucracy, as is often the case in large companies.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Manager: more stress, and roughly the same pay.

wiz21c 3y ago

Management is about having authority. That is, you're a vector: you must defend the company's values (which you may disagree with) in front of your team (which may disagree with them too). So you'd better be very aligned on those values to be happy in the job. (for example, when I was a manager, my manager's goal was to "show the rest of the company we can make websites much faster", which meant putting pressure on everyone. I disagreed with that, making things faster just to "show it can be done" at a very high human price, didn't look like a good idea. So I suffered.)

resolutebat 3y ago
Good management goes both ways: you need to defend your team, convince the higher-ups of its worth and ultimately help define those values. Of course, it's always possible to end up with a boss who refuses to listen or just doesn't understand, and then you're in trouble.
- wiz21c 3y ago
  I was with a boss who refused to listen, that's for sure. Not the whole company, just him. This ended in me burned out and him gotten fired (I think I have been the one too many). Retrspectively, the guy created the conditions of a failing project and I was too unexperimented/weak to say "no" (it's pretty hard to say "we can't do it" when everythign around you ask for "we can do it"). Big lesson learned: have the courage to say no. Fortunately, the company noticed and dropped in some additional management and the projcet went on. But it was too late for my health :-( So, yeah, you can say it's nothing to do with company's core values but nevertheless, I got that feeling. And eventhough I may not be a great PM, I trust my feelings pretty much.
RugnirViking 3y ago
That sounds like a terrible attitude. Management is about providing value to the company, and usually the best way to do that is by shielding your team from the worst of what's coming down by being an advocate for your team and what they do, and communicating the real situation as well as possible. You work with adults, if they know what they are doing and why they will prioritize well

oytis 3y ago

Anecdotally I haven't observed managers having more difficulties job hopping than engineers. In fact managers are often the first to jump the ship in stormy weather.

higeorge13 3y ago
And once they reach the director/vp/c levels it’s even easier to do so, independent on their achievements. They always throw the classic ‘grew the team from x to y people, and from i teams to k teams’ and get an offer.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Why would it be easier? The higher up you go, the less positions are available, and the competition for them is stronger.
  - oytis 3y ago
    There are fewer positions, but as usual people who already reached the required level have a hard priority. So it's only harder if the total number of management positions is shrinking faster than total number of engineering positions (which might we'll be the case now though).

bbsimonbb 3y ago

> Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. Software is a new industry, we're only just starting to get it right, and put behind us a litany of failed projects and methodologies. Every decision in a software company has a technical aspect. I personally am absolutely over non-technical managers and the aberrant strategies and directions they set out on. In my jaundiced view, any software company not led by developers is just waiting to be blown out of the water. But don't let that detract from an intelligent, heart-felt and thought-provoking article :-)

oytis 3y ago
The thing that makes best managers IMO is the lack of ambition to be leaders. They understand their role as helping engineers do their job and grow and do that well. Whether you need technical expertise for that is an open question. In my career I've seen bad managers both with and without technical background, while good managers all had some experience as engineers - but my sample size is quite small.
s_dev 3y ago
> > Basically everyone who utters the question “.. but how technical are they?” in that particular tone of voice is a shitbird. I don't see the problem here either. Sounds like somebody overheard that comment and had no real answer hence "they're a shitbird". I want to take instruction from managers who have literally done the thing they're asking for. There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are former players I don't see why that should be different from software -- even those managers who didn't play professional football often have a pro background in another team sport.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  > There is a reason vast majority of football coaches/managers are former players The reason there is nepotism. It’s insanely difficult for anyone without preexisting connections to get any sort of coaching opportunity. I definitely think ex players make worse coaches, generally speaking. They just have an almost insurmountable leg up. I do think eng managers should be technical, though. Not because I think you need to have done a job to manage it, but because they are frequently asked to make what amount to being technical decisions.

gigatexal 3y ago

Holy smokes this was a timely post... I am strongly considering moving into a team lead role with the idea that I might move into engineering management afterwards. What's the trend w.r.t mgmt in healthy companies? I have seen the atherosclerosis-like effect of many many fiefdoms at the current "${JOB}" and the crushing burden of too many middle managers. Will the successful companies of the future (today?) have fewer managers and many more engineers? Anecdotally I am seeing many more managers being laid off on my personal LinkedIn timeline than ICs... One reason I'd like to get into leadership/mgmt is to have a greater say in team culture, tech choices, what gets done and what gets sidelined, etc. I feel currently very little power. Sure I could become a staff level or higher engineer and have some pull but it'll only be something that: "gets taken into advisement" rather than some edict given/decided by a manager or managers. Is my thinking completely wrong?

svilen_dobrev 3y ago

well, i think i did my 2 years term (eh) trying to be CTO/head-of-eng in not-that-organised setup.. and heh, was never given the manager powers/tools. But got things like deciding over my head and workarounding me. before i started, i read the Managers Path of Camille Fournier... REALLY good book - and the only thing that did not match with me was "you cannot be friends with them (below) anymore". Which, sadly, is mostly true. But i did not expect the other parts. Politics that is not called politics. So, yeah, looking for Mentoring/ Principal/ Staff/ Whatever-you-call-that - in my 35years making software i have-been even life coach (of few chosens) but seems not a Manager (of whoever run-of-the-mill is there) ah. have fun. www.svilendobrev.com edit: and the lesson is: you can only be a proper manager if you have proper "manager" above..

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago

I'm an experienced engineer that's been a manager for three years. I'm now returning to an engineering role. Having been a manager and having learned what it means to scale your ability to have impact and to land impact purely through leveraging others, I feel far more equipped to be the kind of engineer that I would like to manage. More than that, one of the best experiences I've had as a manager is to be able to dissuade myself of many of the misconceptions and stereotypes that are rife in this thread. I'd strongly advise non-managers in the thread to read Charity's other blog posts such as the Engineer/Manager Pendulum too.

fatnoah 3y ago
I made the move to full-time management after about 16 years as a hands-on Engineer & tech lead. As a high-level Engineer, I was very much into mentorship, influence, architecture, and process, so it felt natural to go into management. After a few years, I moved back to being an IC because it was very hard to not "control my own destiny" through hands-on contributions. As it turns out, going back to being hands-on made me realize that I'd kinda been-there, done that in terms of the things I wanted to get done myself. I really missed a) playing an integral role in the career growth of others and b) the strategic level thinking of being an upper-level manager, so I went back to full-time management. There are times where I still think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but then I have those moments where someone on my team or in my org will thank me for supporting them or how that X that I've done has reduced the hassle of their day.

T3RMINATED 3y ago

[dead]

lizknope 3y ago

15) Meetings. I look at my director and senior directors schedule in Outlook. It is 6 to 10 hours of meetings per day. They often start at 6am and might go until midnight because the company is worldwide. Meetings with people in India, China, Singapore, Israel, Europe, east and west coast US. I get annoyed if I have more than 2 hours of a meetings a day. I get really annoyed when they interfere with my personal life outside of normal work hours. I may be working from home at 6am or 11pm mostly to monitor jobs and check results. But I don't want to have a meeting at those times.

sirsinsalot 3y ago
Unless I am paid by the hour, there's nothing making me do more than 8 hours per day. Even if I am paid hourly (I am) ... it's rare. I am not sure what kind of people do that, but if it's managers, then EM/Lead is as far down that path I want to go.
mdgrech23 3y ago
Companies will say look at all the money we're saving by by hiring people in India/China/whereever meanwhile the managers are stuck taking calls at all hours of the day. The saving are really enabled by the manager working these extra hours to support international teams.
havblue 3y ago
While I think people who organize these meetings might have a benefit of being able to keep track of everyone, I'm usually surprised how much dead time there is when people discuss what they're working on and there are only 2 or 3 people who are involved in the discussion while 20 or so other people are on the clock doing nothing. The manager might reply that everyone should know and care about everything happening but this is never the case.
cvhashim04 3y ago
Those managers sound like pushovers.
- lizknope 3y ago

noufalibrahim 3y ago

I was a technical IC for the majority of my career and apart from leading small teams technically, didn't do much management. However, i picked it up when i started my own company and it has considerably changed my pov. Hard conversations, managing time, developing people, building the organisation, delivering value to clients and a ton of other things which i couldn't dream of doing as an IC have been possible and extremely rewarding. I think the article makes a few good points but on the overall, I feel that an younger, immature and less clued in me would resonate with it more than me now.

BowBun 3y ago
Your experience is very, very different than what the article was about. Starting your own company means you have ownership and pride of everything going on in the business. That motivation and entrepreneurial spirit will obviously paint everything in pink, at least for a while. Imagine having those responsibities, but nearly no decision-making power. All those messy human behaviors are now coming at you from above and below. What's tough is that to do management well, you need a level of freedom like what you experience as a founder. However, most managers with their own bosses will never get that level of freedom and have to somewhat conform to existing culture/process.
- noufalibrahim 3y ago
  Thanks. That's a useful perspective. I read it as a general screed on managers in general. Not on improperly structured environments that don't enable managers to do good work which I understand is what you read from the article.
  - BowBun 3y ago
    Unfortunately you did not understand what I read from the article. Thanks for the attempt though. Maybe "an younger, immature and less clued in me would resonate with it more than me now" :eyeroll:
    - 3y ago

bl4ckm0r3 3y ago

To me there are 2 main reasons: 1) ownership - the manager does not really own the way the team works, in most cases it's just applying processes defined somewhere else (career progression, expectations, OKRs, sdlc, internal processes and the way the team works) 2) the eternal doubt - managing teams and people is not a science (that's why there are thousands of books claiming they have found the formula) and people are always different (different motivators, interests, personalities), and usually managers don't get proper training, and if they do it's more about facilitating discussions and giving feedback than anything else. This creates a lot of uncertainty over the actions that a manager take as the results, often, arrive later in time than, let's say, building a feature. And the reality is that it's a complete different job than being an IC and most people don't realize this until they are deep into it. ps to people talking about meetings, the reality is that this depends a lot on company culture and organization...in general the more the meetings the worse the culture (because it means that there aren't really good processes to share status updates and people don't take advantage of async communication as much as they should, but still want to be on top of everything so there isn't really much delegation and trust).

benreesman 3y ago

It’s possible that I’m misreading sarcasm or something. But point 6, “engineers can be little shits”, about how asking if the person in charge of you understands the work going on is mildly offensive for the obvious reasons, and extremely offensive for how fucking stupid it is. Knowing how to do something is not an absurd ask of being responsible for that thing being done. I only ever got up to 3 dozen-ish reports as an EM, but to the extent I ever lapsed in being able to read a diff, that was me just failing. EMs should know a lot about engineering. That’s what “Engineering” and “Manager” mean. Like, in the dictionary.

BowBun 3y ago
That's just not reality. Many EMs are not necessarily proficient or even knowledgeable in the stack. It depends on the company. EM doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Last week I applied to an EM role that was 100% people management where my tech experience did not matter much. I also applied to one that was still a majority technical/architecture design, that some would consider a 'tech lead' or something like that. Being offended by it is kind of funny. You'll probably have a boss like that eventually.
- benreesman 3y ago
  I’ve known lots of people who aren’t technical to the level of an engineer but still crazy smart and high-value in teams. They’re usually called project managers. Calling them engineering managers and acting like it’s good to have EMs who can’t code is an anti-pattern. Just call them PMs and let them do all the high value stuff they do.

harimau777 3y ago

Personally, I don't so much want to be a manager as I want to get away from the BS of being an individual contributor. I'm tired of having my warnings about things like tech debt and code quality ignored; only to be expected to fix everything and maintain deadlines when everything falls apart. I'm tired of being compared to engineers who get things done quicker because they cut corners and build up tech debt. I'm tired of caring about my craft when managers just want people who churn out slop.

karaterobot 3y ago

Some more: * The politics and alliance building required to get anything done is both absurd and exhausting. * You get it from both sides: leadership is pissed off because of X, individual contributors are pissed off because of Y. In both cases they are pissed off at you, or at least pissed off at something and using you as a pin cushion. * You have to pretend to care about things. A good individual contributor can get away with an attitude of "I'll work on whatever you want me to work on, but this is just a job to me", whereas a manager is expected to be a loyal and excited booster of whatever stupid shit the company is up to. * Generally I worked harder as a manager than as an IC, and the work was more stressful. The pay bump was not as significant as the stress bump. I've also worked at places (like my current job) where ICs make more than PMs. I am an IC here, and have no idea why anyone would ever take a PM job here. Sure enough, we can't keep them around. * Do you like to consider all options and really think through a decision before you make it? Well, get used to being asked for definitive, snap judgments all day, every day.

zapregniqp 3y ago

Being a manager often involves additional time commitments, including meetings, administrative tasks, and mentoring employees. Some people may prefer to prioritize their personal time or work on other projects without managerial responsibilities.

moonbunR 3y ago

Not everyone aspires to climb the corporate ladder or take on higher management roles. Some individuals may be content and fulfilled by pursuing specialized expertise or contributing in other ways.

spektom 3y ago

I used to think that it's much harder to find a manager job than a dev job. Eventually I learned that this is not the case - quite the opposite. There is obviously lack of good managers. After reading "Peoplewhare" I understood why. There are two main manager objectives: 1) Advance the project 2) Advance the people. I can't even imagine how one finds a symbiosis between people's ambitions and project needs. Someone has to get hurt.