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A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers

388 points by prawn 11y ago

esturk 11y ago
Interesting, I think this idea should be explored more. Does anyone else think the "MBA Degree" market is rip for disruption? We've been seeing a huge flux of MBA graduates that gets hired for mainly their network or connection. This seems almost opposite to the whole meritocracy culture in the tech industry. So given a manager/employee could do effectively what a MBA can do, why would a company hire a MBA degree instead?
- eru 11y ago
  What's wrong with hiring for network and connections? (If they actually do contribute to the bottom line of the company.)
  - Jare 11y ago
    They are finite. Hire for the ability to create valuable networks and connections, not for the few contacts that someone got in exceptional circumstances (like studying an MBA).
- illuminek 11y ago
  Well I am an MBA(IT)[+ Mechanical Engg.], and right now I am managing some 15+ people engg team. I can very confidently say that being an MBA has helped me a lot. It gave me an insight in being a leader and made my job of managing a engineering team easy. However I started my career as developer and have spent 7+ years in developing complex systems. The one difference I could always notice was leadership/initiative distinction between me and other developers and I used to think why these guys are not able to manage their time and guide their juniors. Simply they were not able to think beyond code(I am not generalising but the pattern I noticed with obvious exceptions).
  - eitally 11y ago
    Counterpoint: I'm not an MBA but I have a BA in history and a MEng in Industrial, and I spent the first 5 years of my career as a programmer before moving into management. I steadily moved up and am reporting to the CIO and managing 115+ folks. As my old boss said, you can learn the key skills of an MBA on your own, but you can't learn emotional intelligence or how to lead without practical experience. I'm not saying your MBA hasn't helped you. I'm just saying it's not a magic bullet (unless a company requires an MBA to get in the door). For most situations, just having a basic understanding of accounting & finance is enough, and for the times it isn't, knowing how to organize and lead a large multidisciplinary project is. That part's tougher and all the theoretical knowledge & case study readings in the world will only get you so far.
    - illuminek 11y ago
      Agreed. MBA just helped me a bit, but I guess most of my career is a result of coding & sitting with fellow programmers spending nights and learning vudu tricks.
- choppaface 11y ago
  MBAs can be particularly useful at extracting value from an existing product / solution, fielding complicated legal / accounting issues, ensuring communication within large companies has high (or at least respectable) signal-to-noise, executing M&A / partnerships, working with outside partners or services... There are well-defined scenarios where an MBA has some value. Agree with you that managing developers is typically not one of these scenarios, but I don't believe b-schools typically frame MBA programs as a means to teach management of people but rather management of well-known business problems. A good proportion of managers get promoted due to necessity rather than merit (as mentioned a the beginning of the OP). This issue is more conspicuous now that employees of fast-growing companies are more open about this issue and have time to blog about it (as growth has become somewhat more efficient). Would love to see the space of engineering management get "disrupted" by high-quality, community-reviewed, and freely available publications. Might not 'kill MBAs' but will help people decide if they even need an MBA.
  - msravi 11y ago
    > MBAs can be particularly useful at extracting value from an existing product / solution, fielding complicated legal / accounting issues, ensuring communication within large companies has high (or at least respectable) signal-to-noise, executing M&A / partnerships, working with outside partners or services... As can engineers. Aside from the presumption that MBAs want to and are hired to do this kind of stuff, and will put in 100% of their time doing it, there's no exceptional value that the MBA education in itself brings, IMHO. Most of this is stuff that a reasonably smart person would be expected to pick up on the job. The MBA does not learn enough finance/accountancy to do a CFO/accountant's job, nor does he learn enough to do a lawyer's job...
- pbreit 11y ago
  Things like YC and startups in general are already disrupting the MBA market. Far better use of time and money to just go start/operate a business.
yanilkr 11y ago
After being a consultant, engineer, manager and again starting as allinone on a small project, I believe organizational hierarchy is just an OK solution. If I put on a career planner hat, I find so many career paths which are in big hierarchies personally bad deals and would avoid them in future and advice the same to others. I wrote a summary of what I observed so many times. Sorry for a lengthy post. When a software company becomes successful, it becomes a magnet for crazies. The crazies are the process-people who use fancy marketing lingo to tell you that you are doing something inadequate and you should be using a different methodology which is more correct for your company. This takes the conversation away from “ideas” to “sudo-ideas”. The conversation shifts from what made the product amazing and what else we can do about it to a new conversation about how someone should do a certain job and fulfill its role. A new engineer with a good potential to produce software will have to go through a phase of self doubt surviving in this world and asking himself/herself if he/she is meeting the role and understanding what it means to meet the role. Now you need more people who are smarter than the engineer to tell him/her and hold him/her accountable and enforce certain improvements needed to fulfill this role. This leads to a burdensome overhead which derails the whole organization from focusing on the core or the simplicity in its culture which enabled the business to succeed in the first place. This overhead and drama around it is what the smart helpless people call politics. Instead of a plan to solve a problem you can see people talking about a plan for a plan. Instead of a simple understanding between people, there will be a process to come up with more process. Someone writes a document about how to write documents because somehow that seems to be more rewarded. You got to be good at being the process abiding employee fulfilling the Role to play in this environment. An expert professional sees this system as something that is designed to keep you at the same level of influence no matter how much value you can produce and sees the leadership very un-inspiring. There comes a point where if you are a productive engineer, it is more easy to build something and let the market forces decide if your invention is worth any merit. The bar in the market is not too high either. You build an app that lets you share your dick pictures, you get a billion dollar investment. Though it takes multiple engineer teams to produce useful software, it is possible to build a very useful feature or system that is missing from an ecosystem of a larger product or service. This micro service/product which generates revenue, Improves on the market feedback, succeed and itself might one day become a magnet for crazies. The feedback the market gives you is far more useful and actionable than the feedback you get in a large organization that is designed to to fit you to the role.
pbreit 11y ago
I'm sure everyone has their own opinions on all of this but, wow, that is an incredible resource.
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  You might want to check out the manager-tools podcasts as well, (different people, I believe,) if you haven't already: https://www.manager-tools.com https://www.manager-tools.com :)
colund 11y ago
For me, the whole idea of management in the software industry is to get out of the way to ensure engineers can do their job and and https://twitter.com/therealfitz/status/623526248338186240 https://twitter.com/therealfitz/status/623526248338186240
- cousin_it 11y ago
  FWIW, I don't believe that managers should shield engineers from what's going on up above. Instead, they should present the information in a manageable way, but also in a way that's honest. Political reality is too important to your reports' careers, so withholding it is kinda irresponsible.
- smt88 11y ago
  No, managers should actually make the engineers' jobs easier. The manager should take things off their plates (or streamline with good processes) anything that they aren't specialized to do.
- rkwasny 11y ago
  This picture is accurate, just someone should realize this shit on the top is not needed and not adding any value.
plinkplonk 11y ago
"Don’t manage only to advance your career. Many tech companies have parallel career paths to seniority for both technical and managerial high-performers." Is this really true? Many engineers do become managers only to advance their careers. The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Even when a rough parity exists on paper, for every "principal Engineer" or whatever, there are a couple of dozen Vice Presidents of Blah. Oddswise, to make the same amount of money, and more importantly, to get more lucrative job offers in the future, in most companies it pays to transition to management than stay technical. (which is fine, it is just the way the world works, just pointing out that the article may need some fixing)
- carc 11y ago
  FWIW, I know senior engineers that chose the technical route rather than manager route, who make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money. Like close to 1,000,000/year including equity. I don't know any non VP level people making anywhere close to that. Obviously this is anecdotal though.
  - smt88 11y ago
    "including equity" Pretend the equity is worth zero or close to zero (which it almost always is). How much are those people making then?
    - philwelch 11y ago
      At a startup this is a good rule of thumb, but the more established a company is, the closer to cash equity becomes. At a publicly traded company, equity can be a periodic (albeit variable) cash bonus if you want it to be.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - gchadwick 11y ago
      > Pretend the equity is worth zero or close to zero (which it almost always is) In a startup or private company yet to IPO sure. In an established, large, public company, RSUs, ESPP and whatever else you get is definitely going to deliver cash. Sure as the market moves around it'll change in value but you might look at it as +- 20% of the expected value. It's certainly not worth 0.
endymi0n 11y ago
Related, a little opinioated as well and incredibly well drilled down: http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html
alexandercrohde 11y ago
I cannot tell if blog post is this a theory or 15-page commercial for one man's opinions. The title claims it turns engineers into remarkable managers, yet provides no evidence. I see a lot of bold claims (e.g. "As with any new job, the most important task you should be doing at any given time will definitely be uncomfortable. It should be") but this piece lacks the reflection and perspective of a PG think-piece or any sort of evidence to justify its numerous opinions. A more accurate title: "Some guy has opinions on what managers should do so we typed those opinions up." My other big objection is that the pieces of advice (e.g. "manage up") seem stock and not actionable. Merely telling one to "manage up," (i.e. make your boss happy) is a new phrase for something entirely obvious. Nobody would disagree with "Make your boss happy," but somehow you spin the phrase in a new way and make a new lexicon around it and you have a facade of content.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  Didn't Steve McConnell (code complete) suggest that managing up should be a firing offence.
  - plonh 11y ago
    What? Why? That's insane.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      Most overt and intentional "managing up" is a waste of time at best and often runs counter to the organization's goals. By this, I mean when you decide on your drive into work "Today, I'm going to manage up" or block it on your calendar. I don't mean doing a naturally good job and keeping your boss informed of what's going on, figuring out how to best help the company achieve its goals, etc. That's the productive version, but it's 1% of the usage of that phrase IME. Most of "managing up" ranges from pure politics to useless paperwork to ass-kissing.
      - brudgers 11y ago
brador 11y ago
This is a list of things a CEO wants managers to do and be like. IMO following these rules will keep you submissive and his castle nice and orderly. Not what you want if you have an ounce of ambition. To actually survive and excel as a manager you need to play politics and win turf battles. Take on the highest value projects and ship. To get the good projects you'll need to fight because everyone wants them. TLDR: Adding value to the company is how you get promoted as a manager, not by showcasing talent in a skill.
- dang 11y ago
  How do playing politics and turf battles add value to the company?
  - tharax 11y ago
    SOMEONE will end up managing the team that adds value to the company. I think the point is to play the politics & turf battles so that YOU are that someone.
    - brador 11y ago
      Exactly right. If you feel you're the highest EV manager with the best team then getting that hot project naturally maximises the value for the company. And being the best is useless if you're not perceived as the best, and that takes politics and turf wars.
      - ianbicking 11y ago
        This is very realpolitik ;) Note that you aren't proposing that you get ahead by bringing the most value to the company, you are saying it's important to be perceived as bringing the most value to the company.
- rndn 11y ago
  According to the Peter Principle [1], the entire concept of promotion is flawed in that people get promoted according to their performance in their current role, not the future role. Perhaps, it would generally be better if promotions would require a test run in the new role over a long time period (e.g. a year) before it is set in stone. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
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sergiofbsilva 11y ago
http://www.surf-the-edge.com/2014/05/08/the-engineer-manager/ http://www.surf-the-edge.com/2014/05/08/the-engineer-manager...
deleted 11y ago
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gailees 11y ago
"Focus on enhancing strengths, not fixing weaknesses. “It’s a common trap for new managers to focus on fixing their engineer’s weaknesses than enhancing their strengths. The upside from improving someone's strength is typically greater and more likely to stick than the upside from addressing a weakness."
Aoyagi 11y ago
Well, it seems to have worked well for AMD (Su) and GM (Barra) so far.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Couple random pieces of advice: 1. Learn management, even if you're never going to use it. Everybody in this world has a manager. The more you know about the job, the better integrated you can be with others, either as a manager yourself or working with managers. That 3-way diagram? Holds true at the developer level as well. 2. Management ain't programming. When I learned to fly airplanes on instruments, the toughest thing was realizing that I had to rely on the gauges and fight my natural instincts. Likewise, if you've been a super-cool coder for many years, you're going to have to give up those coding and architecture instincts and learn people management ones. I see far too many extremely smart people try building and managing systems of people just as if they were computers. Wrong answer. 3. Ambition is fine. Being a jerk is not. If you like managing, you need to realize that it's always a gut check to make sure you're doing the right thing, and you very well may end up in a position where it is better to leave your current company and go play somewhere else than it is to continue. That sucks, but there's a difference between being a cog in a machine and being a professional. Be a professional or don't do it.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > Learn management, even if you're never going to use it. Yeah. Those who don't do management will still have management done to them.
deleted 11y ago
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markbnj 11y ago
I took on a project management role in a "take one for the team" scenario, and it was a disaster. I believe I managed the project fairly well, but since I hadn't wanted the job in the first place I felt I had some leeway to do things my way, and the boss ended up resenting that I didn't "want" the job and didn't reflect that by working hard to get things done his way. I ended up leaving the company after four years of good reviews. Not a mistake I will repeat.
ryandrake 11y ago
The day I decided to make it a goal to switch from developing software to management: I was sitting at my desk at 8:00 at night fixing some bug and I looked across the sea of gray half-height cubicles at a someone 30 years older than me doing the same thing with the exact same job title, probably not making much more than I. At 95% of companies, there is zero career development and advancement once you become a "Senior Software Engineer". Fix that and you'll see more engineers stay put (where they're likely happier and more productive).
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  Worth noting is that it's not just about titles. Titles matter, but they can also become a joke. It's easy to imagine a company, realizing that its best seniors are underpaid, inventing a new title to justify paying them only 10% more instead of the 30% they should get. The bigger problem is that most companies view "engineer" as "implementor of ideas that come from the business". Hence, all that Agile/Scrum bullshit in which engineers just churn tickets, rather than making meaningful technical decisions and building projects of increasing scope. No one who has any leverage and talent wants to work in that way. This becomes self-perpetuating, because even though there are good people who stick around (usually, with kids in expensive private schools, or uninsured sick relatives) the assumption becomes that good engineers leave after a certain point and, thus, that anyone left isn't any good. For me, I only enjoy coding if it's part of a bigger whole, and if I am proving something in doing so. If I'm stuck in a ticket shop and can't leave for 2 years for some reason, I'm going to manage (preferably officially; unofficially via aggressive delegation if necessary) because I was done with that junior-level business-story coding several years ago. I graduated out of it long ago, and I won't be put back there like Billy Madison.
  - guj11 11y ago
    Totally agree with your second paragraph. Good technical people at large companies (ran by non-Technical management) are often undervalued. I see over and over again how an engineering team gets a non-technical PO/Manager - who is just a very bad proxy. They can't bring any important insights into technical products and can't easily fix inter-team dependency. That's why all Google's APMs are technical (most with CS degrees). This gets worse when top level management is not technical for a technical company. Since they are not technical, they don't have good vision about where the industry will go in 10 years and what are the limitations. Ex. Microsoft under Steve vs Satya. One only had a vision for next quarter and the other seems to think longer term (and knows where the technology is going).
Maro 11y ago
I've done the engineer -> manager transition successfully about two years ago. The biggest help for me (=somebody who likes to read) was the Hardard Business Review's 'Guide to X' series: https://hbr.org/store/landing/guides https://hbr.org/store/landing/guides In particular (X=): - Better Business Writing - Coaching Employees - Giving Effective Feedback - Finance Basics for Managers - Office Politics (parts of it) But really, all of them are pretty good, at about ~150 pages each, I plan to read all of them just to be sure.
- branchless 11y ago
  I knew a guy who did better business writing at Hardard!
kevinSuttle 11y ago
I've never understood this. At some point, you suddenly become great at managing people? No. You worked your way up by being good at what you do, coding. http://lizthedeveloper.com/how-to-reward-skilled-coders-with-something-other-than-people-management http://lizthedeveloper.com/how-to-reward-skilled-coders-with...
- 15155 11y ago
  At some point you realize that your career is going to hit a dead end in most organizations. That's the reality. Software engineers, by and large, are under-compensated relative to value produced.
huehue 11y ago
"Teach Yourself Management in Ten Years" haha Management isn't that hard, specially compared to engineering where competition is fierce. The degrees are an absolute joke. I had virtually no social life during my CS studies, but the other one? Some of the managers I know don't even have one. If you're the average HN reader you might have to hone up your soft skills and that's about it. Any competent developer would do just fine without training, even with autism going rampant in our industry. It's not like we all jumped into the management career path in search for a challenge.
- LargeWu 11y ago
  Just because something is a "soft skill" doesn't mean it's easy. I suspect anybody that thinks effective management is easy would not do very well in that role. I've seen plenty of competent developers get chewed up and spit out as managers because they didn't understand what they needed to do to run successful teams.
chriscareycode 11y ago
"Every time you dissuade a great engineer from becoming a manager, an angel gets its wings." - Roy Rapoport
mooogs 11y ago
Very well written article
navbaker 11y ago
Has anyone here had experience going the other way: management to technical?
cmwelsh 11y ago
They should just call it "Management Perspective Training"... even if you don't graduate to manager you're still given essential insight on how to help them do their jobs effectively.
shellbye 11y ago
Long article but really a good one.
joeevans1000 11y ago
Lol... who the fuck wants to manage instead of code? I guess if you're burning out and seriously paranoid you won't be worth a fuck as a coder, you have to go in the management direction. But the joy of where things are headed -- and what technology is increasingly enabling -- is that we can finally get rid of managers.

388 points by prawn 11y ago

Interesting, I think this idea should be explored more. Does anyone else think the "MBA Degree" market is rip for disruption? We've been seeing a huge flux of MBA graduates that gets hired for mainly their network or connection. This seems almost opposite to the whole meritocracy culture in the tech industry. So given a manager/employee could do effectively what a MBA can do, why would a company hire a MBA degree instead?

eru 11y ago
What's wrong with hiring for network and connections? (If they actually do contribute to the bottom line of the company.)
- Jare 11y ago
  They are finite. Hire for the ability to create valuable networks and connections, not for the few contacts that someone got in exceptional circumstances (like studying an MBA).
illuminek 11y ago
Well I am an MBA(IT)[+ Mechanical Engg.], and right now I am managing some 15+ people engg team. I can very confidently say that being an MBA has helped me a lot. It gave me an insight in being a leader and made my job of managing a engineering team easy. However I started my career as developer and have spent 7+ years in developing complex systems. The one difference I could always notice was leadership/initiative distinction between me and other developers and I used to think why these guys are not able to manage their time and guide their juniors. Simply they were not able to think beyond code(I am not generalising but the pattern I noticed with obvious exceptions).
- eitally 11y ago
  Counterpoint: I'm not an MBA but I have a BA in history and a MEng in Industrial, and I spent the first 5 years of my career as a programmer before moving into management. I steadily moved up and am reporting to the CIO and managing 115+ folks. As my old boss said, you can learn the key skills of an MBA on your own, but you can't learn emotional intelligence or how to lead without practical experience. I'm not saying your MBA hasn't helped you. I'm just saying it's not a magic bullet (unless a company requires an MBA to get in the door). For most situations, just having a basic understanding of accounting & finance is enough, and for the times it isn't, knowing how to organize and lead a large multidisciplinary project is. That part's tougher and all the theoretical knowledge & case study readings in the world will only get you so far.
  - illuminek 11y ago
    Agreed. MBA just helped me a bit, but I guess most of my career is a result of coding & sitting with fellow programmers spending nights and learning vudu tricks.
choppaface 11y ago
MBAs can be particularly useful at extracting value from an existing product / solution, fielding complicated legal / accounting issues, ensuring communication within large companies has high (or at least respectable) signal-to-noise, executing M&A / partnerships, working with outside partners or services... There are well-defined scenarios where an MBA has some value. Agree with you that managing developers is typically not one of these scenarios, but I don't believe b-schools typically frame MBA programs as a means to teach management of people but rather management of well-known business problems. A good proportion of managers get promoted due to necessity rather than merit (as mentioned a the beginning of the OP). This issue is more conspicuous now that employees of fast-growing companies are more open about this issue and have time to blog about it (as growth has become somewhat more efficient). Would love to see the space of engineering management get "disrupted" by high-quality, community-reviewed, and freely available publications. Might not 'kill MBAs' but will help people decide if they even need an MBA.
- msravi 11y ago
  > MBAs can be particularly useful at extracting value from an existing product / solution, fielding complicated legal / accounting issues, ensuring communication within large companies has high (or at least respectable) signal-to-noise, executing M&A / partnerships, working with outside partners or services... As can engineers. Aside from the presumption that MBAs want to and are hired to do this kind of stuff, and will put in 100% of their time doing it, there's no exceptional value that the MBA education in itself brings, IMHO. Most of this is stuff that a reasonably smart person would be expected to pick up on the job. The MBA does not learn enough finance/accountancy to do a CFO/accountant's job, nor does he learn enough to do a lawyer's job...
pbreit 11y ago
Things like YC and startups in general are already disrupting the MBA market. Far better use of time and money to just go start/operate a business.

yanilkr 11y ago

After being a consultant, engineer, manager and again starting as allinone on a small project, I believe organizational hierarchy is just an OK solution. If I put on a career planner hat, I find so many career paths which are in big hierarchies personally bad deals and would avoid them in future and advice the same to others. I wrote a summary of what I observed so many times. Sorry for a lengthy post. When a software company becomes successful, it becomes a magnet for crazies. The crazies are the process-people who use fancy marketing lingo to tell you that you are doing something inadequate and you should be using a different methodology which is more correct for your company. This takes the conversation away from “ideas” to “sudo-ideas”. The conversation shifts from what made the product amazing and what else we can do about it to a new conversation about how someone should do a certain job and fulfill its role. A new engineer with a good potential to produce software will have to go through a phase of self doubt surviving in this world and asking himself/herself if he/she is meeting the role and understanding what it means to meet the role. Now you need more people who are smarter than the engineer to tell him/her and hold him/her accountable and enforce certain improvements needed to fulfill this role. This leads to a burdensome overhead which derails the whole organization from focusing on the core or the simplicity in its culture which enabled the business to succeed in the first place. This overhead and drama around it is what the smart helpless people call politics. Instead of a plan to solve a problem you can see people talking about a plan for a plan. Instead of a simple understanding between people, there will be a process to come up with more process. Someone writes a document about how to write documents because somehow that seems to be more rewarded. You got to be good at being the process abiding employee fulfilling the Role to play in this environment. An expert professional sees this system as something that is designed to keep you at the same level of influence no matter how much value you can produce and sees the leadership very un-inspiring. There comes a point where if you are a productive engineer, it is more easy to build something and let the market forces decide if your invention is worth any merit. The bar in the market is not too high either. You build an app that lets you share your dick pictures, you get a billion dollar investment. Though it takes multiple engineer teams to produce useful software, it is possible to build a very useful feature or system that is missing from an ecosystem of a larger product or service. This micro service/product which generates revenue, Improves on the market feedback, succeed and itself might one day become a magnet for crazies. The feedback the market gives you is far more useful and actionable than the feedback you get in a large organization that is designed to to fit you to the role.

pbreit 11y ago

I'm sure everyone has their own opinions on all of this but, wow, that is an incredible resource.

6d0debc071 11y ago
You might want to check out the manager-tools podcasts as well, (different people, I believe,) if you haven't already: https://www.manager-tools.com https://www.manager-tools.com :)

colund 11y ago

For me, the whole idea of management in the software industry is to get out of the way to ensure engineers can do their job and and https://twitter.com/therealfitz/status/623526248338186240 https://twitter.com/therealfitz/status/623526248338186240

cousin_it 11y ago
FWIW, I don't believe that managers should shield engineers from what's going on up above. Instead, they should present the information in a manageable way, but also in a way that's honest. Political reality is too important to your reports' careers, so withholding it is kinda irresponsible.
smt88 11y ago
No, managers should actually make the engineers' jobs easier. The manager should take things off their plates (or streamline with good processes) anything that they aren't specialized to do.
rkwasny 11y ago
This picture is accurate, just someone should realize this shit on the top is not needed and not adding any value.

plinkplonk 11y ago

"Don’t manage only to advance your career. Many tech companies have parallel career paths to seniority for both technical and managerial high-performers." Is this really true? Many engineers do become managers only to advance their careers. The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Even when a rough parity exists on paper, for every "principal Engineer" or whatever, there are a couple of dozen Vice Presidents of Blah. Oddswise, to make the same amount of money, and more importantly, to get more lucrative job offers in the future, in most companies it pays to transition to management than stay technical. (which is fine, it is just the way the world works, just pointing out that the article may need some fixing)

carc 11y ago
FWIW, I know senior engineers that chose the technical route rather than manager route, who make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money. Like close to 1,000,000/year including equity. I don't know any non VP level people making anywhere close to that. Obviously this is anecdotal though.
- smt88 11y ago
  "including equity" Pretend the equity is worth zero or close to zero (which it almost always is). How much are those people making then?
  - philwelch 11y ago
    At a startup this is a good rule of thumb, but the more established a company is, the closer to cash equity becomes. At a publicly traded company, equity can be a periodic (albeit variable) cash bonus if you want it to be.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - gchadwick 11y ago
    > Pretend the equity is worth zero or close to zero (which it almost always is) In a startup or private company yet to IPO sure. In an established, large, public company, RSUs, ESPP and whatever else you get is definitely going to deliver cash. Sure as the market moves around it'll change in value but you might look at it as +- 20% of the expected value. It's certainly not worth 0.

endymi0n 11y ago

Related, a little opinioated as well and incredibly well drilled down: http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html

alexandercrohde 11y ago

I cannot tell if blog post is this a theory or 15-page commercial for one man's opinions. The title claims it turns engineers into remarkable managers, yet provides no evidence. I see a lot of bold claims (e.g. "As with any new job, the most important task you should be doing at any given time will definitely be uncomfortable. It should be") but this piece lacks the reflection and perspective of a PG think-piece or any sort of evidence to justify its numerous opinions. A more accurate title: "Some guy has opinions on what managers should do so we typed those opinions up." My other big objection is that the pieces of advice (e.g. "manage up") seem stock and not actionable. Merely telling one to "manage up," (i.e. make your boss happy) is a new phrase for something entirely obvious. Nobody would disagree with "Make your boss happy," but somehow you spin the phrase in a new way and make a new lexicon around it and you have a facade of content.

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
Didn't Steve McConnell (code complete) suggest that managing up should be a firing offence.
- plonh 11y ago
  What? Why? That's insane.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Most overt and intentional "managing up" is a waste of time at best and often runs counter to the organization's goals. By this, I mean when you decide on your drive into work "Today, I'm going to manage up" or block it on your calendar. I don't mean doing a naturally good job and keeping your boss informed of what's going on, figuring out how to best help the company achieve its goals, etc. That's the productive version, but it's 1% of the usage of that phrase IME. Most of "managing up" ranges from pure politics to useless paperwork to ass-kissing.
    - brudgers 11y ago

brador 11y ago

This is a list of things a CEO wants managers to do and be like. IMO following these rules will keep you submissive and his castle nice and orderly. Not what you want if you have an ounce of ambition. To actually survive and excel as a manager you need to play politics and win turf battles. Take on the highest value projects and ship. To get the good projects you'll need to fight because everyone wants them. TLDR: Adding value to the company is how you get promoted as a manager, not by showcasing talent in a skill.

dang 11y ago
How do playing politics and turf battles add value to the company?
- tharax 11y ago
  SOMEONE will end up managing the team that adds value to the company. I think the point is to play the politics & turf battles so that YOU are that someone.
  - brador 11y ago
    Exactly right. If you feel you're the highest EV manager with the best team then getting that hot project naturally maximises the value for the company. And being the best is useless if you're not perceived as the best, and that takes politics and turf wars.
    - ianbicking 11y ago
      This is very realpolitik ;) Note that you aren't proposing that you get ahead by bringing the most value to the company, you are saying it's important to be perceived as bringing the most value to the company.
rndn 11y ago
According to the Peter Principle [1], the entire concept of promotion is flawed in that people get promoted according to their performance in their current role, not the future role. Perhaps, it would generally be better if promotions would require a test run in the new role over a long time period (e.g. a year) before it is set in stone. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

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sergiofbsilva 11y ago

http://www.surf-the-edge.com/2014/05/08/the-engineer-manager/ http://www.surf-the-edge.com/2014/05/08/the-engineer-manager...

deleted 11y ago

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gailees 11y ago

"Focus on enhancing strengths, not fixing weaknesses. “It’s a common trap for new managers to focus on fixing their engineer’s weaknesses than enhancing their strengths. The upside from improving someone's strength is typically greater and more likely to stick than the upside from addressing a weakness."

Aoyagi 11y ago

Well, it seems to have worked well for AMD (Su) and GM (Barra) so far.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Couple random pieces of advice: 1. Learn management, even if you're never going to use it. Everybody in this world has a manager. The more you know about the job, the better integrated you can be with others, either as a manager yourself or working with managers. That 3-way diagram? Holds true at the developer level as well. 2. Management ain't programming. When I learned to fly airplanes on instruments, the toughest thing was realizing that I had to rely on the gauges and fight my natural instincts. Likewise, if you've been a super-cool coder for many years, you're going to have to give up those coding and architecture instincts and learn people management ones. I see far too many extremely smart people try building and managing systems of people just as if they were computers. Wrong answer. 3. Ambition is fine. Being a jerk is not. If you like managing, you need to realize that it's always a gut check to make sure you're doing the right thing, and you very well may end up in a position where it is better to leave your current company and go play somewhere else than it is to continue. That sucks, but there's a difference between being a cog in a machine and being a professional. Be a professional or don't do it.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> Learn management, even if you're never going to use it. Yeah. Those who don't do management will still have management done to them.

deleted 11y ago

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markbnj 11y ago

I took on a project management role in a "take one for the team" scenario, and it was a disaster. I believe I managed the project fairly well, but since I hadn't wanted the job in the first place I felt I had some leeway to do things my way, and the boss ended up resenting that I didn't "want" the job and didn't reflect that by working hard to get things done his way. I ended up leaving the company after four years of good reviews. Not a mistake I will repeat.

ryandrake 11y ago

The day I decided to make it a goal to switch from developing software to management: I was sitting at my desk at 8:00 at night fixing some bug and I looked across the sea of gray half-height cubicles at a someone 30 years older than me doing the same thing with the exact same job title, probably not making much more than I. At 95% of companies, there is zero career development and advancement once you become a "Senior Software Engineer". Fix that and you'll see more engineers stay put (where they're likely happier and more productive).

michaelochurch 11y ago
Worth noting is that it's not just about titles. Titles matter, but they can also become a joke. It's easy to imagine a company, realizing that its best seniors are underpaid, inventing a new title to justify paying them only 10% more instead of the 30% they should get. The bigger problem is that most companies view "engineer" as "implementor of ideas that come from the business". Hence, all that Agile/Scrum bullshit in which engineers just churn tickets, rather than making meaningful technical decisions and building projects of increasing scope. No one who has any leverage and talent wants to work in that way. This becomes self-perpetuating, because even though there are good people who stick around (usually, with kids in expensive private schools, or uninsured sick relatives) the assumption becomes that good engineers leave after a certain point and, thus, that anyone left isn't any good. For me, I only enjoy coding if it's part of a bigger whole, and if I am proving something in doing so. If I'm stuck in a ticket shop and can't leave for 2 years for some reason, I'm going to manage (preferably officially; unofficially via aggressive delegation if necessary) because I was done with that junior-level business-story coding several years ago. I graduated out of it long ago, and I won't be put back there like Billy Madison.
- guj11 11y ago
  Totally agree with your second paragraph. Good technical people at large companies (ran by non-Technical management) are often undervalued. I see over and over again how an engineering team gets a non-technical PO/Manager - who is just a very bad proxy. They can't bring any important insights into technical products and can't easily fix inter-team dependency. That's why all Google's APMs are technical (most with CS degrees). This gets worse when top level management is not technical for a technical company. Since they are not technical, they don't have good vision about where the industry will go in 10 years and what are the limitations. Ex. Microsoft under Steve vs Satya. One only had a vision for next quarter and the other seems to think longer term (and knows where the technology is going).

Maro 11y ago

I've done the engineer -> manager transition successfully about two years ago. The biggest help for me (=somebody who likes to read) was the Hardard Business Review's 'Guide to X' series: https://hbr.org/store/landing/guides https://hbr.org/store/landing/guides In particular (X=): - Better Business Writing - Coaching Employees - Giving Effective Feedback - Finance Basics for Managers - Office Politics (parts of it) But really, all of them are pretty good, at about ~150 pages each, I plan to read all of them just to be sure.

branchless 11y ago
I knew a guy who did better business writing at Hardard!

kevinSuttle 11y ago

I've never understood this. At some point, you suddenly become great at managing people? No. You worked your way up by being good at what you do, coding. http://lizthedeveloper.com/how-to-reward-skilled-coders-with-something-other-than-people-management http://lizthedeveloper.com/how-to-reward-skilled-coders-with...

15155 11y ago
At some point you realize that your career is going to hit a dead end in most organizations. That's the reality. Software engineers, by and large, are under-compensated relative to value produced.

huehue 11y ago

"Teach Yourself Management in Ten Years" haha Management isn't that hard, specially compared to engineering where competition is fierce. The degrees are an absolute joke. I had virtually no social life during my CS studies, but the other one? Some of the managers I know don't even have one. If you're the average HN reader you might have to hone up your soft skills and that's about it. Any competent developer would do just fine without training, even with autism going rampant in our industry. It's not like we all jumped into the management career path in search for a challenge.

LargeWu 11y ago
Just because something is a "soft skill" doesn't mean it's easy. I suspect anybody that thinks effective management is easy would not do very well in that role. I've seen plenty of competent developers get chewed up and spit out as managers because they didn't understand what they needed to do to run successful teams.

chriscareycode 11y ago

"Every time you dissuade a great engineer from becoming a manager, an angel gets its wings." - Roy Rapoport

mooogs 11y ago

Very well written article

navbaker 11y ago

Has anyone here had experience going the other way: management to technical?

cmwelsh 11y ago

They should just call it "Management Perspective Training"... even if you don't graduate to manager you're still given essential insight on how to help them do their jobs effectively.

shellbye 11y ago

Long article but really a good one.

joeevans1000 11y ago

Lol... who the fuck wants to manage instead of code? I guess if you're burning out and seriously paranoid you won't be worth a fuck as a coder, you have to go in the management direction. But the joy of where things are headed -- and what technology is increasingly enabling -- is that we can finally get rid of managers.