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The Evolution of Management: Transitioning Up the Ladder

131 points by amortize 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
malvosenior 7y ago
For a slightly more humorous (but very real) take on the management ladder, I highly recommend The Gervais Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ In my experience it's been dead on accurate.
- kitsune_ 7y ago
  Haha, what a cynical, bleak and fascinating read.
- RyanHamilton 7y ago
  Interesting. Thanks.
stakhanov 7y ago
Is being promoted from individual contributor to manager still a thing? Certainly the mobility from engineer to manager is something that I haven't witnessed "in the wild" ever, after 10 years in the business and having seen half a dozen organizations; neither with myself, nor with my peers. What I predominantly see is a caste system where engineers are the lower caste and MBA-types are the higher caste, and members of the lower caste aren't taken seriously when voicing suggestions and opinions regarding business direction and management and also certainly don't stand a chance of being moved into any positions where they would meaningfully influence business direction on an ongoing basis. There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now). Also, what I've sometimes seen work is a lateral move followed by a vertical move, say from engineering to sales, and then from sales into management.
- Ozzie_osman 7y ago
  Where have you worked? There's been a direct path from engineer to manager at every company I've worked at. I've mostly worked at Silicon Valley companies, some were venture-backed and some were simply aspiring to be such. In some companies, that was a promotion (with a pay increase), in others, it was a lateral transition (and of course, at some it was a promotion but the company pretended it was a lateral transition). Ironically, I did get an MBA but after graduating I was coding before transitioning into management, and I'm not sure the MBA degree had much to do with that transition. Dual-ladder type systems for technical people are pretty common in the software industry, and, when applied correctly, one of the things I love most about it. I wrote about that: https://hackernoon.com/why-all-engineers-must-understand-management-the-view-from-both-ladders-cc749ae14905 https://hackernoon.com/why-all-engineers-must-understand-man...
  - stakhanov 7y ago
    ...I know that this concept exists, but I've only ever encountered it as a theoretical concept that certain HR departments will pay lip service to, but the reality, in my experience, is different. For example I have worked in a top-tier investment bank. One year, they had a particularly bad year (because markets were just bad), so while traders in some cases still got bonuses, nobody in the entire Technology Division (since they were seen as being more replaceable) got a bonus. They made up for it by giving everybody a bump in their title (with no bump in pay). That kind of BS is my primary association of what it looks like in practice when people climb the "technical" ladder (rather than the "management" ladder). In my mind, a carreer progression would have to imply that, as time goes by, your options of things you might do in the organization expand and, since you get to pick and choose from a wider pool, you make choices that are in your best interest meaning more money and more opportunity to influence the direction of the business and all that. It works that way for management, as the relationships you build with people become an asset that starts paying dividends over time. For engineering, it works in reverse: Your options become less with time, not more. The determinant of any move you might make within the organization is not so much the opporunity around you doing something new, but the risk around you no longer continuing with what you leave behind. (Or at least that's the way that organizations will mistakenly see it). Say you've built a database that underlies reporting infrastructure that underlies all decision-making in the entire company. Bringing in somebody else to look after the database is a risk that a company usually won't want to take. Ramping up somebody else to learn about the system is a cost they won't want to incur. Congratulations: You're stuck looking after that database for the rest of your time at that organization. That's the reward you get for having done a good job at building that database. In addition, I would say that over the 10 years that I've been in industry I have seen a cultural change around non-engineering professions moving in on decision-making-territory that would have previously been an engineer's. I'm talking about business managers, designers, product managers, product designers, it infrastructure architects, what have you. 10 years ago, you would have been presented with a problem which, at the face of it, was technical in nature like "build a database and some reporting infrastructure around it". You would have picked a database management system, built the data ingestion infrastructure, created e-mail reports which you designed yourself, etc. etc. Nowadays, you go to person X enterprise IT architect to have them decide which database you can use. You go to a designer to tell you which font to use on the report. You go to a product manager to tell you how often to send the e-mail reports and what the signup-flow should look like, etc. etc. -- Congratulations you have just been reduced to a mere machine executing a business process, not making a single meaningful decision for yourself, and as a result your social standing is barely above that of a machine.
stuff4ben 7y ago
Having made the switch from IC to IT manager and now back to IC (at a different company), I want to add in a few insights of my own: 1. It's probably not a good idea to get into management if your team is a remote team. 2. If you're managing a remote team for the first time and your boss is also colocated with your remote team, make sure he/she is not a micromanager. 3. Make sure you're talking to your team and checking in on them. The introvert part of me had a hard time with this. 4. Yes, it's ok to interrupt your smart, gets-shit-done employees, especially if you've haven't talked to them in days. 5. Make sure you set a vision to your ICs and hold them accountable to that vision. It helps if they contributed to making this vision with you. 6. Yadda yadda yadda, I'm happy being an IC again :)
ensiferum 7y ago
How does one transition into management without prior management experience? This is a genuine question I've been wanting to move out of engineering for a while but it's been very hard so far to get into non-eng positions. (No luck so far). Do you just talk to your direct supervisior and lay out your career path wants or do you need to look for another position at some other shop or what's a working strategy here?
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  I recently transitioned to being a product manager. In my organization, that doesn't mean I have any reports, but I am responsible for what my team does and why we're doing it. (They have an engineering manager that determines the 'how we're doing it' and all engineers report to the EM.) In my case, it was a sort of give and take in both directions. They needed a PM, and I had been doing some product work, mostly in the open source world, and wanted to give it a try professionally. They were explicit that being a first time PM was okay, and I was that I would be one. I've been enjoying it a lot so far.
  - mwcampbell 7y ago
    That sounds a lot like the role at Microsoft that was historically called "program manager", though some orgs there are starting to call that role "product manager" as well. Disclosure: I'm a dev at Microsoft, on the Windows accessibility team.
- xythian 7y ago
  Yes. You should be having this kind of career conversation with your current manager. Together, you should be able to find opportunities to grow and test out manager-like skills (e.g., hiring and managing an intern, mentoring junior devs, becoming a team lead, etc). Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path, is a good read for learning about some of the common transitions from IC to manager to executive in software engineering. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do
- inerte 7y ago
  Yes, talk to your manager. They will hopefully either mentor/coach you and/or find people to do it. If you don't let them know, once a manager role opens in your org, even if your name comes up as a potential person, anyone else who has asked for it and is being groomed to become a manager will probably get ahead of you. So, be that person instead.
zug_zug 7y ago
I don't believe a word of this. It's the usual buzzword-soup that's self-contradictory with even the simplest glance (e.g. claiming a manager's value is both unmeasurable but also the key to promotion? If it's unmeasurable, you're probably getting promoted for something else, like company growth, being well-liked, looking the part) It reeks of the self-importance of a director who reassures himself, "Well I got this far, so I must be doing things right." Is this author the kind of person who'd fail to buy google for 1bn, while "ensuring alignmnet with managers" and other PHB concerns? We'll never know. But what we do know is that less that 5% of this article is actually about making the right decisions happen. That to me is a red flag.
- thendrill 7y ago
  Whoever wrote the article were on a heavy dose of corporate cool aid sprinkled with some denial of the "Peter principal" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
  - Ragnarork 7y ago
    > You have to shift your mindset, and focus on building new skills that are often very different from the skills that made you successful in your previous role. How is that "denial of the Peter Principle"? Not even mentioning that the Peter Principle can be criticized in itself, as it's based on suppositions that are dubious and do not necessarily hold. For example the fact that you might not end up actually keeping the position at which you become "incompetent".
- naringas 7y ago
  to use the language of this [1]; I agree, I get a strong sense of "posturetalk" [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

131 points by amortize 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

For a slightly more humorous (but very real) take on the management ladder, I highly recommend The Gervais Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ In my experience it's been dead on accurate.

kitsune_ 7y ago
Haha, what a cynical, bleak and fascinating read.
RyanHamilton 7y ago
Interesting. Thanks.

stakhanov 7y ago

Is being promoted from individual contributor to manager still a thing? Certainly the mobility from engineer to manager is something that I haven't witnessed "in the wild" ever, after 10 years in the business and having seen half a dozen organizations; neither with myself, nor with my peers. What I predominantly see is a caste system where engineers are the lower caste and MBA-types are the higher caste, and members of the lower caste aren't taken seriously when voicing suggestions and opinions regarding business direction and management and also certainly don't stand a chance of being moved into any positions where they would meaningfully influence business direction on an ongoing basis. There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now). Also, what I've sometimes seen work is a lateral move followed by a vertical move, say from engineering to sales, and then from sales into management.

Ozzie_osman 7y ago
Where have you worked? There's been a direct path from engineer to manager at every company I've worked at. I've mostly worked at Silicon Valley companies, some were venture-backed and some were simply aspiring to be such. In some companies, that was a promotion (with a pay increase), in others, it was a lateral transition (and of course, at some it was a promotion but the company pretended it was a lateral transition). Ironically, I did get an MBA but after graduating I was coding before transitioning into management, and I'm not sure the MBA degree had much to do with that transition. Dual-ladder type systems for technical people are pretty common in the software industry, and, when applied correctly, one of the things I love most about it. I wrote about that: https://hackernoon.com/why-all-engineers-must-understand-management-the-view-from-both-ladders-cc749ae14905 https://hackernoon.com/why-all-engineers-must-understand-man...
- stakhanov 7y ago
  ...I know that this concept exists, but I've only ever encountered it as a theoretical concept that certain HR departments will pay lip service to, but the reality, in my experience, is different. For example I have worked in a top-tier investment bank. One year, they had a particularly bad year (because markets were just bad), so while traders in some cases still got bonuses, nobody in the entire Technology Division (since they were seen as being more replaceable) got a bonus. They made up for it by giving everybody a bump in their title (with no bump in pay). That kind of BS is my primary association of what it looks like in practice when people climb the "technical" ladder (rather than the "management" ladder). In my mind, a carreer progression would have to imply that, as time goes by, your options of things you might do in the organization expand and, since you get to pick and choose from a wider pool, you make choices that are in your best interest meaning more money and more opportunity to influence the direction of the business and all that. It works that way for management, as the relationships you build with people become an asset that starts paying dividends over time. For engineering, it works in reverse: Your options become less with time, not more. The determinant of any move you might make within the organization is not so much the opporunity around you doing something new, but the risk around you no longer continuing with what you leave behind. (Or at least that's the way that organizations will mistakenly see it). Say you've built a database that underlies reporting infrastructure that underlies all decision-making in the entire company. Bringing in somebody else to look after the database is a risk that a company usually won't want to take. Ramping up somebody else to learn about the system is a cost they won't want to incur. Congratulations: You're stuck looking after that database for the rest of your time at that organization. That's the reward you get for having done a good job at building that database. In addition, I would say that over the 10 years that I've been in industry I have seen a cultural change around non-engineering professions moving in on decision-making-territory that would have previously been an engineer's. I'm talking about business managers, designers, product managers, product designers, it infrastructure architects, what have you. 10 years ago, you would have been presented with a problem which, at the face of it, was technical in nature like "build a database and some reporting infrastructure around it". You would have picked a database management system, built the data ingestion infrastructure, created e-mail reports which you designed yourself, etc. etc. Nowadays, you go to person X enterprise IT architect to have them decide which database you can use. You go to a designer to tell you which font to use on the report. You go to a product manager to tell you how often to send the e-mail reports and what the signup-flow should look like, etc. etc. -- Congratulations you have just been reduced to a mere machine executing a business process, not making a single meaningful decision for yourself, and as a result your social standing is barely above that of a machine.

stuff4ben 7y ago

Having made the switch from IC to IT manager and now back to IC (at a different company), I want to add in a few insights of my own: 1. It's probably not a good idea to get into management if your team is a remote team. 2. If you're managing a remote team for the first time and your boss is also colocated with your remote team, make sure he/she is not a micromanager. 3. Make sure you're talking to your team and checking in on them. The introvert part of me had a hard time with this. 4. Yes, it's ok to interrupt your smart, gets-shit-done employees, especially if you've haven't talked to them in days. 5. Make sure you set a vision to your ICs and hold them accountable to that vision. It helps if they contributed to making this vision with you. 6. Yadda yadda yadda, I'm happy being an IC again :)

ensiferum 7y ago

How does one transition into management without prior management experience? This is a genuine question I've been wanting to move out of engineering for a while but it's been very hard so far to get into non-eng positions. (No luck so far). Do you just talk to your direct supervisior and lay out your career path wants or do you need to look for another position at some other shop or what's a working strategy here?

steveklabnik 7y ago
I recently transitioned to being a product manager. In my organization, that doesn't mean I have any reports, but I am responsible for what my team does and why we're doing it. (They have an engineering manager that determines the 'how we're doing it' and all engineers report to the EM.) In my case, it was a sort of give and take in both directions. They needed a PM, and I had been doing some product work, mostly in the open source world, and wanted to give it a try professionally. They were explicit that being a first time PM was okay, and I was that I would be one. I've been enjoying it a lot so far.
- mwcampbell 7y ago
  That sounds a lot like the role at Microsoft that was historically called "program manager", though some orgs there are starting to call that role "product manager" as well. Disclosure: I'm a dev at Microsoft, on the Windows accessibility team.
xythian 7y ago
Yes. You should be having this kind of career conversation with your current manager. Together, you should be able to find opportunities to grow and test out manager-like skills (e.g., hiring and managing an intern, mentoring junior devs, becoming a team lead, etc). Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path, is a good read for learning about some of the common transitions from IC to manager to executive in software engineering. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do
inerte 7y ago
Yes, talk to your manager. They will hopefully either mentor/coach you and/or find people to do it. If you don't let them know, once a manager role opens in your org, even if your name comes up as a potential person, anyone else who has asked for it and is being groomed to become a manager will probably get ahead of you. So, be that person instead.

zug_zug 7y ago

I don't believe a word of this. It's the usual buzzword-soup that's self-contradictory with even the simplest glance (e.g. claiming a manager's value is both unmeasurable but also the key to promotion? If it's unmeasurable, you're probably getting promoted for something else, like company growth, being well-liked, looking the part) It reeks of the self-importance of a director who reassures himself, "Well I got this far, so I must be doing things right." Is this author the kind of person who'd fail to buy google for 1bn, while "ensuring alignmnet with managers" and other PHB concerns? We'll never know. But what we do know is that less that 5% of this article is actually about making the right decisions happen. That to me is a red flag.

thendrill 7y ago
Whoever wrote the article were on a heavy dose of corporate cool aid sprinkled with some denial of the "Peter principal" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
- Ragnarork 7y ago
  > You have to shift your mindset, and focus on building new skills that are often very different from the skills that made you successful in your previous role. How is that "denial of the Peter Principle"? Not even mentioning that the Peter Principle can be criticized in itself, as it's based on suppositions that are dubious and do not necessarily hold. For example the fact that you might not end up actually keeping the position at which you become "incompetent".
naringas 7y ago
to use the language of this [1]; I agree, I get a strong sense of "posturetalk" [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/