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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 "

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.
  - Qworg 7y ago
    Much of this sounds like being in an organization where engineering is seen (or is) a cost center, not a profit engine. There's definitely a tendency to stasis in organizations - if the benefit of new software doesn't outweigh the loss of older, working software, there's no way anyone would want to encourage new software to be made.
    - stakhanov 7y ago
      This has been my experience both in the case of a bank (where technology is an operating overhead) but, surprisingly, also in a tech startup at the stage where it was maturing beyond 50 employees. Even more surprisingly, we are speaking of a tech startup where the CEO, CTO and most senior product manager are all engineers. But they got into those positions when the company was just a handful of people and seem to have forgotten about their roots. What is going on now is that there is little to no real carreer mobility for newly hired engineers, and the company now has more non-technical than technical people, who have built up a caste system where they keep engineers out of the decisions that matter.
      - waprin 7y ago
        I'm curious where you're located. This was exactly my experience in "tech" startups in NYC, but not my experience at all working in SF. This is a big part of the reason why I have zero interest in leaving SF for some upcoming tech city, as in my experience you are correct there is a tendency to push engineers away from any business decisions, but much less so in SF which has a culture that ties engineering to entrepreneurship more closely. One explanation I've noticed is that the VCs in the Bay Area are far more likely to have technical backgrounds, whereas in NYC the VC firms almost always have finance backgrounds, and that culture bubbles down.
        stakhanov 7y ago
        You're quite right: I have had no direct contact with the SF / Bay Area, nor any companies based there. I've mostly been based in major European cities, and in some cases working within the European operations of U.S.-corporates (that weren't Bay Area startups). In a few cases I've worked remotely directly for U.S.-East Coast startups.
dsunshine 7y ago
It depends on the organization but I see it a lot in consultancies; as consultants build client-facing skills alongside their technical knowledge they often move into leadership roles. In the corporate world, I've seen both. However, the better managers that I've worked for have had recent engineering experience or at least can follow a technical discussion.
ryandrake 7y ago
I’ve seen the exact opposite in some companies. Great technical people who have no business managing, suddenly becoming a manager. It goes like this: Person X is much better performing than the average bear. Company wants to reward Person X, but he or she is already at the max level for a technical individual contributor: “Senior Software Engineer” which is one level above entry level “Software Engineer”. Since the company has no career growth for techies past Senior Software Engineer, they say “OK We are going to reward you for doing such a good job: you are now knighted as a manager.” They bob the sword up and down. “Now go off and do this entirely different thing than you’ve been doing!” Unsurprisingly, a lot of these new managers aren’t really great at managing. I’ve had sw team managers open up to me and admit they didn’t want to be managing at all and hate it but that’s the only way to advance in your career so they do it. I’ve also seen mediocre engineers who have great personal and presentation skills (or potential) languish as “3rd engineer from the left” because they weren’t Wizard enough to be promoted to management. There’s a huge skill/function mismatch.
steveklabnik 7y ago
Mozilla has two parallel tracks, the management track and the IC track. Both have their own levels, but you can switch between them. I've known several people that started off on the IC track and moved to the management track.
lrem 7y ago
In Google I've seen people moving from IC to manager and vice versa. Some times repeatedly.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
From what I have seen the caste system exists in companies where the tech part is not the main business. I work in medical devices and there the programmers are viewed as replaceable and don’t have much potential to move up. At least I haven’t seen it so far. You either have to be MBA or sales. Some medical guys also get promoted. In software companies I have seen programmers move up a lot. That’s Why I recommend people to try to work for a company where the CEO has some understanding and appreciation of your work and doesn’t see it just as a cost factor that better get offshored and outsourced. There are always exceptions but in general you will have a much better life and career in such companies.
pjc50 7y ago
Happened to me when my manager left at my previous job. No training or support came with it, sadly, so I went back to IC level at my current job which is much more comfortable and actually better paid. > where they would meaningfully influence business direction on an ongoing basis If your business is "customer led", as lots are, then it's the people nearest to the customer in the sales and account management pipeline that are directing it.
Swizec 7y ago
I work in startups. Fighting against becoming a manager is a daily battle. And my job still looks way more managey than it used to. It just sort of sneaks up on you. I used to get to code. Now I spend half my time running projects, pushing back on specs, interviewing people, mentoring juniors, running meetings, discussing team structure, and all sorts of things that aren’t coding.
shantly 7y ago
> There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now). This is one of those things I'd not go out of my way to bring up, for obvious reasons, but yes, I've noticed this too. Best I can tell it's because more of them (as a percentage) have entering management as a primary goal and actively work toward it from day one, which just means that, for most non-FAANG companies, they're playing the making-money-and-gaining-status game smarter than their male peers, so it's not even a dig, really—kinda the opposite.
encoderer 7y ago
In SFBA it happens all the time.
cuddlybacon 7y ago
My current boss was promoted from engineering. The boss he replaced was also promoted from engineering. My boss's boss was promoted from engineering as well. He went directly from engineer to second-tier manager. I work for a Silicon Valley based company with 10k employees.
rb808 7y ago
I've switched from manager and back. Usually there is a real shortage of devs that want to be manager. If you're inclined, ask your boss for some responsibility, maybe with a grad or junior dev, I'm sure you'll get it. After that work on bigger projects.
yibg 7y ago
I’ve very rarely seen engineering managers that didn’t come from being an engineer. Most lower level manager interviews (at least in the valley) still involve a significant amount of technical questions to weed out people that don’t have a solid engineering background. If you are talking more about executives this has also been true at places I’ve been. Engineering VPs mostly were also engineers at one point, although likely long ago. Conversely I’ve known very few engineering managers / directors / VPs with MBAs.
pmiller2 7y ago
It exists at my company, for sure. In the past year, I’ve seen 3 engineers on my team or closely affiliated teams start up the management track. We even have a 3 month trial period for IC’s turned manager. During this period, the new manager is mentored by an existing manager. At the end of the 3 months, they can decide to continue as a full manager or step back down to IC, no questions asked.
gfs78 7y ago
In service companies (consulting firms, software factories) the path is from business related positions (BA, sales, etc.) to management. Here devs as seen as cogs. In tech companies the path is from dev to management. Here the BAs and the like are seen as cogs. But it´s always from individual contributor to middle manager. From there and up the class system seems to be at work as it has always been.
UncleMeat 7y ago
This is exactly the opposite of my experience. I'm a manager. I was originally an IC. My boss, his boss, and his boss were all originally ICs. Past that I don't know their background well enough to know whether they were originally ICs or not.
pm90 7y ago
> There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now). Then don't bring it up. Just suggesting this seems unnecessary and seems to be begging a misogynist interpretation.
- gizmo686 7y ago
  Parent brought up a politically charged topic to the extent nessasary to qualify an otherwise false statement. In doing so, they took care to avoid the heart of the polical issue. What more do you want? To allow charged topics to infect more and more otherwise non charged topics, and bring every conversation down to their level?
  - pm90 7y ago
    What more do I want? How about not acting like there’s some kind of anti male conspiracy when literally the entire industry is over represented by males and males have reaped the biggest rewards from the system, and where any success by women is immediately tainted by hints of reverse discrimination? That’s what I want.
    - gizmo686 7y ago
      Good news then; parent specifically did not bring any of that up. Their observation can be just as easily explained by an anti female discrimination earlier in the pipeline, or even (much more controversial) explanations that involve no discrimination. I think I can guess which camp you fall into. I don't think I have given any indication on this thread as to which camp I fall into. I have absolutely no idea which camp parent falls into, and I don't see how anyone could infer from their short post on this thread (I haven't looked through their history, nor do I intend to). Parent made an anecdotal observations. You are free to argue that the observation is wrong (as other responders have).. I suppose you could even engage with the underlying issue that parent specifically avoided. Although I suspect that you would, unfortunately, run into precisely the issue that parent was afraid of. At this point, I think it is clear that this subject is toxic. That is very unfortunate, but probably one of the only things all sides can agree on. Given that, we should do our best to quarantine the toxicity and not let it infect adjacent topics. In the case of parent, what other options did they have? If they must omit the observation entirely, we are ignoring an entirely on-point observation for fear that it has polically incorrect implications for an unrelated or tangentially related subject. If they omit the problamatic condition, they are outright lieing, and introducing a false anecdote into the discourse.
lostphilosopher 7y ago
I was a Senior Engineer, was promoted to Manager, then to a Manager of Managers role. No MBA. I work for a Fortune 10 company. This is the path almost all of my peers followed. Some version of this track existed in every company I've worked for. Change companies? Or accept some open minded mentorship from the people who succeeded in this track at your company. (I encounter a fair amount of folks who want leadership roles but are going about it super wrong...)

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.
- Qworg 7y ago
  Much of this sounds like being in an organization where engineering is seen (or is) a cost center, not a profit engine. There's definitely a tendency to stasis in organizations - if the benefit of new software doesn't outweigh the loss of older, working software, there's no way anyone would want to encourage new software to be made.
  - stakhanov 7y ago
    This has been my experience both in the case of a bank (where technology is an operating overhead) but, surprisingly, also in a tech startup at the stage where it was maturing beyond 50 employees. Even more surprisingly, we are speaking of a tech startup where the CEO, CTO and most senior product manager are all engineers. But they got into those positions when the company was just a handful of people and seem to have forgotten about their roots. What is going on now is that there is little to no real carreer mobility for newly hired engineers, and the company now has more non-technical than technical people, who have built up a caste system where they keep engineers out of the decisions that matter.
    - waprin 7y ago
      I'm curious where you're located. This was exactly my experience in "tech" startups in NYC, but not my experience at all working in SF. This is a big part of the reason why I have zero interest in leaving SF for some upcoming tech city, as in my experience you are correct there is a tendency to push engineers away from any business decisions, but much less so in SF which has a culture that ties engineering to entrepreneurship more closely. One explanation I've noticed is that the VCs in the Bay Area are far more likely to have technical backgrounds, whereas in NYC the VC firms almost always have finance backgrounds, and that culture bubbles down.
      - stakhanov 7y ago
        You're quite right: I have had no direct contact with the SF / Bay Area, nor any companies based there. I've mostly been based in major European cities, and in some cases working within the European operations of U.S.-corporates (that weren't Bay Area startups). In a few cases I've worked remotely directly for U.S.-East Coast startups.

dsunshine 7y ago

It depends on the organization but I see it a lot in consultancies; as consultants build client-facing skills alongside their technical knowledge they often move into leadership roles. In the corporate world, I've seen both. However, the better managers that I've worked for have had recent engineering experience or at least can follow a technical discussion.

ryandrake 7y ago

I’ve seen the exact opposite in some companies. Great technical people who have no business managing, suddenly becoming a manager. It goes like this: Person X is much better performing than the average bear. Company wants to reward Person X, but he or she is already at the max level for a technical individual contributor: “Senior Software Engineer” which is one level above entry level “Software Engineer”. Since the company has no career growth for techies past Senior Software Engineer, they say “OK We are going to reward you for doing such a good job: you are now knighted as a manager.” They bob the sword up and down. “Now go off and do this entirely different thing than you’ve been doing!” Unsurprisingly, a lot of these new managers aren’t really great at managing. I’ve had sw team managers open up to me and admit they didn’t want to be managing at all and hate it but that’s the only way to advance in your career so they do it. I’ve also seen mediocre engineers who have great personal and presentation skills (or potential) languish as “3rd engineer from the left” because they weren’t Wizard enough to be promoted to management. There’s a huge skill/function mismatch.

steveklabnik 7y ago

Mozilla has two parallel tracks, the management track and the IC track. Both have their own levels, but you can switch between them. I've known several people that started off on the IC track and moved to the management track.

lrem 7y ago

In Google I've seen people moving from IC to manager and vice versa. Some times repeatedly.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

From what I have seen the caste system exists in companies where the tech part is not the main business. I work in medical devices and there the programmers are viewed as replaceable and don’t have much potential to move up. At least I haven’t seen it so far. You either have to be MBA or sales. Some medical guys also get promoted. In software companies I have seen programmers move up a lot. That’s Why I recommend people to try to work for a company where the CEO has some understanding and appreciation of your work and doesn’t see it just as a cost factor that better get offshored and outsourced. There are always exceptions but in general you will have a much better life and career in such companies.

pjc50 7y ago

Happened to me when my manager left at my previous job. No training or support came with it, sadly, so I went back to IC level at my current job which is much more comfortable and actually better paid. > where they would meaningfully influence business direction on an ongoing basis If your business is "customer led", as lots are, then it's the people nearest to the customer in the sales and account management pipeline that are directing it.

Swizec 7y ago

I work in startups. Fighting against becoming a manager is a daily battle. And my job still looks way more managey than it used to. It just sort of sneaks up on you. I used to get to code. Now I spend half my time running projects, pushing back on specs, interviewing people, mentoring juniors, running meetings, discussing team structure, and all sorts of things that aren’t coding.

shantly 7y ago

> There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now). This is one of those things I'd not go out of my way to bring up, for obvious reasons, but yes, I've noticed this too. Best I can tell it's because more of them (as a percentage) have entering management as a primary goal and actively work toward it from day one, which just means that, for most non-FAANG companies, they're playing the making-money-and-gaining-status game smarter than their male peers, so it's not even a dig, really—kinda the opposite.

encoderer 7y ago

In SFBA it happens all the time.

cuddlybacon 7y ago

My current boss was promoted from engineering. The boss he replaced was also promoted from engineering. My boss's boss was promoted from engineering as well. He went directly from engineer to second-tier manager. I work for a Silicon Valley based company with 10k employees.

rb808 7y ago

I've switched from manager and back. Usually there is a real shortage of devs that want to be manager. If you're inclined, ask your boss for some responsibility, maybe with a grad or junior dev, I'm sure you'll get it. After that work on bigger projects.

yibg 7y ago

I’ve very rarely seen engineering managers that didn’t come from being an engineer. Most lower level manager interviews (at least in the valley) still involve a significant amount of technical questions to weed out people that don’t have a solid engineering background. If you are talking more about executives this has also been true at places I’ve been. Engineering VPs mostly were also engineers at one point, although likely long ago. Conversely I’ve known very few engineering managers / directors / VPs with MBAs.

pmiller2 7y ago

It exists at my company, for sure. In the past year, I’ve seen 3 engineers on my team or closely affiliated teams start up the management track. We even have a 3 month trial period for IC’s turned manager. During this period, the new manager is mentored by an existing manager. At the end of the 3 months, they can decide to continue as a full manager or step back down to IC, no questions asked.

gfs78 7y ago

In service companies (consulting firms, software factories) the path is from business related positions (BA, sales, etc.) to management. Here devs as seen as cogs. In tech companies the path is from dev to management. Here the BAs and the like are seen as cogs. But it´s always from individual contributor to middle manager. From there and up the class system seems to be at work as it has always been.

UncleMeat 7y ago

This is exactly the opposite of my experience. I'm a manager. I was originally an IC. My boss, his boss, and his boss were all originally ICs. Past that I don't know their background well enough to know whether they were originally ICs or not.

pm90 7y ago

> There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now). Then don't bring it up. Just suggesting this seems unnecessary and seems to be begging a misogynist interpretation.

gizmo686 7y ago
Parent brought up a politically charged topic to the extent nessasary to qualify an otherwise false statement. In doing so, they took care to avoid the heart of the polical issue. What more do you want? To allow charged topics to infect more and more otherwise non charged topics, and bring every conversation down to their level?
- pm90 7y ago
  What more do I want? How about not acting like there’s some kind of anti male conspiracy when literally the entire industry is over represented by males and males have reaped the biggest rewards from the system, and where any success by women is immediately tainted by hints of reverse discrimination? That’s what I want.
  - gizmo686 7y ago
    Good news then; parent specifically did not bring any of that up. Their observation can be just as easily explained by an anti female discrimination earlier in the pipeline, or even (much more controversial) explanations that involve no discrimination. I think I can guess which camp you fall into. I don't think I have given any indication on this thread as to which camp I fall into. I have absolutely no idea which camp parent falls into, and I don't see how anyone could infer from their short post on this thread (I haven't looked through their history, nor do I intend to). Parent made an anecdotal observations. You are free to argue that the observation is wrong (as other responders have).. I suppose you could even engage with the underlying issue that parent specifically avoided. Although I suspect that you would, unfortunately, run into precisely the issue that parent was afraid of. At this point, I think it is clear that this subject is toxic. That is very unfortunate, but probably one of the only things all sides can agree on. Given that, we should do our best to quarantine the toxicity and not let it infect adjacent topics. In the case of parent, what other options did they have? If they must omit the observation entirely, we are ignoring an entirely on-point observation for fear that it has polically incorrect implications for an unrelated or tangentially related subject. If they omit the problamatic condition, they are outright lieing, and introducing a false anecdote into the discourse.

lostphilosopher 7y ago

I was a Senior Engineer, was promoted to Manager, then to a Manager of Managers role. No MBA. I work for a Fortune 10 company. This is the path almost all of my peers followed. Some version of this track existed in every company I've worked for. Change companies? Or accept some open minded mentorship from the people who succeeded in this track at your company. (I encounter a fair amount of folks who want leadership roles but are going about it super wrong...)