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I meant specifically things only a manager does. For instance, the presentations he does are for director/vp level, hefty slide deck stuff. Of course the more
by brandall10 6y ago
I meant specifically things only a manager does. For instance, the presentations he does are for director/vp level, hefty slide deck stuff.
Of course the more senior ICs do more than simply code AFA talk across teams and divisions to scope and define work, present workshops and presentations to the team and cross-departments, contribute to architecture decisions, present as SMEs across various parts of the stack, and mentor juniors. None of the ICs year on my team spend more than 80% of their time simply coding, the more senior staff spend probably more like 60-70%, and I spend about 50%.
I’ve worked at 14 companies over 23 years, from 3 Fortune 500s, to a couple mid-sized, to a bunch of smaller companies, to a handful of early stage startups. Have had probably close to 20 supervisors over this time and interfaced with dozens of other managers on related teams, and been a team lead about 5 or so times and a manager once.
I’ve never seen this dynamic play out. IME you're talking about a team lead not an actual people manager. Even in the most streamlined/simplest environments, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a people manager spend the majority of their time coding, not unless they were pushing 60+ hours doing so. Something as simple as 1-on-1s should be done at least once every week or two, and that can take up to an hour (or more counting prep) for every report.
Your mention of having multiple sups and junior heavy ICs at one place sounds dysfunctional and has little relation to any place I’ve worked at.
- _ek94 6y agoThose presentations to the higher levels didn’t really happen because the corporate structure was very flat. Also, I would not expect those to take up all that much time. You may have worked at a lot of places, but your experience is still only a tiny slice of the different shops out there. My experience is likewise limited, and I acknowledge that such light touch management is probably very rare, but it can and does work. You said she was a team lead not a real manager, which does have some truth to it, but it’s not like there was someone doing the “real” management work to pick up the slack for her. In the right environment that stuff simply isn’t needed.
- cutemonster 6y ago> such light touch management is probably very rare Don't be too certain about that :-) I recognize the things you mention from my first job, I had a manager / CTO who were like her. (This was a 20-30 ppl startup, high trust, not many meetings)
- _ek94 6y agoIt’s good to know there is hope of landing another such gig :)