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I worked as a manager at a FAANG for 2 years and switched back to IC. It was fairly common practice at my company, even among directors. I actually preferred
by SwSwinger 5y ago
I worked as a manager at a FAANG for 2 years and switched back to IC. It was fairly common practice at my company, even among directors. I actually preferred the management role, but felt like there were many downsides.
1. I wanted more flexibility in hours and working remotely. I have elderly parents in another state and want the flexibility to support them, as an only child.
2. Level of support. Most directors talked about taking all their vacation at once to relieve pressure to constantly check messages during vacation. For me, it was a < 1 hr response, much like lawyers. I was constantly pinged if I ever slacked on checking.
3. I felt like line management was much less emotionally supported than ICs. It was pretty common practice to give any positive praise to the IC and negative feedback to the manager, regardless of any sensical attribution. This was fine for optics, but frustrated me that it extended to internal reviews.
4. The power dynamics mean that any of your IC friends now have at least a minor level of suspicion towards you. Other managers also have hostility because advancing feels more zero-sum unless the company is hypergrowth.
I miss being a manager, but my mental health is a lot better. Honestly, I felt like I provided more value to the company as a manager and had a great relationship with my team that continued after I stepped down. It's not my evaluation process however.
- innagadadavida 5y agoI’m moving in the opposite direction. One of the things I have trouble keeping up is with latest best practices and new frameworks and dependency injection and unit tests and… just need to find my grove where the mindless hype and green engineers are less of a problem.
- wonderingdev 5y agoIf you don't really like your job as an engineer, it makes total sense. Management means, well, management: check on people, approve time off, help people with some wise-sounding standard advice and fake coaching. I've thought about that as well. Oh, don't tell me it depends on the company, I have a fair experience in very big corps and small startups. Variations on the same theme. In the end, my advice to other people would be: try to find a job you really like, something you're passionate about if you can, and avoid politics and drama (well, unless that's your passion of course).
- innagadadavida 5y agoI love the creative pursuit of solving problems and all the related engineering aspects. Software development is however becoming more of a cargo cult and that is the aspect of working I find very challenging. But at the end of the day, I’m mature enough to understand that there is a reason why this is called work - you get paid to do stuff and I’m happy if I find satisfaction in 70% of the things I do.
- wonderingdev 5y agoHow can something bringing value (read: money) to a lot of companies all around the world be considered "cargo cult"? As developers we are lucky enough that the market is so so wide, that if you don't like a company (heck, even just a person in a company) you can just change. So, nah, I don't buy it. Management is the real cargo cult, if we have to find one. People so aroused by the idea of mentoring (lol) other people (even more mature than them, quite often)... Look up "developer anarchy" on YouTube.