7 ms·

I've never understood engineers who decide to go manage. Why would you give up actually doing real work? Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

sbarre 5y ago
As an engineer, do you ever wonder who keeps your path clear, who makes sure you can focus on delivery, who advocates for meeting-free days, good work practices, or explains why those conference passes are money well spent? Who helps push tools and services through procurement? Who spends hours working with HR re-working career ladders so engineers have options _other_ than becoming a manager once they reach a certain level of seniority? Who is your voice in the leadership team when they don't get what you do and just see you as a high cost? Who explains to senior management why that high cost is worth their money? Speaking of "not doing real work", who do you think bargains to give you time to deal with that tech debt, instead of being death-marched to ship feature after feature? Features make money, right? You think all that just happens automatically? I was a hands-on coder for 2 decades. Now I've decided I want to spend my time helping developers earlier in their careers make the most of their time and their skills, I want to help them enjoy their work and grow their careers in a way that I couldn't do because the field had not matured as much as it has now. But sure yeah, I'm not doing real work..
- Xevi 5y ago
  That's what a manager should do, yes. But I think a lot of developers have had managers that don't do those things at all. And I think that's where the resentment of managers come from.
  - fnord77 5y ago
    indeed. I've found most managers have been a hindrance to getting the job done. unlike engineering, there's not really any formal "engineering manager" education. so it probably boils down to incompetence.
    - sbarre 5y ago
      I'm sorry you've had that experience. In my early career, I never had any managers, we were just "the developers" and left to figure stuff out on our own.. But in the last 5 years of my coding career, I had some excellent managers who really helped me grow and do my best work, which is what inspired me to go that route myself and try to do the same for other developers who are earlier in their careers. I will say, there actually is formal management education. It's just not often a requirement for promoting developers into management positions, and a lot of time the people who get put into those manager positions are either the least-good coders, or people who don't want the job but take it to get the promotion and (maybe) salary increase. And once they're in the roles, they are not properly trained or supported in the new skills they absolutely need to do a good job. That's not a recipe for success... but it's also an organizational problem just as much as an individual problem.
      - fnord77 5y ago
        is there a formal engineering management education, though? at the risk of sounding exceptionalistic, I think managing engineers is a different beast than managing other roles
        sbarre 5y ago
        That's very exceptionalistic (to stick with your word). You could apply this logic to any practitioner discipline, like medicine, research, sports, construction, cooking, etc.. Of course someone with practitioner experience will be (or appear?) better able to manage people doing that work, because they understand the finer details. But people management itself is also a learned skill, and that's where in my experience companies fall down on the training sometimes. They assume that the practitioner experience and the seniority is enough, and it's not. Then there's the whole empathy/EQ side of things. Being a manager requires a ton of emotional labour and that's not for everyone.
    - g051051 5y ago
      > I've found most managers have been a hindrance to getting the job done. Same. Additionally, "management" seems to be the path chosen by the most incompetent programmers to try to salvage a career.
  - sbarre 5y ago
    Sure, there are bad employees at all levels. I've seen plenty of bad/lazy developers in my time too. In fact I was probably on my way to becoming one when I decided I needed to do something new with myself after 20 years of coding. Also, some of the work a manager does is invisible to the people they manage. In fact I would argue that the "good" work is often the most invisible of all the work. So when that role, at some level, is responsible for you being able to do your work, whether you see it or not, calling it "not real" feels even more naive. But yes, there are absolutely bad managers out there. I agree with you on that.
    - dwohnitmok 5y ago
      > In fact I would argue that the "good" work is often the most invisible of all the work. This is just another version of the mantra often seen on HN that the "silent, behind-the-scenes" dev work of refactoring, maintenance, etc. is extremely valuable but under-acknowledged. The same holds for all levels of an organization, whether it's the CEO or a straight-out-of-school IC, but we seem to keep forgetting this principle when presented with a new face.
      - sbarre 5y ago
        Not quite.. I can see all the work my ICs do, even if others can't (to your point, which I agree with).. So I am aware of their challenges and their effort. But my ICs don't see all my work, just like I don't see all my director's work. So it's still somewhat asymmetrical. So it's easy to fall into that "they don't do anything of value" trap when you don't have the big picture. I believe that this is why as a manager it's actually super important to be transparent, and where possible (and desired) provide as much of a view into my work as I can for my ICs.. Some stuff I can't share of course, but if I can, I do. Hopefully this helps everyone in the end.
        g051051 5y ago
        What's an "IC"? All I can find online is "Independent Contractor".
- g051051 5y ago
  > do you ever wonder who keeps your path clear, who makes sure you can focus on delivery, who advocates for meeting-free days, good work practices, or explains why those conference passes are money well spent? Yes I do, because no one has ever done that any place I worked. If you're doing all the stuff you claim, then I tip my cap to you.
  - sbarre 5y ago
    Like I said somewhere else, I'm sorry that this is the experience you've had. I guess all I can say is there are good and bad managers out there just like there are good and bad engineers out there, or in any job title. Maybe an idea would be to use the list I made to formulate some questions for your next round of interviews, to get a better sense of the management culture of the places you're applying at, on top of the engineering culture. Happy to discuss my experience and give further pointers (although I certainly don't have all the answers) if you want. Contact info is in my profile.
    - g051051 5y ago
      > I guess all I can say is there are good and bad managers out there just like there are good and bad engineers out there, or in any job title. True. I see far more bad managers than bad engineers, though. Bad engineers get weeded out early. Unfortunately, in many cases, that moves them to being managers. > Happy to discuss my experience and give further pointers (although I certainly don't have all the answers) if you want. To be blunt, why would I want to? You previously mentioned being a 20-year hands-on coder, then made a late career switch to managing. Do you really think you've already learned enough and matured to the level of being consulted as an expert or resource on this?
      - sbarre 5y ago
        Lol well I wouldn't consider myself "late career", I've got another 15 years ahead of me at least, probably more as a consultant later because I love my work and don't think I'll want to completely stop working. I never professed to being an expert, but I've been in all corners of our industry, from a tech lead in big org to a consultant to strategic leadership (CTO-type roles in small companies) to freelancing for large enterprises. In all those roles I was doing some portion of hands-on coding, but it's only in the last 3-4 years that I don't code at work anymore. I still code plenty in my hobby time though. I offered because, to be blunt, you seem to have a very narrow/naive view of the industry we work in, in my opinion. And it seems to be to to your detriment (you seem bitter about a lot of things), and I thought maybe a different perspective would help. But fair enough, we can leave it at that. Best of luck!
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  A minority of managers care about those things. Most managers do not care about tech debt or advancing the careers of people. Most managers exist because most people believe a team has to have a manager, and that creates opportunities for many people. Many engineering managers dislike software engineering, and sometimes even dislike engineers themselves.
- grayclhn 5y ago
  It’s a little telling that 90% of what you describe is undoing the actions of other managers. :)
  - sbarre 5y ago
    Ehh there are many layers of management, and the higher you go, the more detached and abstract things become. The idea that somehow the people "at the top" should have complete understanding and appreciation for all the details of all the roles under them is unrealistic. It is actually part of the job to advocate and bring the relevant understanding up the chain, and believe it or not, that knowledge is welcomed and appreciated in many cases. And you may have assumed (perhaps I did not write it well) that this knowledge is received grudgingly, but it is not. Good senior executives appreciate context and details (it is a skill to know which details to give), and it helps them make the right decisions. But companies are webs of competing priorities, and you don't get what you don't ask for. Features vs. tech debt for example is a good one. Senior management wants to make money (so we can all keep our jobs), so they want new features. That makes sense to them. They don't really get what tech debt is, because that's not their department, it's ours. So we explain why it's important to tackle tech debt from a business perspective, and long-term product health (security, performance, developer happiness, etc).. And then that helps them see the value of that work, and it allows us to prioritize it alongside new features, because now they understand why it's good for the business. If no one explains it to them, they won't know what they won't know, and they will just keep asking for features.
mehwoot 5y ago
Why would you give up actually doing real work? Building something past a certain scale requires people to work together and building a system of people working together is just as much an interesting challenge as building a computer system of components working together.
pjbeam 5y ago
I would argue Vannevar Bush was more instrumental to the Manhattan project than Oppenheimer was. This is a pretty dismissive take on what "real work" is.
- g051051 5y ago
  > Vannevar Bush was more instrumental to the Manhattan project than Oppenheimer was They could have replaced Vannevar Bush with another manager, it would have been much harder (if even possible) to replace Oppenheimer.
- queuebert 5y ago
  Scientists will self organize; but managers alone will not invent atom bombs.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
There are various reasons. A big one is money (in most companies higher salaries are reserved for managers), people may also get bored with coding over time and creating and managing a good team can also be fun.
pts_ 5y ago
More money in driving slaves.
paxys 5y ago
I am one of these people, and whether I was doing "real work" or not I can guarantee that I had a MUCH larger impact to the product & company while in management (growing the team, setting goals and finalizing roadmaps, assessing priority of different tasks/bugs/features, incentivizing and rewarding engineers) than I did coding and resolving Jira tasks all day.
- g051051 5y ago
  I'd wager that most of the people you ever managed would consider that "larger impact" to be a negative one.

sbarre 5y ago

As an engineer, do you ever wonder who keeps your path clear, who makes sure you can focus on delivery, who advocates for meeting-free days, good work practices, or explains why those conference passes are money well spent? Who helps push tools and services through procurement? Who spends hours working with HR re-working career ladders so engineers have options _other_ than becoming a manager once they reach a certain level of seniority? Who is your voice in the leadership team when they don't get what you do and just see you as a high cost? Who explains to senior management why that high cost is worth their money? Speaking of "not doing real work", who do you think bargains to give you time to deal with that tech debt, instead of being death-marched to ship feature after feature? Features make money, right? You think all that just happens automatically? I was a hands-on coder for 2 decades. Now I've decided I want to spend my time helping developers earlier in their careers make the most of their time and their skills, I want to help them enjoy their work and grow their careers in a way that I couldn't do because the field had not matured as much as it has now. But sure yeah, I'm not doing real work..

Xevi 5y ago
That's what a manager should do, yes. But I think a lot of developers have had managers that don't do those things at all. And I think that's where the resentment of managers come from.
- fnord77 5y ago
  indeed. I've found most managers have been a hindrance to getting the job done. unlike engineering, there's not really any formal "engineering manager" education. so it probably boils down to incompetence.
  - sbarre 5y ago
    I'm sorry you've had that experience. In my early career, I never had any managers, we were just "the developers" and left to figure stuff out on our own.. But in the last 5 years of my coding career, I had some excellent managers who really helped me grow and do my best work, which is what inspired me to go that route myself and try to do the same for other developers who are earlier in their careers. I will say, there actually is formal management education. It's just not often a requirement for promoting developers into management positions, and a lot of time the people who get put into those manager positions are either the least-good coders, or people who don't want the job but take it to get the promotion and (maybe) salary increase. And once they're in the roles, they are not properly trained or supported in the new skills they absolutely need to do a good job. That's not a recipe for success... but it's also an organizational problem just as much as an individual problem.
    - fnord77 5y ago
      is there a formal engineering management education, though? at the risk of sounding exceptionalistic, I think managing engineers is a different beast than managing other roles
      - sbarre 5y ago
        That's very exceptionalistic (to stick with your word). You could apply this logic to any practitioner discipline, like medicine, research, sports, construction, cooking, etc.. Of course someone with practitioner experience will be (or appear?) better able to manage people doing that work, because they understand the finer details. But people management itself is also a learned skill, and that's where in my experience companies fall down on the training sometimes. They assume that the practitioner experience and the seniority is enough, and it's not. Then there's the whole empathy/EQ side of things. Being a manager requires a ton of emotional labour and that's not for everyone.
  - g051051 5y ago
    > I've found most managers have been a hindrance to getting the job done. Same. Additionally, "management" seems to be the path chosen by the most incompetent programmers to try to salvage a career.
- sbarre 5y ago
  Sure, there are bad employees at all levels. I've seen plenty of bad/lazy developers in my time too. In fact I was probably on my way to becoming one when I decided I needed to do something new with myself after 20 years of coding. Also, some of the work a manager does is invisible to the people they manage. In fact I would argue that the "good" work is often the most invisible of all the work. So when that role, at some level, is responsible for you being able to do your work, whether you see it or not, calling it "not real" feels even more naive. But yes, there are absolutely bad managers out there. I agree with you on that.
  - dwohnitmok 5y ago
    > In fact I would argue that the "good" work is often the most invisible of all the work. This is just another version of the mantra often seen on HN that the "silent, behind-the-scenes" dev work of refactoring, maintenance, etc. is extremely valuable but under-acknowledged. The same holds for all levels of an organization, whether it's the CEO or a straight-out-of-school IC, but we seem to keep forgetting this principle when presented with a new face.
    - sbarre 5y ago
      Not quite.. I can see all the work my ICs do, even if others can't (to your point, which I agree with).. So I am aware of their challenges and their effort. But my ICs don't see all my work, just like I don't see all my director's work. So it's still somewhat asymmetrical. So it's easy to fall into that "they don't do anything of value" trap when you don't have the big picture. I believe that this is why as a manager it's actually super important to be transparent, and where possible (and desired) provide as much of a view into my work as I can for my ICs.. Some stuff I can't share of course, but if I can, I do. Hopefully this helps everyone in the end.
      - g051051 5y ago
        What's an "IC"? All I can find online is "Independent Contractor".
g051051 5y ago
> do you ever wonder who keeps your path clear, who makes sure you can focus on delivery, who advocates for meeting-free days, good work practices, or explains why those conference passes are money well spent? Yes I do, because no one has ever done that any place I worked. If you're doing all the stuff you claim, then I tip my cap to you.
- sbarre 5y ago
  Like I said somewhere else, I'm sorry that this is the experience you've had. I guess all I can say is there are good and bad managers out there just like there are good and bad engineers out there, or in any job title. Maybe an idea would be to use the list I made to formulate some questions for your next round of interviews, to get a better sense of the management culture of the places you're applying at, on top of the engineering culture. Happy to discuss my experience and give further pointers (although I certainly don't have all the answers) if you want. Contact info is in my profile.
  - g051051 5y ago
    > I guess all I can say is there are good and bad managers out there just like there are good and bad engineers out there, or in any job title. True. I see far more bad managers than bad engineers, though. Bad engineers get weeded out early. Unfortunately, in many cases, that moves them to being managers. > Happy to discuss my experience and give further pointers (although I certainly don't have all the answers) if you want. To be blunt, why would I want to? You previously mentioned being a 20-year hands-on coder, then made a late career switch to managing. Do you really think you've already learned enough and matured to the level of being consulted as an expert or resource on this?
    - sbarre 5y ago
      Lol well I wouldn't consider myself "late career", I've got another 15 years ahead of me at least, probably more as a consultant later because I love my work and don't think I'll want to completely stop working. I never professed to being an expert, but I've been in all corners of our industry, from a tech lead in big org to a consultant to strategic leadership (CTO-type roles in small companies) to freelancing for large enterprises. In all those roles I was doing some portion of hands-on coding, but it's only in the last 3-4 years that I don't code at work anymore. I still code plenty in my hobby time though. I offered because, to be blunt, you seem to have a very narrow/naive view of the industry we work in, in my opinion. And it seems to be to to your detriment (you seem bitter about a lot of things), and I thought maybe a different perspective would help. But fair enough, we can leave it at that. Best of luck!
29athrowaway 5y ago
A minority of managers care about those things. Most managers do not care about tech debt or advancing the careers of people. Most managers exist because most people believe a team has to have a manager, and that creates opportunities for many people. Many engineering managers dislike software engineering, and sometimes even dislike engineers themselves.
grayclhn 5y ago
It’s a little telling that 90% of what you describe is undoing the actions of other managers. :)
- sbarre 5y ago
  Ehh there are many layers of management, and the higher you go, the more detached and abstract things become. The idea that somehow the people "at the top" should have complete understanding and appreciation for all the details of all the roles under them is unrealistic. It is actually part of the job to advocate and bring the relevant understanding up the chain, and believe it or not, that knowledge is welcomed and appreciated in many cases. And you may have assumed (perhaps I did not write it well) that this knowledge is received grudgingly, but it is not. Good senior executives appreciate context and details (it is a skill to know which details to give), and it helps them make the right decisions. But companies are webs of competing priorities, and you don't get what you don't ask for. Features vs. tech debt for example is a good one. Senior management wants to make money (so we can all keep our jobs), so they want new features. That makes sense to them. They don't really get what tech debt is, because that's not their department, it's ours. So we explain why it's important to tackle tech debt from a business perspective, and long-term product health (security, performance, developer happiness, etc).. And then that helps them see the value of that work, and it allows us to prioritize it alongside new features, because now they understand why it's good for the business. If no one explains it to them, they won't know what they won't know, and they will just keep asking for features.

mehwoot 5y ago

Why would you give up actually doing real work? Building something past a certain scale requires people to work together and building a system of people working together is just as much an interesting challenge as building a computer system of components working together.

pjbeam 5y ago

I would argue Vannevar Bush was more instrumental to the Manhattan project than Oppenheimer was. This is a pretty dismissive take on what "real work" is.

g051051 5y ago
> Vannevar Bush was more instrumental to the Manhattan project than Oppenheimer was They could have replaced Vannevar Bush with another manager, it would have been much harder (if even possible) to replace Oppenheimer.
queuebert 5y ago
Scientists will self organize; but managers alone will not invent atom bombs.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

There are various reasons. A big one is money (in most companies higher salaries are reserved for managers), people may also get bored with coding over time and creating and managing a good team can also be fun.

pts_ 5y ago

More money in driving slaves.

paxys 5y ago

I am one of these people, and whether I was doing "real work" or not I can guarantee that I had a MUCH larger impact to the product & company while in management (growing the team, setting goals and finalizing roadmaps, assessing priority of different tasks/bugs/features, incentivizing and rewarding engineers) than I did coding and resolving Jira tasks all day.

g051051 5y ago
I'd wager that most of the people you ever managed would consider that "larger impact" to be a negative one.