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I wonder if the lack of cultivation is partially due to mismatched incentives: It's often impossible to be a successful manager without embedding yourself in a
by Mezzie 5y ago
I wonder if the lack of cultivation is partially due to mismatched incentives: It's often impossible to be a successful manager without embedding yourself in a particular social network and organizational culture; making management the 'reward' for a good developer means that the good developers can be, for lack of a better term, brainwashed into corporate culture.
Older and more experienced technical specialists are more of a threat. Cultivating those people would mean giving them mentorship and resources, and older tech specialists are the population that's most likely to be a.) able to leave/have transferrable skills/not be as reliant on the companies as the managers, b.) old enough to stand up for their juniors - can't have someone on the team telling them NOT to work 14 hour days/killing themselves grinding to work at FAANG, and c.) they're most likely to have the organizational and long-term thinking/architectural skills to compete.
Cultivating older technical specialists could be seen, by tech execs, as training in and investing in their own competition.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoThe team that I ran was composed of experienced C++ developers, working on image processing pipeline stuff (propellor-beanie territory). They also weren't being paid particularly well, compared to what they could have gotten at other places. As a manager, it was my job to retain them; which I did -quite well. I did this via a combination of maintaining my own technical prowess (on my own time, as my company was no support at all on this), empowering my employees, staying out of their hair, learning the individual drivers of each of my team members, not nickle-and-dimeing them, supporting their training and personal/career development, and not playing political games. I never lied to them, and used carrots far more often than sticks. I also -very importantly- shielded them from a rather rapacious HR department, and terrible upper-level management. I didn't give a damn about whether or not they wanted to replace me (I don't think it ever crossed their minds). Basically, I became the manager that I always wished I had.