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> I think "manager as supervisor" is frankly dead. sorta. as someone who is an EM, so i guess take the bias with a grain of salt, the difference between a rea

by volkk 4y ago

> I think "manager as supervisor" is frankly dead. sorta. as someone who is an EM, so i guess take the bias with a grain of salt, the difference between a really good EM, and someone who warms a seat is astounding. the really good ones have strong opinions, can coach well on a variety of topics (e.g effective communication, organizational thinking), and understand the technicals at least from a level of where you can see how your direct reports are doing. they also understand the economics/business of a company and can foresee which teams are dead-ends so they can offer good advice to direct reports to grow careers. the ones who warm seats are glorified project managers. no real advice beyond "should we do standups, when are retros" and basics like running a board, or taking notes during meetings. usually pretty disconnected from the day to day, no strong opinions on the actual hard stuff, just topical high level advice. plenty of those in the field, and its unfortunate because its not a hard science, so they tend to BS their ways into these positions and make a lot of money. either way, managers aren't going anywhere and no amount of code will automate them away.

dalyons 4y ago
I agree and further - After ~20 or so years in tech (including being a manger myself for awhile) I would guess about 70% of EMs industry wide are your “seat warmers”. They’re not necessarily harmful or bad people, just kind of useless. These days I have learned to pretty much ignore what they say and chart my own path to making things happen.
- SamuelAdams 4y ago
  Unfortunately in corporate America there are many people who are simply coasting towards retirement. It’s quite difficult to motivate someone when they only have three years left.
  - dalyons 4y ago
    im not sure if its that in tech - mostly people are pretty motivated. I think there's just more need for manager roles (HR stuff, 1/1s, communication, coordination, etc) than there exists willing talented candidates. So the bar gets naturally lowered and we end up with a lot of mediocre seat warmers.
- volkk 4y ago
  question for ya -- i've been thinking about going back into IC actually. i'm sort of in a weird position where i am bored to death being an EM, but also appreciate some of the problems i get to think about and try to solve that i would never get to as an IC. was your decision to go back to being an IC the right one? do you miss anything about the EM role?
  - dalyons 4y ago
    great question. It was absolutely worth it for me, but let me give some extra context and explain what kind of role i work in now. background: - what i liked about management was leverage, and being able to influence strategy, etc more than i could as a regular IC. Also coaching and growing people. - what i was "meh" on was the very time consuming mechanics of mgmt, 1/1s, perf reviews, sprint mechanics, status reports, interfacing with HR machinery etc. So i wanted to create an IC role where ideally I could have large scale influence, and still participate in the strategy and high level decision making at a company. I did NOT want to go back to IC to be left alone to code hard things in a corner. Thats a totally valid path too that ive heard from some, but not for me, so just calling that out. So creating the role: - you need to be at a company that believes in (or has already established) an IC leadership track that parallels the management track. That means there should be IC levels that match (in pay and responsibility) to manager, director, VP levels. Facebook, google, big tech all do this now. Creating and paying for a non-management ladder is kind of the "put your money where you mouth is" - if the company wont do this, they wont take IC leaders seriously when push comes to shove. - one way to do it is to pair an IC role with a senior mgmt. eg, there is an eng Director in charge of payments, so there should be a single technical IC in charge of payments tech. They work together on shaping the overall strategy for their unit - the EM & IC lead are responsible for the same domain. Notably, these folk dont have to be on a specific delivery team, rather they work with each delivery team in their unit as needed. - the senior roles come with real responsibility and accountability... if you are the payments lead IC, you're making technical decisions with consequences in the millions or 10s of millions of $$, in terms of risk but also in terms of engineering opportunity cost. A rough proxy for "how senior is this person" is "what would it cost us if they were wrong". Make that clear to the business side, take responsibility, justify decisions in business/commercial terms. It will be received well and you will be taken much more seriously as a strategic stakeholder. - you can still coach and grow people, just on your own terms without the formal reporting structure. Better to me. anyway enough rambling - and YMMV this is all advice that applies to what I wanted to do with my role. Others may have different goals. Happy to talk more if you have questions, email in profile.

by volkk 4y ago

dalyons 4y ago

I agree and further - After ~20 or so years in tech (including being a manger myself for awhile) I would guess about 70% of EMs industry wide are your “seat warmers”. They’re not necessarily harmful or bad people, just kind of useless. These days I have learned to pretty much ignore what they say and chart my own path to making things happen.

SamuelAdams 4y ago
Unfortunately in corporate America there are many people who are simply coasting towards retirement. It’s quite difficult to motivate someone when they only have three years left.
- dalyons 4y ago
  im not sure if its that in tech - mostly people are pretty motivated. I think there's just more need for manager roles (HR stuff, 1/1s, communication, coordination, etc) than there exists willing talented candidates. So the bar gets naturally lowered and we end up with a lot of mediocre seat warmers.
volkk 4y ago
question for ya -- i've been thinking about going back into IC actually. i'm sort of in a weird position where i am bored to death being an EM, but also appreciate some of the problems i get to think about and try to solve that i would never get to as an IC. was your decision to go back to being an IC the right one? do you miss anything about the EM role?
- dalyons 4y ago
  great question. It was absolutely worth it for me, but let me give some extra context and explain what kind of role i work in now. background: - what i liked about management was leverage, and being able to influence strategy, etc more than i could as a regular IC. Also coaching and growing people. - what i was "meh" on was the very time consuming mechanics of mgmt, 1/1s, perf reviews, sprint mechanics, status reports, interfacing with HR machinery etc. So i wanted to create an IC role where ideally I could have large scale influence, and still participate in the strategy and high level decision making at a company. I did NOT want to go back to IC to be left alone to code hard things in a corner. Thats a totally valid path too that ive heard from some, but not for me, so just calling that out. So creating the role: - you need to be at a company that believes in (or has already established) an IC leadership track that parallels the management track. That means there should be IC levels that match (in pay and responsibility) to manager, director, VP levels. Facebook, google, big tech all do this now. Creating and paying for a non-management ladder is kind of the "put your money where you mouth is" - if the company wont do this, they wont take IC leaders seriously when push comes to shove. - one way to do it is to pair an IC role with a senior mgmt. eg, there is an eng Director in charge of payments, so there should be a single technical IC in charge of payments tech. They work together on shaping the overall strategy for their unit - the EM & IC lead are responsible for the same domain. Notably, these folk dont have to be on a specific delivery team, rather they work with each delivery team in their unit as needed. - the senior roles come with real responsibility and accountability... if you are the payments lead IC, you're making technical decisions with consequences in the millions or 10s of millions of $$, in terms of risk but also in terms of engineering opportunity cost. A rough proxy for "how senior is this person" is "what would it cost us if they were wrong". Make that clear to the business side, take responsibility, justify decisions in business/commercial terms. It will be received well and you will be taken much more seriously as a strategic stakeholder. - you can still coach and grow people, just on your own terms without the formal reporting structure. Better to me. anyway enough rambling - and YMMV this is all advice that applies to what I wanted to do with my role. Others may have different goals. Happy to talk more if you have questions, email in profile.