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Bruh, I don't know where you've been but "Engineering Manager" positions are the new "Devops" from 10 years ago in terms of needing to do multiple jobs. Every p
by lovich 3y ago
Bruh, I don't know where you've been but "Engineering Manager" positions are the new "Devops" from 10 years ago in terms of needing to do multiple jobs. Every position I've both applied for and gotten has required that I can
-Complete technical tasks at the minimum of a senior engineer level if not staff/principal
-Train the <senior engineers on a weekly basis
-Project Management
-System Design, to the point that I am willing to put my name on each and every design as the architect
-Understand all the projects my team owns to the level that I can answer extremely explicit technical questions from other teams line engineers immediately in that meeting and not need to refer to my team's expertise
-Be on call 24/7. This isn't asked explicitly, but I am told that I need to be available to support my team for every on call event, which funnily enough means I cover 100% of the on 24/7 call schedule my team has
-People Management
-Employee growth
-Vendor Management
-more I am probably forgetting
I am not super incensed about this because the total comp has kept increasing as the expectations grow, but I am now 3 jobs in a row with companies expecting this combination of perfect high level engineer and perfect MBA accredited business leader in one role. If you have engineering managers that legitimately seem like overpaid scrum masters you should probably look to join a more mature software company.
Also if you're at a FAANG or close to FAANG startup and still feel this way, odds are that you have no idea what goes into 90% of running a team in an well running business and think that the company is making bad decisions because they don't dump 90% of their revenue into feature development instead of stupid choices like fulfilling government mandated regulation.
Edit: Also I've worked on teams with Scrum Masters. Its been more than 7 years since I last came across someone with that title. My Scrum Master equivalent planned tasks equate to less than 6 man hours total a week and 5 of that is the standup set for 15 minutes for 4 engineers a day that we normally end 5 minutes in
- baby 3y agoI’ve worked with engineering managers and they did none of the stuff you listed lol. I’m still wondering what they were doing.
- lovich 3y agoIf that is legimately the case then you are probably working fore a bad company. I would caution you to confirm that your engineering manager isn't working in the background on a bunch of non engineering tasks that kept the engineers more productive. IMO, my modus operandi as an engineering manager is to body all the work that I can handle for a team that lets the team stay focused on the engineering work and be more productive.
- oldpersonintx 3y agoMany of us work for "bad" companies With tens of billions in the bank, who will be dancing on the graves of highly effective startups Which is why people still work for "bad" companies
- UK-AL 3y agoI've worked at many software companies, and the idea that a engineering manager can do a system design is hilarious. Most come from non technical backgrounds, or we're in a technical role for a short time.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoAt my FAANG, the chain up until the SVP has an engineering background. I previously worked for a startup that put a non engineer in charge which was super weird. Before that, my engineering manager was highly technical.