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That's a nice fantasy but most technically minded folks will quickly discover that political savviness required to pull this off is in fact a skill and the one

That's a nice fantasy but most technically minded folks will quickly discover that political savviness required to pull this off is in fact a skill and the one they generally don't possess. Also, watch the hands: > 2. Get hired into a higher level than you could in a SWE role.

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
Its not a fantasy, this is path represents a huge percentage of managers/higher ups in software
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Its not a fantasy, this is path represents a huge percentage of managers/higher ups in software It's also a part of the reason why at least historically there is such an insane hate for managers in hacker culture.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  This was my experience after my startup was acquired. My boss, and my skip level were both former QA folks who'd never done any SWE work. I had more YOE as a SWE AND as a manager than both combined.
blueboo 3y ago
I worry this whole comment chain is celebrating a coping mechanism of troglodytic engineering, that the ideal is to shape artisanal code-crystals undisturbed in a cave. We all wish there was a simple meritocracy of crystal-fashioning, with the master diamondsmiths sat at the top. If only, enough said. The political savviness so scorned by the in-the-trenches coder might actually be communication, capacity for broader context, strategic foresight, emotional intelligence to debug and optimise teams, among the many other skills required to execute a product/project beyond programming. And good leads will pluck coders showing these skills out of the engineering corps and set them on a TPM track. Perhaps it is only rarely the case. But it seems fair to observe that it is gentler on the ego to cast these rare and hard-earned skills as “playing the game”, PM mumbled-jumbo, etc. At the same time, operators in bad faith tend to deploy just these skills, and a bad experience can incline one to wash their hands of it all and crave the rough diamonds of the cave…
- fjweo 3y ago
  No these teams with these people tend to be totally dysfunctional. It's not the case that they are skilled at producing value and doing important things for the product, just playing the game (often in a very evil way)

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago

Its not a fantasy, this is path represents a huge percentage of managers/higher ups in software

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Its not a fantasy, this is path represents a huge percentage of managers/higher ups in software It's also a part of the reason why at least historically there is such an insane hate for managers in hacker culture.
fatnoah 3y ago
This was my experience after my startup was acquired. My boss, and my skip level were both former QA folks who'd never done any SWE work. I had more YOE as a SWE AND as a manager than both combined.

blueboo 3y ago

I worry this whole comment chain is celebrating a coping mechanism of troglodytic engineering, that the ideal is to shape artisanal code-crystals undisturbed in a cave. We all wish there was a simple meritocracy of crystal-fashioning, with the master diamondsmiths sat at the top. If only, enough said. The political savviness so scorned by the in-the-trenches coder might actually be communication, capacity for broader context, strategic foresight, emotional intelligence to debug and optimise teams, among the many other skills required to execute a product/project beyond programming. And good leads will pluck coders showing these skills out of the engineering corps and set them on a TPM track. Perhaps it is only rarely the case. But it seems fair to observe that it is gentler on the ego to cast these rare and hard-earned skills as “playing the game”, PM mumbled-jumbo, etc. At the same time, operators in bad faith tend to deploy just these skills, and a bad experience can incline one to wash their hands of it all and crave the rough diamonds of the cave…

fjweo 3y ago
No these teams with these people tend to be totally dysfunctional. It's not the case that they are skilled at producing value and doing important things for the product, just playing the game (often in a very evil way)