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This is very true and I learned this quickly when moving to a management role. As an IC, when someone is out for some life event, it might mean more work for yo

This is very true and I learned this quickly when moving to a management role. As an IC, when someone is out for some life event, it might mean more work for you to pick up the slack. As a manager, everyone on your team's problems become your problems. Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully.

h4ny 2y ago
I'm not trying to make light of your experience, and I do appreciate that you care about people you have to look after deeply. However, I also don't think what you described is professional with respect to being a manager. A manager's job is to balance the interest between stakeholders and their reports, make sure things happen as promised (and adjust scope when promise can't be met), and make sure everyone in their team grows (skill, remuneration, etc.). > Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. These are not things that would affect you from being a good manager. That's just part of the job of being a manager. It's a different kind of problem, it's not necessarily heavier problems. It's unhelpful, or even narcissistic, to think that you're actually quietly taking on more burden for everyone without being appreciated. You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if your empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to be a better manager, then you're probably not doing a very good job as a manager. > Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully. I disagree. That's just an excuse of not doing what you should be doing as a manager: manage things. See above. If you are an empathetic person, if you work in a team where people have/had "cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc.", then it's emotionally just as taxing whether you're an IC or a manager. In fact, if you can't manage your emotions and get what needs to be done done (damage control, repriortization, etc. to get things shipped), then you're not doing your job as a manager. Edit: feel free to downvote if you don't agree but much appreciated if you also leave a response to say why you disagree. Otherwise, I hope you feel good "punishing" people just because you feel differently but don't actually have a concrete argument against.
- gmueckl 2y ago
  I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal human being with natural empathy for the people they work with. Managing people does require emotional stability and self control, though. ICs tend to automatically defer to their managers. Sometimes, this leads the ICs to misinterpret tiny reactions from their managers in completely unintended ways. I find that negative, emotionally charged reactions from managers are especially likely to lead to unintended reactions from their ICs. As an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups and does to the job. This is even more important as a manager.
  - h4ny 2y ago
    > I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal human being with natural empathy for the people they work with. I agree but that's not what I said. What I said was it's "unhelpful, or even narcissistic", for a manager to think that being empathetic as a manager is more emotionally taxing than an IC. > Managing people does require emotional stability and self control, though. It does. That's just being professional though. Being a good coworker in general requires emotional stability and self control. I'm not sure if you're trying to argue that a manager has to have much greater ability to do those than an IC since you seem to avoid saying that directly. > ICs tend to automatically defer to their managers. Sometimes, this leads the ICs to misinterpret tiny reactions from their managers in completely unintended ways. I find that negative, emotionally charged reactions from managers are especially likely to lead to unintended reactions from their ICs. Uh, the reverse sounds just about as true? I'm honestly not sure what the argument there is. > As an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups and does to the job. This is even more important as a manager. It's unclear from what you said why it's more important as a manager -- that's just what every professional should do at a workplace. Can you please elaborate?
    - gmueckl 2y ago
      As a manager, you are always implicitly communicating from a position of power. That changes what you can and cannot say. It's not very hard to understand once you experience it from a manager's perspective, but I don't think that I would have truly understood this exclusively from an IC's perspective, though.
walterbell 2y ago
s/has a heavy emotional toll/is emotional labor/ Sustainable labor requires care, including of the manager.
bigfatkitten 2y ago
> Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully. I've been a manager, and I've also been a volunteer firefighter for many years. I've seen a lot of things no person should see. My relatively brief stint in management kept me awake at night more than the shotgun vs face suicide, or fatal motor vehicle accidents that I attended in the same period. I think it was because the fate of those people was well out of my hands, but the livelihood of my direct reports was not.
- hnisoss 2y ago
  you sound like a very empathetic person. But hear me out - at end of the day, it's all just business. I was let go on Thursday, 1 hour before end of shift, in a 60 seconds zoom call. Got told that core team is working hands on in the office, has high velocity, and me being remote is slowing them down. I strongly suspect it was also about the fact that this week they had me work on a project I haven't touched yet, and I got no support to set the dev env properly even. So I was developing blind, while also working overtime to push changes to backend I joined to work on. My wife just lost a kid, this was first job I had in 8 months, just started on new year. We are in small debt. I worked from 6 in the afternoon to 5 in the morning (timezone difference) to output a lot, so they keep me and raise my rate. Company raised 16mm but they're still startup, yknow. So when push comes to shove you get let go without them asking about any of that, or concern themself with it. CEO almost bitterly thanked me for working with them and notified me my contact is over and that's it, hung up and left to work on their launch. Team didn't even notice I m gone. I still went to coworking space today to send CVs because I didn't have heart to tell wife we are cooked again. But look, it happened before, I chose to do this job. I'll deal with the fallout, find new one. It is O.K., I'm not entitled to anyone's pitty. Like I said, that is the risk of business. As manager you cannot set rules of the company. And even if you could, sometimes you still need to make hard decisions. You're not a rock in the stream they can latch on, you are another man floating downstream. Don't lose sleep.
  - kovac 2y ago
    I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope you'll find new, better work soon. Where I work, we do not have any open positions I'm aware of at the moment. But if you like we can connect. I'm trying to start my own start-up rn. But can't promise anything.

h4ny 2y ago

I'm not trying to make light of your experience, and I do appreciate that you care about people you have to look after deeply. However, I also don't think what you described is professional with respect to being a manager. A manager's job is to balance the interest between stakeholders and their reports, make sure things happen as promised (and adjust scope when promise can't be met), and make sure everyone in their team grows (skill, remuneration, etc.). > Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports. These are not things that would affect you from being a good manager. That's just part of the job of being a manager. It's a different kind of problem, it's not necessarily heavier problems. It's unhelpful, or even narcissistic, to think that you're actually quietly taking on more burden for everyone without being appreciated. You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if your empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to be a better manager, then you're probably not doing a very good job as a manager. > Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully. I disagree. That's just an excuse of not doing what you should be doing as a manager: manage things. See above. If you are an empathetic person, if you work in a team where people have/had "cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc.", then it's emotionally just as taxing whether you're an IC or a manager. In fact, if you can't manage your emotions and get what needs to be done done (damage control, repriortization, etc. to get things shipped), then you're not doing your job as a manager. Edit: feel free to downvote if you don't agree but much appreciated if you also leave a response to say why you disagree. Otherwise, I hope you feel good "punishing" people just because you feel differently but don't actually have a concrete argument against.

gmueckl 2y ago
I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal human being with natural empathy for the people they work with. Managing people does require emotional stability and self control, though. ICs tend to automatically defer to their managers. Sometimes, this leads the ICs to misinterpret tiny reactions from their managers in completely unintended ways. I find that negative, emotionally charged reactions from managers are especially likely to lead to unintended reactions from their ICs. As an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups and does to the job. This is even more important as a manager.
- h4ny 2y ago
  > I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal human being with natural empathy for the people they work with. I agree but that's not what I said. What I said was it's "unhelpful, or even narcissistic", for a manager to think that being empathetic as a manager is more emotionally taxing than an IC. > Managing people does require emotional stability and self control, though. It does. That's just being professional though. Being a good coworker in general requires emotional stability and self control. I'm not sure if you're trying to argue that a manager has to have much greater ability to do those than an IC since you seem to avoid saying that directly. > ICs tend to automatically defer to their managers. Sometimes, this leads the ICs to misinterpret tiny reactions from their managers in completely unintended ways. I find that negative, emotionally charged reactions from managers are especially likely to lead to unintended reactions from their ICs. Uh, the reverse sounds just about as true? I'm honestly not sure what the argument there is. > As an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups and does to the job. This is even more important as a manager. It's unclear from what you said why it's more important as a manager -- that's just what every professional should do at a workplace. Can you please elaborate?
  - gmueckl 2y ago
    As a manager, you are always implicitly communicating from a position of power. That changes what you can and cannot say. It's not very hard to understand once you experience it from a manager's perspective, but I don't think that I would have truly understood this exclusively from an IC's perspective, though.

walterbell 2y ago

s/has a heavy emotional toll/is emotional labor/ Sustainable labor requires care, including of the manager.

bigfatkitten 2y ago

> Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully. I've been a manager, and I've also been a volunteer firefighter for many years. I've seen a lot of things no person should see. My relatively brief stint in management kept me awake at night more than the shotgun vs face suicide, or fatal motor vehicle accidents that I attended in the same period. I think it was because the fate of those people was well out of my hands, but the livelihood of my direct reports was not.

hnisoss 2y ago
you sound like a very empathetic person. But hear me out - at end of the day, it's all just business. I was let go on Thursday, 1 hour before end of shift, in a 60 seconds zoom call. Got told that core team is working hands on in the office, has high velocity, and me being remote is slowing them down. I strongly suspect it was also about the fact that this week they had me work on a project I haven't touched yet, and I got no support to set the dev env properly even. So I was developing blind, while also working overtime to push changes to backend I joined to work on. My wife just lost a kid, this was first job I had in 8 months, just started on new year. We are in small debt. I worked from 6 in the afternoon to 5 in the morning (timezone difference) to output a lot, so they keep me and raise my rate. Company raised 16mm but they're still startup, yknow. So when push comes to shove you get let go without them asking about any of that, or concern themself with it. CEO almost bitterly thanked me for working with them and notified me my contact is over and that's it, hung up and left to work on their launch. Team didn't even notice I m gone. I still went to coworking space today to send CVs because I didn't have heart to tell wife we are cooked again. But look, it happened before, I chose to do this job. I'll deal with the fallout, find new one. It is O.K., I'm not entitled to anyone's pitty. Like I said, that is the risk of business. As manager you cannot set rules of the company. And even if you could, sometimes you still need to make hard decisions. You're not a rock in the stream they can latch on, you are another man floating downstream. Don't lose sleep.
- kovac 2y ago
  I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope you'll find new, better work soon. Where I work, we do not have any open positions I'm aware of at the moment. But if you like we can connect. I'm trying to start my own start-up rn. But can't promise anything.