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I've been using chatgpt for career coaching and improving my visibility at work. It has been surprisingly helpful. A million times more helpful than my own mana

I've been using chatgpt for career coaching and improving my visibility at work. It has been surprisingly helpful. A million times more helpful than my own manager. I really don't understand what the point of EMs is.

ctkhn 1y ago
It's really just monitoring you. A designated technical lead on your team can be very helpful, but once someone moves off the dev team but also isn't able to make any decisions from the product/business side they just become dead weight. I have the same issue with my EM trying to get coaching and visibility and have gone to LLMs just like you because manager is clueless.
1123581321 1y ago
Theoretically the EM is building the department to do what the company needs, using departments or groups of engineers as the Lego pieces. Good ones are able to keep improving capabilities and keep good engineers at the company. But often they’re just surfing success they had little to do with, and it’s usually an inflated title at small companies.
lovich 1y ago
Well in the past couple of years all the EM roles I’ve gotten or been offered have come with expectations that not only am I managing 1-2 teams, I used to be a senior engineer right? I should be doing 20-40 hours of technical work and have a deep understanding of every single piece of work every member of my team does to the point that I understand it better than themselves. Needless to say there’s not enough hours in a week for that and I’ve yet to see a company that did more than pay lip service to employee development before immediately asking why the new project hasn’t shipped already
- apwell23 1y ago
  In my company its pure ppl managment role. No EM writes code. mine trying to give me some technical suggestions but that's about it.
icedchai 1y ago
It depends on the team and company size. EM for a 4 person dev team? Probably useless. You need a tech lead with light, part-time management responsibilities.

ctkhn 1y ago

It's really just monitoring you. A designated technical lead on your team can be very helpful, but once someone moves off the dev team but also isn't able to make any decisions from the product/business side they just become dead weight. I have the same issue with my EM trying to get coaching and visibility and have gone to LLMs just like you because manager is clueless.

1123581321 1y ago

Theoretically the EM is building the department to do what the company needs, using departments or groups of engineers as the Lego pieces. Good ones are able to keep improving capabilities and keep good engineers at the company. But often they’re just surfing success they had little to do with, and it’s usually an inflated title at small companies.

lovich 1y ago

Well in the past couple of years all the EM roles I’ve gotten or been offered have come with expectations that not only am I managing 1-2 teams, I used to be a senior engineer right? I should be doing 20-40 hours of technical work and have a deep understanding of every single piece of work every member of my team does to the point that I understand it better than themselves. Needless to say there’s not enough hours in a week for that and I’ve yet to see a company that did more than pay lip service to employee development before immediately asking why the new project hasn’t shipped already

apwell23 1y ago
In my company its pure ppl managment role. No EM writes code. mine trying to give me some technical suggestions but that's about it.

icedchai 1y ago

It depends on the team and company size. EM for a 4 person dev team? Probably useless. You need a tech lead with light, part-time management responsibilities.