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This is a chicken & egg problem. If someone is moving into management as a form of "career advancement", the way I read that is, they think they should be paid

This is a chicken & egg problem. If someone is moving into management as a form of "career advancement", the way I read that is, they think they should be paid more, but they don't think companies pay individual contributors with lots of experience more than they pay managers with lots of experience. That sucks. My belief is that management & compensation should be completely decoupled, so people wouldn't seek to do management for "career advancement", but because they actually enjoy management. For example, I hired a product manager last year and he really loves the work. It allows him to mix small engineering projects with product strategy, requirements elaboration, and his considerable people skills. But I don't see him as a "superior" to my other engineers -- he is just a contributor, like my other engineers. The "pay scale" for management should be similar to the pay scale for advanced individual work, in my opinion. Unfortunately, that's not the market we live in, so I can see why people would choose to seek management for "advancement" reasons, but this is just an unfortunate side effect of the market and ultimately causes a lot of talented contributors to do work they don't really love. Why? Essentially, for the money & prestige that needlessly comes with it.

bane 13y ago
Actually, in the cases where I've done lots of hiring etc. It's quite often that good engineers make more than their managers. I think this is a good thing in some cases. I'm thinking of the recent Ask HN "What happens to older developers?" Which I answered in some detail here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373301 There's lots of reasons for wanting to get into management, and I've found that one of the main motivators is wanting to get out of direct code-slinging software development as the majority of their day and use their experience for the company good in different ways -- basically new challenges and all that...but keep a similar level of pay. And very few people these days want to stay at a single job for more than a few years. So for a very experienced developer, they may start to feel "trapped" in their career and may not even know it. Sorry, I don't want to be contradictory or make you defend what's obviously a working system for you guys. Just food for thought.
- pixelmonkey 13y ago
  No need to apologize -- it was a healthy question & it's a strong point about motivations for management career move.
gaius 13y ago
Remember that there are two sides to every promotion: the promotee must also want it. So decisions on who gets promoted are made by people for whom getting promoted chimes with their value system.
cwp 13y ago
Well, there's another pattern that leads experienced developers into management. After a while, they realize that no matter how good they get, they can only write so much code each day. They can only increase their effectiveness by applying their experience to improving code that other people write. One route to that is by getting out of mainline production coding and going meta: designing new systems, programming languages, tools etc. Good work if you can get it, but prone to failure. Another route is to become a manager. There's plenty of demand for managers with technical ability, a clear route for advancement and much lower risk of failure.
kingraoul3 13y ago
Traditional business structures are predicated on the manager knowing more about the product & process than his/her employees - that's how he or she vet's and improves their work. The managers your describing sound more like PM's.

bane 13y ago

Actually, in the cases where I've done lots of hiring etc. It's quite often that good engineers make more than their managers. I think this is a good thing in some cases. I'm thinking of the recent Ask HN "What happens to older developers?" Which I answered in some detail here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373301 There's lots of reasons for wanting to get into management, and I've found that one of the main motivators is wanting to get out of direct code-slinging software development as the majority of their day and use their experience for the company good in different ways -- basically new challenges and all that...but keep a similar level of pay. And very few people these days want to stay at a single job for more than a few years. So for a very experienced developer, they may start to feel "trapped" in their career and may not even know it. Sorry, I don't want to be contradictory or make you defend what's obviously a working system for you guys. Just food for thought.

pixelmonkey 13y ago
No need to apologize -- it was a healthy question & it's a strong point about motivations for management career move.

gaius 13y ago

Remember that there are two sides to every promotion: the promotee must also want it. So decisions on who gets promoted are made by people for whom getting promoted chimes with their value system.

cwp 13y ago

Well, there's another pattern that leads experienced developers into management. After a while, they realize that no matter how good they get, they can only write so much code each day. They can only increase their effectiveness by applying their experience to improving code that other people write. One route to that is by getting out of mainline production coding and going meta: designing new systems, programming languages, tools etc. Good work if you can get it, but prone to failure. Another route is to become a manager. There's plenty of demand for managers with technical ability, a clear route for advancement and much lower risk of failure.

kingraoul3 13y ago

Traditional business structures are predicated on the manager knowing more about the product & process than his/her employees - that's how he or she vet's and improves their work. The managers your describing sound more like PM's.