Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers -- and even then the match will only be in salary, not in overall power in the organization and probably not in bonus structure either. You'll still be left out of countless meetings and kept in the dark on many decisions you could contribute to effectively.

I say that I learned the hard way because I focused on being that high-impact developer. At my first job, I rewrote the company's core software to make it (really) an order of magnitude faster, providing the basis for the company's sustainability for the next decade. My salary skyrocketed. My title did not. I was forever stuck in a limbo of being just a "developer" while being paid as much as an executive but being excluded from every executive meeting and not even being involved in hiring for the team that would maintain the software I wrote on which the entire company depended. I was still stuck in a cubicle while the managers were sure to get very nice, spacious offices with ludicrous window views.

I really don't understand this view. They're different jobs. If you want to have the power an exec has become an exec. More than likely you cannot do both effectively at the same time. Yes, there are shitty managers but there are also a lot of them doing stuff an engineer doesn't have the skills to do. In all industries people think they could do a better job than their boss - usually it's not true and if it is learn new skills to take their job from them or start your own company.

I didn't say they were the same job. I said they were accorded different levels of respect and prestige, which is what this post is about. I didn't want to be a pure executive or manager.

At that company, it was, frankly, impossible for a developer to get the same perks as a manager. I'm sure there are companies out there that handle this a lot better and don't make management the only path to promotion. These have just been the minority in my personal experience.

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I also agree with you for what it's worth that management is a skill in and of itself that most developers wouldn't be good at. The point I was making in my previous post was a little more nuanced. Think of it like this. At a large company, there might be 100 VPs who are pure managers, and there might be 5 very distinguished engineers who are at the same VP level. This creates the impression that developers can rise up just as high in the company, when in reality it's more of an illusion. The technical skill level necessary to reach VP level as a developer is astronomically high. The management skill level necessary to reach VP level as a pure manager is certainly not low by any means, but it's comparatively much lower than it is for VP engineers.

Thanks for the clarifications.

One thing that helps is to get to personally know the people up the management chain better. Respect comes easier when they know you as a person instead of just a name on a document.

I learned this the easy way at a company when our manager left and it took a long time to find a replacement so all the directors and VPs would come directly to us for questions, advice, etc.

> Yes, there are shitty managers but there are also a lot of them doing stuff an engineer doesn't have the skills to do

and the engineers have skills most managers don't. One set just happens to lead to easier power and money, for some reason.

> I was forever stuck in a limbo of being just a "developer" while being paid as much as an executive but being excluded from every executive meeting and not even being involved in hiring for the team that would maintain the software I wrote on which the entire company depended.

In other words, my dream job.

Obviously no matter how you slice it I was in a good position. I don't deny that and never meant to.

Some companies have gotten wise to this problem and created dual career tracks for engineers, management track and technical guru track, to ensure that great tech talent that want to stay in tech has a way to advance in title, pay, and responsibility without having to go into management.

If that's you, then make sure to add that to your list of jobsearch criteria and don't join a company that doesn't have it. Lack of it is almost a guarantee management is unenlightened about tech talent.

Yup. It's likely the "fellow" or "principal" position. The technical impact crosses teams and organizations, and can reach outside of VPs as well. Especially if you are writing software "the entire company depends on."

our company (few 1000 devs) has a parallel hierarchy of ICs going all the way up to VP reporting directly to CEO. They are one of the most respected and influential people in company. While each team has complete freedom in terms of tech stack and other decisions, they drive company wide things like migration to cloud, inhouse big data platforms.

Would love to know the company!

But do they get a seat at the table when the company sets its strategic direction? Likewise, do they get a say when the company decides how the budget is allocated and to whom?

In my experience if the answers to these questions are no then the company is still being run by PHBs with PHB priorities and PHB viewpoints in which technical people are largely interchangeable cogs.

I understand this frustration. I really really do. Just being a code monkey to the direction the PHBS set.

I do ask you to take the flip side. Do you want your non tech savvy PHBS at your meeting setting your technical direction? Should they tell you what Web framework to use? What IDE? Tabs vs spaces? OOP vs FOP?

Most engineers who I know are really mad about not helping more with business decisions, but they won't listen to a pointy hair boss making technical decisions. Why is that?

Agreed. Where I find this especially bizarre is in technical companies, or even the tech department of a company. There's a layer of devs, then a glass ceiling, then above that countless layers of management.

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