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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Whatever you do, don't seek to join a management track because you think it's the "next logical step" or some reward for being good at coding. It's not that. It's a different job.

Gather some evidence about whether you're good at helping people solve their problems. All sorts of problems. Problems not even having to do with work. Ask whether you're good at communicating up and down, high level and low level. Do you enjoy answering dumb questions and explaining things over and over again? Are you good at switching between topics that you didn't want to switch to, hour by hour? Do you like writing reports and managing projects and Gantt charts? Are you "a people person, I'm good with people dammit"?

Would you take the job if there were no pay increase? If the answer is no, then that's likely not what it's going to bring you -- it's probably going to bring you stress and dissatisfaction more than any potential pay difference. Of course, it may vary a bit by company, but this is often a reasonable caution.

Think hard before just jumping in. Managing people isn't what many think it is!

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> Whatever you do, don't seek to join a management track because you think it's the "next logical step" or some reward for being good at coding. It's not that. It's a different job.

It is certainly a different job, but the reality of today's corporations is that outside of a few niches, it certainly is the the next logical step. It is also easier to move down to IC than the opposite (by changing jobs), and getting back in management if you have a good resume.

Yes, some companies have technical tracks where you can grow your career well, but the reality is those are few, and moreover, even when you have them, growing in technical track is actually much harder than the management track. And technical track involves a lot of meetings/discussions as well. E.g. there was recently a post on HN about principal engineer, and their job overlaps with what I do as EM quite a bit.

I have met many engineers who are around 50 years old, did not want to go into management, and they are fairly miserable. If you're a kernel hacker, sure, you will likely be able to get paid working on enjoying it until you retire. But otherwise... It ends up being consulting, 'architects', and other jobs that are not that much more challenging technically speaking than engineering management. They get paid much less, and have fewer opportunities.

Also, honestly, the whole thing about "management is a role, not a rank/title" feels like another trick by companies to low ball salaries.

> It is also easier to move down to IC

I don't know about that. Once you are at "non-technical" position, people assume you are non-technical when looking at CV and such. We had technical position open and this was super visible in one applicant. It might have played role that she was woman, but I think it would just milder with guy - but still present.

So you're right about the CV assumption. But if you grow as an EM and beyond, it helps growing your network faster, and resume stop being as relevant. To be fair, it does help I am in an area (AI/ML) where even as a manager, you're assumed to have a certain technical level, fairly or not.

My experience is that consulting pays more, but only if you can keep yourself in it full time.

Yes, there is a lot of variance in consulting. It also often involves a lot of travel, which I personally really hate.

I was the opposite, I loved the doors to travel consulting opened up. I could go on a trip wherever I wanted every weekend (after spending the week with the client) and sometimes actually did. It's actually one of the parts of my life I miss most since the pandemic, but alas it is a first world problem and I have it much better than most.

Tends to be much easier on single folks. Good friend of mine and I worked at the same place for a while, and he moved in to a consultant role, doing a lot of 'on-site' work with clients. Initial review, few days working with team toward goals, writing up reports, etc. He did like the pace - rarely worked on the same gig for more than a few weeks max - but travel really started to wear on him, typically around 80% travel. Definitely takes a toll on family life.

It was the travel that killed it for me. I loved the work, especially the metal distance you can maintain from your clients. But the constant travel was draining.

I have no idea why you were downvoted.

Consulting often involves traveling and that's not fun for everyone.

Consulting can pay a lot more (for a typical engineer) but it really is a different job from either of those.

what do you mean by consulting? things like SAP?

not the earlier parent, but ... I read it to mean self-employed. I 'consult', although probably at least 60% of the time it's just ... code/development. But with the experience I have, some clients engage me to be more than a pair of hands, and there can be 'consultative' engagements: helping develop plans, strategic guidance, etc.

But it can also mean working for a larger agency, focusing on specific areas (of technology, or industry, etc). To me 'consulting' has some connotation with 'deep expertise' in one or more fields.

It's a good question, and to be fair there is a broad range of things that go on under that label.

I would draw the distinction between freelancing and consulting this way: you are freelancing if you directly or indirectly (e.g. through a body shop consulting agency) are providing variable bandwidth for a client. So they could probably do the work themselves but need more horsepower. By comparison consulting would be where they bring you in to provide insight, experience, or skills they do not possess.

The lines are somewhat blurry.

This is true in a lot of industries - if you're lucky enough to be a developer it isn't though. If you have skills and feel like you've hit a ceiling for advancement then shift companies - a lot of organizations have limits of how much they'll pay technical employees that are far below the limits on management but there are organizations that would treasure your skills and compensate you appropriately.

I will say that it's hard to avoid moving into leadership positions as your gain seniority - if you have issues mentoring others, estimating project and leading a discussion then your options are more limited but there are still some good opportunities out there for you especially if you're willing to be frank about any social anxiety that contributes to those weaknesses.

I have met many engineers who are around 50 years old, did not want to go into management, and they are fairly miserable.

Forcing yourself into a role you aren't really suited to is a recipe for becoming miserable.

I don't think the GP was saying the engineers were miserable because they stopped being engineers and went into management. I think he was saying they were miserable because they didn't go into management and then found that their careers were at a dead end.

While all that may be true, it's also true that in many companies once you become a manager you are empowered to take actual technical decision. It's the manager that chose technology, high-level architecture, development methodology, project management technology, evaluate feature vs quality, ... and most important, actually protect him and his team from the constant bullshit coming down and sideways.

Right before Corona hit us all there was a chance for me to grab a new minor management position in my group at work, where it was decided that we should create official ~5 person teams with a leader out of the whole group. I applied but ultimately didn't get the job (my colleague who did get it was more qualified ultimately for this specific task). And boy was that a good thing... now that I see everything that he had to take on in addition to what he did before, or rather what he is doing instead of what he did before, I am so glad I do not have to do that. But I still worry that my (bigger) boss wants to push me in that direction as I now have to get certified in project/team lead management work, which will a. make it harder to avoid that kind of tasks in the future and b. makes me wonder how he sees the workforce and how he values people not doing that. In addition to that I feel that a lot of our IT projects, while they are often interesting to work on, tend to be dysfunctionally organized: they are almost always planned by calendar dates well in advance, then staffed, then the scope is decided on, then everybody scrambles to try to get it done in time.

Writing that I might need to look for a new team Anybody hiring SAP Consultants / ABAP developers with 10+ years of experience interested in a CRM-to-S/4 migration? :D

It could be that your manager sees something in you that makes them think that you would be a successful manager yourself. Good managers can usually spot others with potential. And your frustration with how projects are run is often one way that people are tempted into management - you think you can do a better job! And sometimes you can, that's the best part.

It might well be that he sees something like that, but (at least here) the frustration would definitely increase, not decrease. In general I could imagine a job like that, I mean, I applied... but there is a trend in this company, it seems ;)

> It could be that your manager sees something in you that makes them think that you would be a successful manager yourself.

It could also be that his manager needs to check boxes on how many of his people are qualified in particular areas, whether those qualifications actually mean anything or not. Or that the more people he has working for him who he can say are "team leads" or something like it, the greater his own chances of moving up.

> It's not that

It IS that, money wise, in all the places where even the best employed developer does not even make close to 100k, e.g. all of Europe. Which is why a lot of managers in IT suck. They are previous developers that reached the developer salary ceiling. Then you can only become architect or some kind of manager.

Switzerland a notable exception.

Building on from that, a lot of large organisations have no progression for developers that isn't up the management ladder. I got sucked into this - realising I wanted more money, so got promoted into the management track (as that was the only route), and hated it. I soon quit the org and went freelance, where I could close the salary gap, yet still remain hands on technical.

How did you do that?

I am in the same boat, got into tech lead position for more money. As a tech lead, I have 0 power and a lot more responsibilities. Hate it.

I tried to go back to dev position but management kept blocking it. So I have been practicing leet code and hoping to go to one of FAANGs. But maybe freelancing is a better route for me. Only thing is that whenever I look up freelancing rates, they are quite low compared to my current average Texas SWE salary.

I think a lot of these discussions are missing the locale that many people are living in. The amount of people who are contracting or freelancing and raking in FAANG money ($400k+) is likely a lot lower than people are being lead to believe.

If you want FAANG money, just join FAANG.

I agree. Location is very important here.

If one likes to work in Southeast Asia for example, it doesn't take FAANG money to enjoy living there.

> Only thing is that whenever I look up freelancing rates, they are quite low compared to my current average Texas SWE salary.

"looking up freelancing rates" is almost ... impossible? Most places I see that offer that are self-reported numbers, and I don't know who's self-reporting. Freelance is going to be largely what you make of it, but there's definitely a 'sales' aspect to it, at least periodically. You need to connect with prospects, demonstrate ability, set up a deal, get paid, do the work, get more paid, etc. It's not impossible, but definitely takes a bit more work for many folks. Word-of-mouth referrals helps remove some of those steps. Finding another agency to work for/under can help too - they can handle some of the 'finding work', and maybe even billing, but they're going to take their cut. May or may not be worth it - you can definitely get more flexibility, but that's not everyone's primary goal. And... with the pandemic, most people are remote working now anyway, and have some more flexibility than they had a year ago, so there's a bit less obvious win there as a comparison point.

Agreed, equivalent compensation between IC and management might be a common thing in USA but it certainly is not in Europe.

All of Europe seems to be quite a stretch. I am earning north of 100k euro as IC in the Netherlands, most of my peers are doing the same here. I also know quite a few people in Ireland, Germany and Sweden doing better than me.

In NL? What roles do you and your peers have?

I am a regular/core developer, others are either core or seniors.

Are you working at a special place like Google? A quick Google search lets one think 100k is absolutely exceptional in NL.

No, not Google or other FAANMG company.

That's the problem with quick Google searches and not living and exploring job market in the given country. I agree that there are truly a lot of developer jobs in NL paying in 40-70k range. However, there is non-exceptional number of jobs paying above that.

I won't name the company I am working for, I will just outline industries which offer 80-120k+ here in NL: obviously, FAANMG; financial institutions; hospitality; healthcare. And most probably a number of others that I am not aware about.

Also there is quite a discrepancy in pay among companies even in the same domain, so generalizing is difficult. E.g. I used to work in TomTom and I know the pay there is in 40-70k range. However, I cannot say that it will be the same for e.g. Phillips.

One of my first development supervisor tasks was to talk to a developer about their body odor (there were complains from other staff). A few days later, after some super fun HR consultations, I had to send him home to shower -- and then repeat the same thing every few months.

If it makes you feel any better, I've had the "please don't trim your toenails on your desk" discussion.

I've had the "please turn off your zoom camera if you're going to floss your teeth on a call" discussion. (Was using his own zoom video preview like it was a mirror so everyone got a good close-up.)

OMG I'm sorry but that made me laugh so hard. Who does that?!

Pre-video call days, but... years ago, I had a phone interview with engineering manager. Had made it past initial screen, was ... interested in working there. Talking to the guy for a bit - I'm working on making all my points as best I can, trying to impress, then I hear "Noah, go talk to mommy - daddy's on the toilet!" I couldn't focus after that, and not sure he'd ever paid attention enough such that I had a shot anyway.

Similarly: One of my first issues to deal with was when one team member yelled at another team member's dog...spent a day trying to figure out what to do and in that day the yeller quit for unrelated reasons. Dodged that bullet I guess

> Gather some evidence about whether you're good at helping people solve their problems.

I mean following 100%: that is not what managers do. That is feel good theory of ... something. But, it is not what managerial work entails. Managers also dont explain dumb questions all that much nor explain things over and over again.

In my experience, what managers do is

- shoot the shit with us in endless meetings

- present regular progress update slide decks that no one cares about

- periodically get together to determine the comp of people who actually work

This is just the same ridiculous, overly cynical nonsense people have been saying for decades regurgitated.

- Good relationships are a requirement for a good manager.

- You may not care about them but executives do, and the manager is judged on their quality.

- If you don't think managerial work is work you must have truly had some terrible managers.

Congrats on having a different opinion/experience, but I don't think yours is any more valid or any less "ridiculous/nonsense" than mine. It's my experience and if you think you know better than me what the real value of managers is in my world, I think that's arrogant and a bit delusional, honestly.

> It's my experience and if you think you know better than me what the real value of managers is in my world

Your inability to judge of the value of a manager, even a bad manager, doesn't make someone else delusional.

Reductively, if it were really the case that no one cared about the slide decks your managers were presenting, they'd be told to stop and do other things instead. So clearly someone does. That someone obviously isn't you, but that doesn't really matter if someone else gains enough value from that communication.

> Your inability to judge of the value of a manager, even a bad manager, doesn't make someone else delusional.

Doubling down on the arrogance! Funny stuff.

Do you make all these assumptions about things you know nothing about in your actual job as well?

> that doesn't really matter if someone else gains enough value from that communication

It would matter if the managers cared about all the employee time they were wasting with these meetings. Managers could present to only the people who care and not demand the attendance of those for whom the material is uninformative.

> Doubling down on the arrogance!

I'm a different person. And it's not arrogance to re-assert someone else isn't delusional for disagreeing with you.

> It would matter if the managers cared about all the employee time they were wasting with these meetings.

This doesn't actually address what I said. Someone seems to think these meetings have value.

I did acknowledge the technical accuracy of your statement, implicitly, before moving on to something more interesting. It's just too banal of a point to spend a full sentence on. Of course someone is demanding these slides. Feel free to mentally amend my original claim. Sometimes I write in a humorous, rough way, maybe it isn't for you.

Don't worry, I don't hold all managers in contempt based on my own limited experience in my particular org of my particular company in my particular industry. I'll make sure to update this post if I come into contact with ones whose contribution I respect more.

> - Good relationships are a requirement for a good manager.

Except that managers tend to have pretty bad relationships with their peers and have routinely bad relationships with people under them. It is to large extend structural, managerial work pretty much rarely involves actual cooperation with people on the same level.

> - You may not care about them but executives do, and the manager is judged on their quality.

They are judged by the relationship toward executive primary. That has little to do with quality of relationship to anyone else.

Manager here.

I think I have good relationships with my peers and vice versa. We cooperate literally constantly and often help each other with things while receiving nothing in return. When I look around my org, I see this as the norm.

What you've listed resonates with me yet 10 years in I just can't break into management. I'm a high performer and am compensated super well. I've been told by others to "shut up and do your job, your pay is fantastic" but there is an inner yearning to help others be the best they can be and also compound the skills of a group to accomplish greater business goals, many of which I'm suffering to complete now under the tremendous stresses that seem unfair for one person.

This isn't the first time I've been in this or seen this situation play out. Businesses stacking an impossible list of responsibilities on one person until they burn out and leave, then get replaced by a manager and 2-3 others.

So I ask, for those of you who have intentionally made the move, how did you do it? I feel like I can't be any more transparent with the business that it's the direction I'm looking for and that I will leave soon if it doesn't happen. But then what, do I keep playing this game into perpetuity until my luck changes?

I applied for a job that was the position I wanted. I feel like you'd probably have more luck doing that than trying to convince a company who seems to be getting a lot of value out of you doing what you're doing.

It's usually pretty difficult to get hired for a management role without any experience. Most of the time you break this dependency loop by being promoted internally first.

That is because what he wrote is not most or actual managerial job. Yes, managers needs good social skills. But those are not defined as "be pleasant to all the people all the time". It is more of "be able to negotiate and push for what you want when you wont be punished for it". Accomplishing more and more wont get you there. Guessing right when to demand what you want and going for it, including leaving when current company is not cooperating, is what gets you there. Even as real manager of multiple people, others will try to stack more and more on your team. And you have to negotiate and push back - but not when the person you are pushing back would retaliate.

Make following exercise: how many managers you know are actually spending much time with "helping people solve their problems" or "patiently answering dumb questions"? Managers I know spend some time with it, but frankly, much less then analysts and not much more developers.

Another exercise: Do you know managers that are unpleasant around, arrogant or misinterpreting people? Do you know managers who are actually not good at all at communicating down chain? Because I know a lot.

what the exercises show is that none of that pleasant communicating to all has to do with who is actually successful as manager or selected for management.

You are describing politics (in other words, status seeking). It happens everywhere, even at IC level, but I agree most of it happens in management.

Yet, politics is not the same thing as managing.

Engineers tend to conflate politics with toxic politics, and that's a source of a lot of confusion.

Toxic politics are everywhere, but the ability to negotiate, navigate the organization, find what make people w/ authority tick, is crucial to any successful manager.

Politics is huge part of managing. It is not just status seeking either, but yes, important part of it is status managing. You cant do successful managing without doing a lot of politics - towards people under you, towards people over you and especially a lot towards peers.

Engineering has politics too, just different kind of politics. You also spend a lot less time explicitly doing politics. But, a lot of what is going on in code reviews for example are dominance games and status managing. How you present yourself so that they perceive you as technical the right way matters too.

Large organizations are constantly trying to decide what to do and how to do it. It does this by consuming information at every level of the hierarchy making decisions and then pushing that information up and down the hierarchy. (Obviously lots of information is translated along different lines than the written down org chat)

Politics is how every organization makes decisions. It's understanding the information flow, the decision making process, people incentives, and how to influence these to get the outcome you want.

Managing up is about altering decisions made above your level (info moving up) and managing down is about taking those decisions made above your level translating them into decisions that affect your team.

i.e. Managing is very much about politics.

It is usually easier to become a manager within your existing company, compared to starting with an EM role.

If that has not happened to you even after being clear, it can mean different things. It could be that you are within a group that has little growth, and does not need a new EM. Some political reasons. Maybe your manager is terrible and does not seek opportunities for you. etc...

In this case, my advice would be to join a mid size company which has growth, and you join as a senior engineer. Startups can be another way (that's how I did it), but that's more difficult to plan. I certainly did not plan it this way myself.

Send me your resume (contact info in my profile)?

I am aggressively hiring EMs, and will definitely consider first time managers.

question, are you a white guy? I find too many techies have trouble with managers who are not, and too many companies are willing to let quiet bigots be bigots.

I really, really like the business I work for and when I was offered a chance to manage the dev team (was a team lead/senior developer - been a dev for 20+ years) I took it. I have written enough code. I wanted to be in a position to get projects done for the business. To facilitate the work, to help guide it, to be a manager that programmers could work with. And so far, so good. I am way more stressed out than ever but this is my own making, and I am learning to live with what is ultimately a different kind of stress than you experience as a dev.

I really like the comment about "would you do it for the same money". If the answer is no, you are probably better off not doing it.

>>> Businesses stacking an impossible list of responsibilities on one person until they burn out and leave

From that and your whole post, I'd take a guess that you are a top contributor easily getting more and bigger projects.

My advise would be to stop getting more responsibilities. It has to be done by your end, you need to not do anything more.

There's some more work coming up? Don't take it, don't get involved in email threads about the new projects/tasks. They will find somebody else to do the work. They want you to be oncall after hours? Don't do it, phone is off.

Good fast workers are a magnet attracting more and more work until they burn out under the load. Look around you and notice people doing no more than they are required to, learn from them, it's the only way to last more than a few years at any place.

Management is a different job but a job with more power, authority and information. Managers will decide the compensation of ICs not the other way around. They will be the first to know of major decisions that company is taking.

As you grow experienced as an IC you want to say in the product roadmap. Usually that only happens at the management level.

Compensation is usually decided by HR, based on some pay bands in the company. The best you might be able to do as a manager is to try to nudge the candidate a bit to the higher end of the narrow band.

Actually I think most middle management has very little power or authority. Try firing a customer and see how far you get with that if you aren't running the company.

Completely agree. The first time I tried it was a disaster - hated what I was doing and missed what I did before. A second attempt a few years later when I was ready and I thrived.

Would you mind elaborating more on what changed from the first to second time? Did the situation change? Did your perspective/goals/motivation change? I'm currently in my first stint in management and really disliking it, and wondering if/when it might make sense to give it a shot again.

>"Would you take a job with no pay increase."

Same statement can be made for every career step. If your pay did not change, would you do the work of E6 at an E3 wage? If I am moving to a position where I deliver more value to the company, then I should be paid accordingly. We need to move off this work for free trope.

I think you're imagining a "work for free trope" (which exists, but definitely not for mid/senior/staff engineering levels) where there is not one. It's a thought exercise, and being overly pedantic about it is not helpful.

The point is that if the only reason you have to move into EM is the bigger paycheck, you're most likely going to be happier sticking with your IC role and having the slightly smaller paycheck but enjoying work a lot more.

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