Comment by _hzrk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _hzrk | Hacker News Reader

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> but in the end that will mean more for your career than anything else, unfortunately.

I strongly disagree. In my organisation engineers have higher salaries than "people persons" like managers, product owners etc. Maybe it is something Eastern Europe (Romania) does better. In my country, people become managers when they don't know what to do in life, when they have not mastered any skill in 12 years of mandatory education + higher education. People who can't code at the end of the CS curriculum have three choices basically: HR, PMO or do a Master in a totally unrelated field to increase your employability. Do you really see yourself the "acting" leader, answering to phone calls all day like a secretary and asking people about the status of their tickets? I hope not. A "people person" is easily replaceable, a good engineer is not. When the financial crisis comes and the line is drawn, engineering skills remain. That is not to say that soft skills do not matter, quite the opposite, just don't make it a day job, you will become vulnerable.

You know the very common complaint from technical people that goes "my manager/leader doesn't understand what I do"?

This is the same thing but from the other side.

Since they live in Romania, it’s very possible that they’re doing outsourced work (for HQ in another country, or even for another company altogether). In such case, the real management happens in HQ, while local managers are just handlers/babysitters like they described.

A valid point for sure. But the comment itself didn't make that distinction and was a bit too broad-strokes for me..

You've just taken a good, detailed comment and dismissed it. Do you have anything else to add?

While it was detailed, I disagree that it's a good comment, I think it's full of statements I consider to be actually false.

As I said, this is an example of someone forming strong opinions about something they don't really understand.

Since we're all familiar with the trope of non-technical people failing to understand the complexity and intricacies of what we do, it seemed like a good point of comparison.

Your livelihood depends on those with people skills. If products don't get marketed, you don't eat. If products don't get sold, you don't eat. If your leader doesn't make the hard and right decisions on where to take the company, you don't eat.

There's a clear delimitation between the leader which takes decisions that impact the organisation and a project manager that barely has any skin in the game. In my experience, the one that takes decisions is not the one that manages people.

And if the product is bad neither do they. At the end of the day it's all a group effort. Good engineers are not easily replaceable in my experience.

Being familiar with this situation, I can tell you that this type of manager is only viable/typical in the outsourcing business.

> Do you really see yourself the "acting" leader, answering to phone calls all day like a secretary and asking people about the status of their tickets?

You owe it to yourself to find higher quality "people-person"s to learn from. If that's all they're good for in your world, it's no wonder you have such a low opinion of them.

i'm not suggesting you should switch to a new role that is more of a people person role. I'm saying as an _engineer_, learning how to "politic" is way more important than learning a new language, or having a deep understanding of security, or some other significant technical thing. Not that those aren't good to know, but at some point the "politicing" will be your limiting factor if you can't play the game.

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