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Comment by bjornsing | Hacker News Reader

This line of reasoning is popular, but it lacks one perspective: people are social animals and many instinctively want to climb hierarchies. If you promote junior software engineers into management based on interest then a lot of junior hires will start manoeuvring for that, instead of trying to get good at their trade and proving themselves that way.

I’ve worked in big companies with the philosophy you’re advocating, and my impression is that they turn very political and lose focus on the day to day engineering work. In the extreme the engineering work even turns into something “dirty” that you should know as little as possible about, because that’s the way to be promoted into higher paying / higher status roles. When 10-20% go around “virtue signaling” their ignorance it quickly destroys the culture.

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> instinctively want to climb hierarchies

But that also means you still see managers "a top" of engineers (a "better" job).

But just because you are managing a project shouldn't mean you stand above all the people in the project. Like e.g. a trainer in football/soccer might direct the Team but the highly experienced players in the Team are, while directed by the trainer, not in a social hierarchy below the trainer. Because most times they stay when the trainer gets fired and they might get the trainer fired too if they believe the trainer is incompetent.

So in the end the problem just again boils down to seeing being a manager as a advancement of your carrier but becoming a senior engineer just as a continuation/negligible advancement.(1)

(1): assuming proper standards for senior engines, I have seen many people in senior engineer positions which do not have the skills to call them senior engineer IMHO.

> But that also means you still see managers "a top" of engineers (a "better" job).

No. All that’s required is that 10-20% of individual contributors see it this way. They will start manoeuvring, “virtue signalling” their ignorance, effectively destroying the culture.

You don’t see it that way. I don’t see it that way. But they do. That’s enough unfortunately.

What you need to break this dynamic is that the opportunity to be a trainer (or at least coach) is a kind of reward for learning to play the game really well. I think that’s how it works e.g. in (European) football as well.

> But that also means you still see managers "a top" of engineers (a "better" job).

Managers are typically comped better. Usually on a level by level basis, but also in the number of times you can be promoted before you run out of new job titles.

In my (giant) company, it appears there is a bit more room at the top for managers, but in general leveling up is more difficult as there is an expectation that the amount of headcount you manage is commiserate with the level, so the optimal leveling progression appears to stay an engineer for as long as you continue to level up and then switch into management.

You meant "commensurate", of course, but maybe "commiserate" was a Freudian slip? I often look at people managing large groups if people and think, "that looks like (it's often) a miserable job". :)

None of the companies I’m at paid managers more than ICs level-for-level.

My company also has a level for level match, except there are far more managers than equivalent high level ICs, and even the generous IC tree ends far sooner than the management one does. If a manager is so inclined one could pursue an executive position, and I’ve never seen an equivalent for IC engineers.

I think there is probably one IC equivalent for every 2-3 low level managers, and $CORP is better about these things than any other company I’ve ever worked for.

I think there's a different problem.

I think a lot of success in hierarchies is based around the willingness and ability to turn a screw.

What domain expertise buys you is a higher intuition on whether or not you should.

Sure, you can have a lot of technical managers who suck. You can also have a good experience with a non-technical manager.

But day by day, pound for pound, my money is on domain expertise leading to better results. This happily explains why a manager is typically a senior role.

Course, there's a lot of ways to screw that up.

> "This line of reasoning is popular, but it lacks one perspective: people are social animals and many instinctively want to climb hierarchies."

Managing people is a shit job. You spend your time in endless meetings and playing politics. You're tasked with day-to-day HR-related tasks. You need to keep everybody satisfied. Your salary won't necessarily be any higher. You get the blame for stuff. You have to delegate away the fun work. You lose touch and rust faster. If you're lucky, some of the people you work with will actually like you - but if your team doesn't deliver then it doesn't really matter...

What makes any of this sound like you're somehow "climbing"?

At some point if you win the tournament you get a C suite job with a private jet and a massive multi million dollar department budget.

Of course the majority of people don’t even come close to this, but people will try nonetheless.

The wording is slightly negative, but it does describe that side of the role well.

There are also positive aspects that hang in the balance. Personally (as a people manager) I appreciated the positive impact (coaching, career development) I could make to people around me in ways that are not easily replicated in other roles. And there are many others.

It’s just not private planes and Champaign.

I actually believe that a small percentage of people want to climb the hierarchy. Based on books I've read, finding meaning in their work, either locally (how it helps the company) or globally (how does my work serve human welfare), is far more important for most people.

It's sad that our society is organized so that people who find meaningful work are stiffed by our society (teacher salaries, for example).

Seeking power is probably a miswant anyways. I think what many people desire is the social stability that it presents, something that is probably more easily achieved via volunteer work.

I think the desire for power is manufactured.

> I think the desire for power is manufactured.

I don’t. I think it has very deep evolutionary roots: more status / power has historically translated into better access to resources, especially in times of scarcity.

But I agree it’s a miswant. In modern society nobody has much power over anybody (compared to how it was in ancient/evolutionary time). I think of it as a primitive drive that can lead some of us astray, like the sex drive can make some preoccupied with pornography.

I also think good managers should have a healthy distance to their desire for power. If they don’t they can waste a lot of company money on scratching that itch endlessly.

There's a different perspective, which is that there are different kinds of management. At the very least there's line management, project management, product strategy, business design/strategy, and operational/delivery strategy.

Sales engineers can also have customer/client consulting management roles.

Some companies promote good engineers to R&D and product strategy roles. They're still engineering-led, and not particularly about day to day development issues or longer term - but still very clearly defined - project goals.

Most of what's being described as management really seems to be line management. What you want from management is at least as much of the other types.

Generalists who can invent the future with some accuracy are particularly valuable. Giving them space to pursue that within some very broad strategic goals is far more valuable than "promoting" them to team management.

Different kind of management = more management bullshit and ring kissing = less autonomy, more bullshit = developer attrition.

Office space joked about having eight different bosses, the secret to worker happiness is less management in their lives, not more.

> There's a different perspective, which is that there are different kinds of management.

I don’t understand why this is a different perspective. The dynamic I’m describing applies if you start promoting junior engineers to these roles as well (based on interest in management and ineptitude in hands-on engineering).

> Generalists who can invent the future with some accuracy are particularly valuable. Giving them space to pursue that within some very broad strategic goals is far more valuable than "promoting" them to team management.

In my experience it’s very hard to invent the future and realise the vision without some sort of formal leadership / management (in the broadest sense) role. (Unless it’s small enough for one or two people to build of course.)

> many instinctively want to climb hierarchies

I think some, myself and Apple included when I worked there for years, consider hierarchies as a restricted sort of graph (essentially trees) that, to be a tree, necessarily collapse multiple dimensions of talent per individual into the single hierarchy, and thereby loses information. Hierarchies were avoided even whenever possible.

This has worked out fantastically for me for decades. But would-be managers have vested interest in promoting the supposed intrinsic instinct thing. Individuals don't have to play along.

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