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Comment by MathMonkeyMan | Hacker News Reader

I'm beginning to think that making more money by becoming a better developer is hard, and that managing, while difficult in a totally different way, is less hard. At least for the money.

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I think people often convince themselves that becoming a manager is a path for those who couldn’t hack it. In reality it’s a completely different set of problems. If you’re a decent developer with phenomenal soft skills, there is a very good chance you’d be better in management or sales than writing code.

In my experience quite a few managers are there to do cargo cult activities mostly involving power point presentations and planning for their managers. In the worst situation it seemed like the vast majority of effort and salary spend went towards satisfying the VP’s appetite for reporting when engineers were very understaffed they focused on expanding to new layers of management instead of hiring ICs.

some of this management can be useful but often a lot of it is not, at best. As organizations age companies become mostly about advancing careers of middle management and the things the company actually does become secondary.

I think the role of managers should be facilitating productivity. If things are in peoples way, help them.

In reality in most larger companies managers mainly do reporting. There is not much emphasis on productivity.

The sad part is they think that all the reporting and metrics, and the juking of the stats which goes along with it, is making things better. In reality it’s generally keeping things the same but with a pretty coat of paint.

My experience with good managers at large companies is they do a lot of work to make sure the rest of the company doesn’t get in the way of their developers. Which yes, mostly involves a lot of reporting and meetings with other people on the company. But it probably is more important for the productivity of their reports than what managers do at smaller companies, even if it seems like it accomplishes nothing.

I think they would spend their time better on improving processes and removing obstacles but that almost seems a taboo to point out. I have seen tons of scrum retrospectives that got ignored as soon as the problems were outside the reach of the immediate team. In the end you can do as much estimation and reporting as you want, but things still get done by doing them, not by talking about them

My own observation is that it's more important for managers to be well-organized, remember details, and keep track of things

Not sure if that's what you mean by soft skills, but I generally think of soft skills as things like ability to communicate well, navigate conflict, and apply emotional intelligence to people management

The "soft skills" as I understand them are more important for roles like team lead/staff, whereas the organizational skills (and maybe even a willingness to be unlikeable at times) are more important for management.

That's why I think a lot of engineers prefer the IC track (I personally think my organizational skills and focus don't qualify me for management, although I enjoy being a lead)

I think there are different kinds of manager positions. Some require excellent soft skills, some require excellent bean-counting skills, etc.

A bit like how there are different kinds of programmer positions.

> My own observation is that it's more important for managers to be well-organized, remember details, and keep track of things

It's interesting, I feel like this applies to a line manager. Once you get beyond that you can just hire to fill in your own weaknesses. If you're bad with organization, just hire a good project manager.

I guess that's how you end up with the Pareto principal. Even just moving from being a line manager to being a manager-of-managers is a different job that requires different skills, but the assumption is if you're a good line manager then the next step is to manage managers. There are probably plenty of people who there who would make fine directors but are bad managers so they don't get that chance. And then you have people who are good managers who end up as bad directors.

Yeah, in terms of actual skills it's weird that you have to climb the ladder because each role is so different from the previous role.

I'm sure there's some overlap, but not enough to really warrant the lower role being preparation for the higher role.

Your conclusion sounds an awful lot like the people in your first sentence are right. Anecdotally, this is what I’ve seen. As people progress on the engineering side and the work gets more demanding, increasingly people bail out and make the transition to management.

Management and Sales also don't usually end up on the on-call rotation. While there are exceptions, usually particularly key individuals, in general developers are at the bottom of the white collar company social ladder. Thus status conscious individuals will view management as an upgrade from development.

Having been both, being a really good manager is hard in a very different set of ways.

Depending what itch you're trying to scratch, and what opportunities are available in your org, it might be just as rewarding to be a tech lead, feature lead, mentor, cross-team liaison, steering committee member, or possibly other roles rather than team lead / manager.

> tech lead, feature lead, mentor, cross-team liaison, steering committee member

All roles that young folks dream about becoming when they grow up.

Grandma: What do you want to be when you grow up, honey?

Granddaughter: A CROSS-TEAM LIASON!!! Yay!!!

I mean... the whole point is that that stuff is not a titled role. It's responsibility you can choose to take on as a senior IC that helps extend your reach, influence, and visibility into what is going on elsewhere in the company, making your voice that much more valuable and insightful when you're pulled into those meeting to talk long term technical direction and strategy.

I don't think it's too hard to imagine how to explain this in a way that might excite a child, but at the end of the day, they look to us for their cues on whether to be excited about Daddy's promotion, whether it's to "Team Lead" or "Staff Engineer".

> I mean... the whole point is that that stuff is not a titled role. It's responsibility you can choose to take on as a senior IC that helps extend your reach, influence, and visibility into what is going on elsewhere in the company, making your voice that much more valuable and insightful when you're pulled into those meeting to talk long term technical direction and strategy.

> I don't think it's too hard to imagine how to explain this in a way that might excite a child, but at the end of the day, they look to us for their cues on whether to be excited about Daddy's promotion, whether it's to "Team Lead" or "Staff Engineer".

I genuinely can’t tell if you’re serious or trolling.

Poe’s Law is in play, I guess.

Fwiw, the eyes of every child I have ever been around always glaze over whenever an adult whips out corporate speak. I think there is a good reason for this.

Yes, this.

The only time I'm OK with being in a manager role is in my own company. Working for someone else, you couldn't pay me enough to do that job. That's because I'm a dev to the core, that's where my interest and skills are. Being a manager is a different beast entirely and, while I can do it, I find it very unpleasant.

I think what I struggled with most in my time managing a small team was feeling that I lacked agency.

Particularly with "soft" objectives like improving morale, building team cohesiveness, helping people set/advance career goals, etc, I just didn't feel like I had a ton in terms of levers to pull and resources to draw on. And I lacked the experience and training to know how I could either advocate for those resources, or achieve the objectives in ways that wouldn't have a lot of cost and disruption attached. The leadership course I took was focused on personality type assessments, and conflict resolution as a very abstract kind of exercise ("try to see and validate all sides, practice non-violent communication") rather than a concrete, like, here's how to navigate when your direct report says they're quitting if they doesn't get a 20% raise, and upper management says lol no way.

Anyway, the pay scale at my org has equivalent IC roles at each manager grade, and in the end I've found I can have more of the type of influence and leadership that I desire by exerting soft power over the decision making processes in the areas that I most care about— which are mostly related to technical direction and strategy.

That is generally true. In most companies it’s way easier to get promoted to a certain salary level in the management track. From my experience the ceiling on the technical track is way lower than on the management track for people with similar levels of competence.

Being a good manager is in my experience just as hard if not harder. But, it's much easier to be a bad manager and keep your job.

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