Hacker News Reader

Comment by WirelessGigabit | Hacker News Reader

Keyword being properly. Too many companies push their engineers into people management.

Which is weird. Your best people should remain engineers. Have them indeed sign off on these things.

> Your best people should remain engineers. Have them indeed sign off on these things.

I agree; the problem with an engineer track is that the salary ceiling is too low, and you have to move to management to get higher salary. but then you end up not using your engineering skills, and waste potential.

What needs to happen is a way for people management to be done without a hierarchical structure. Aka, the senior engineer sits not under their manager, but that the manager is subservient.

Joel spolsky have written about this "problem" already in the last couple of decade: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/03/09/how-to-be-a-progra...

> To make sure that the debate happens respectfully and on a rational basis of facts, it’s absolutely critical that the program managers and developers be peers. If developers report to the program manager, at some point during the debate the program manager is going to get sick of the whole thing and just say, “OK, enough talking, now we do it my way.”

The salary range in a professional track does not _have_ to be too low. That's a choice, a value judgment, by management. Some companies do things differently. In at least one company I know, the professional track runs parallel to the management track: engineers can earn as much or more than senior managers, architects as much as directors. It's all up to whether the organization really values the services it's independent contributors provide. Sadly, many companies are not only indifferent, but hostile to the whole concept: playing at cost reduction theater and outsourcing to satisfy the avarice of simpleton investors. Bottom line is that tech pros need to take charge of their own futures and avoid the latter kinds of companies like the plague, when they have a choice. People need to make a habit of asking questions about professional compensation structures during interviews.

Indeed. I haven't worked at a company that was managed (partially) by engineers. Sure, there were tech leads, but as soon as it came to product and account management and "up", it was business school. Must be some corollary of Peter's Principle.

I don't think pushing a good engineer to also take on management work is such a bad idea. I've actually had quite a lot of success with that system.

The much worse idea is to promote BAD engineers to full time management positions, which seems to be the way most sub par and mediocre companies do it right now.

The meme is that great engineers make bad people managers. They can still be engineering managers, and have a business/HR people run the org and try to make underling engineers productive, while the lead engineer is responsible for certifying whatever gets engineered.

I don't think this is black or white. I've found out that brilliant engineers actually can be incredible people managers if you help them develop those soft skills. Sure there is the age old adage that "I am a brilliant engineer just pay me more for my engineering work" but this has two aspects. For one you definitely can do it if your org is big and rich enough. But on the other side, software is a product of people interacting. If your engineering importance rises you still will have to deal with lots if people. So are you really staying purely an engineer then?

The problem is when this is the only path to growth. You basically cap out as Senior Engineer.

Is that an argument for the former or the latter?

I think that the choice should be up to the person. But there almost never is a non-managerial path.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com