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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

"Can't" is not why people become managers.

At least be thoughtful and say "Won't" (because they prefer management)

In my experience people mostly become managers because that's the next step to more money and there is no other next step to more money. Nothing more nothing less. They certainly don't have a sophisticated philosophy on management and being the best manager they can be.

I’ve worked in places where it’s much easier to promote someone into the management track than it is to create a new IC role.

In plenty of places in London you’ll get to senior engineer and then that’s basically it.

I intentionally used the word can't, because I don't think it's an option that they're choosing, rather a lack of ability.

You may not mean it but I do think sometimes framing it this way implies leading and managing is something that requires less ability (it's a skill in its own right).

What I think is true is people cap out their technical competency, and look to shift their skillset and, globally, we are bad at a) training them to be good managers (because there is a wrong assumption it's an innate skill) and b) weeding out the many who also lack the ability to be a manager.

Agree, it’s a skill, it can be learned and improved, and of course some people have some natural ability.

But for every skill there’s a floor and a ceiling. The floor for managers is imo far lower than it is for tech ICs. Incompetent managers have many options to hide their misdeeds. That doesn’t say anything about the average or the ceiling.

I've generally switched to management when I realised I was doing both great, complex technical work and management work my managers were failing at.

I fully subscribe to the Conway's law, so I love creating system architecture through organizational setup.

I've never worked for someone I felt was less able than I was. Maybe I had a specialty beyond theirs or more recent experience but you don't become a successful technical manager without knowing your shit. Maybe I've been lucky

Happened to me couple of times. If u have strict technical skills but lack ppl skills and u have a big team. The latter (soft skills) starts to matter more. If ur in this situation then hopefully your leader/manager understand that and gets technical advice/consultation from you.

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