[HN Gopher] What happens to developers who never go into managem...
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What happens to developers who never go into management?
Author : pelasaco
Score : 189 points
Date : 2021-12-11 09:29 UTC (13 hours ago)
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| plutonorm wrote:
| And then there are the vast majority of developers who are never
| offered a management position. I don't know what planet you guys
| are from but I've not seen a developer promoted in 15 years. I
| would kill for a promotion to get the hell out of programming
| karaterobot wrote:
| The option they don't really list is "continue working in more or
| less the same way until you retire", which I think is, by volume,
| what most people outside our industry expect.
|
| I was recently talking to some engineers about being in software
| in our 40s, and I eventually realized that a basic assumption
| they all shared was that they should continue getting raises and
| promotions indefinitely, and if that didn't happen it was a sign
| that something was wrong (with the company, or with them). They
| assumed that, as long as they continued advancing along a linear
| skill progression, getting better and better at their jobs, they
| would to continue getting _at least_ commensurate career and
| salary progression.
|
| The thing is, that's not how most jobs work. In most trades, you
| reach a certain level, then top out, and after that you
| (hopefully) get small, periodic raises to match inflation, then
| one day you retire. But, you don't expect to make 10-25% more
| money every couple years for the rest of your life, the way you
| often do in your first decade or so of software development.
|
| I don't think it's a "check your privilege" thing, I think it's
| just that matching growth to compensation is a reasonable
| assumption engineers often make, because maybe that's how it
| _should_ work in an optimal world, and it 's sort of what a good
| developer experiences at first. But, the world isn't optimal, and
| the world of work is so sub-optimal it's not even funny, so don't
| count on it!
| [deleted]
| ab_testing wrote:
| I think the article is missing one key category. Many if these
| people are laid off in their 50s and are then never able to find
| work again or find on and off work as contractors.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The reality is that the org structure for engineering companies
| is broken.
|
| Reasons:
|
| 1. The org chart shows a tree with managers on top of engineers -
| Big mistake because the manager will not be able to accomplish
| anything without reports
|
| 2. People "promoted" into management are usually the ones who
| WANT to be a manager. Wanting to be one is good but the reasons
| for wanting it should align with the company. Far too many people
| want to become managers for the TITLE. These people are parasites
| and will destroy the whole team by virtue of insecurity and
| sycophantism.
|
| 3. Many senior engineers are quite capable of managing teams.
| They should be encouraged by directors to try becoming a team
| lead - focus on tech aspects of a larger team, keep people happy.
|
| A better org structure for fast moving engineering companies
| could be something akin to European soccer clubs of high caliber
|
| 1. Director aka Technical director - Reports to VP - Has the
| power of the purse but is also deeply technical to understand
| what bets their group is taking. Responsible for hiring,
| projects, org structure, pay and culture
|
| 2. Engineering manager aka club manager - Reports to Director -
| Only responsible for coaching, mentoring and allocating resources
| to produce outcomes. Their key responsibility is outcomes and it
| requires keeping people happy, engaged and growing. They need to
| be deeply technical, much more so than directors to be effective
| in their job.
|
| 3. Senior/Team lead engineers aka coaches/leaders - Works with EM
| but reports to director - Responsible for driving their own area
| of expertise/projects. Much like a goalkeeping coach drives
| goalkeepers only. Only difference is that Senior/Team lead should
| also be expected to contribute directly to projects. These people
| are not responsible for happiness or cultivation of other skills
| or producing other opportunities
|
| 4. ICs aka the players themselves - Real MVPs of the team -
| Should be paid higher than EM because the EM is replaceable but
| the players often aren't. Should be shielded from politics but
| should be incentivized by money and status to remain ICs. This is
| how you get players like Cristiano Ronaldo not retiring too early
| to get into coaching.
|
| I would be very inclined to join a company where ICs are treated
| better because I have seen management-heavy companies lose sight
| of what is really important for the company.
| danrocks wrote:
| I have two problems with this suggestion:
|
| - Director should be technical / Team Leads should be
| technical, but the person between them shouldn't? That sounds
| like a recipe for going behind the EM's back at every possible
| junction.
|
| - TLs reporting to the director? The analogy of goalkeepers
| coach does not make a lot of sense, because in a club, they
| report to the manager, not to the General Manager (Director in
| your example).
| nine_zeros wrote:
| 1. My mistake. EM needs to be strongly technical. Much more
| so than directors. I will edit the post.
|
| 2. The GK coach works with the manager/head coach to figure
| out the entire strategy and keep the training aligned with
| goals. But they are hired by the director (general manager),
| fired by the director, paid by the director, have status
| meetings with the director.
|
| From the director's perspective, all coaches are at the same
| level. Each coach has a specialty and a role to fill e.g. GK
| coach, fitness coach etc. There is a head coach/manager whose
| job is to ensure that all other coaches and all players are
| happy and aligned. Let's call this person the alignment and
| happiness coach.
|
| In a similar vein in tech companies, you'd have team leads
| specializing in tech areas and leading projects (as opposed
| to merely coaching), and a EM whose role is to keep everyone
| aligned and happy.
| brimstedt wrote:
| Unfortunately, far too much talent is wasted into making good
| developers into bad managers.
|
| It's great with managers that have domain knowledge, but having
| domain knowledge does not make you a good manager.
| max002 wrote:
| I do love your reply :)
| zo1 wrote:
| The "talent" we need is definitely not technical. Software
| projects are a magnitude more about "people" and "negotiation"
| than it is "how do do this technical widget efficiently" and
| "how can we make this arch scale" (these are all relatively
| solved problems, despite us trying to reinvent the wheel). Even
| projects that fail due to, on the surface, technical problems
| are actually a result of people and leadership, and the effect
| they have on the project.
|
| This is the part that I think a lot of technical people really
| misunderstand, hence all the negative sentiment about turning
| developers into managers. A stellar incredible "10x" team of
| super talented developers can not negate the bad people
| dynamics within a project caused by bad leadership or lack
| thereof.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > Software projects are a magnitude more about "people" and
| "negotiation" than it is "how do do this technical widget
| efficiently" and "how can we make this arch scale" (these are
| all relatively solved problems, despite us trying to reinvent
| the wheel). Even projects that fail due to, on the surface,
| technical problems are actually a result of people and
| leadership, and the effect they have on the project.
|
| If you think the current crop of managers are doing all this,
| I am afraid you are mistaken.
| jcadam wrote:
| OTOH, sometimes you get stuck working for the CEO's nephew who
| just graduated with his BA in business management and has zero
| domain knowledge.
| iso1210 wrote:
| And how long does that domain knowlege survive as technology
| moves on, and the manager isn't getting hands on. You could
| have great domain knowlege when you move into management age
| 35, back in say 2010, and just 10 years later you'd have very
| little hands on knowlege of say AWS. Go back 10 years further
| and while you might be a whiz at building win32 programs in
| 2000 when you were 35, how do those skills apply in 2010 let
| alone 2020 when you're 55.
| makapuf wrote:
| Being on the move is part of the skill. I expect a good
| developer to be effective in a ew tech faster than a younger
| one barely knowing one tech. I think THAT is part of the
| appeal of a senior+ dev, having proven they will be able to
| adapt to the new framework or the next pivot.
| dathinab wrote:
| I believe one of the major skills a senior+ dev has to have
| is to see through the marketing and impl. detail fluff and
| instead understand the underlying concepts and which
| aspects a specific implementation has wrt. the underlying
| concepts.
|
| While frameworks and libraries change all the time, the
| concepts do not.
| nitrogen wrote:
| At some point, languages and frameworks become as
| interchangeable as different brands of tools. Sure, you
| can have a favorite brand with strengths and weaknesses,
| but someone who's used one powered screwdriver or
| handheld sander can pick up any other one quickly, and
| it's actually possible to reach that point with code.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yup. If you know how to think like a coder, you can keep
| picking things up. I've been coding for 28 years and I've
| dipped in and out over the years. I keep abreast of
| things enough to know where to find the most up to date
| information and how I would learn it if I need or want
| to.
|
| I'd compare it to using Wikipedia/web search for basic
| facts. Even if you don't know the capital of Morocco off
| the top of your head, you know how to answer that
| question.
|
| Human languages are similar: I've studied six + have a
| Linguistics degree, and even languages in families I've
| never studied before are a lot easier for me to pick up
| than somebody who's only studied 1 non-native language.
| kortilla wrote:
| AWS is superficial domain knowledge. That indeed will rot.
|
| "Building client-server architectures to run on the internet"
| is domain knowledge that hasn't significantly changed in the
| last 20 years.
| stapled_socks wrote:
| How about just continuing as an average developer? Is this not
| possible?
| almost_usual wrote:
| Really depends on your employer. I work for an engineering driven
| public tech company in SV and it's normal for there to be senior
| engineers who are 40+.
|
| Also at a public company it's very unlikely a junior or new
| manager will be making more than a senior engineer who has been
| there for years. They might have 10x the equity a new employee
| has.
| ArjenM wrote:
| Then people keep developing more, I went from manager back to
| developer and I'm far more happy not having to chase after
| people.
|
| Also I get to decline my boss asking if I want to take on manager
| responsibilities on top of normal duties without extra pay. Bit
| of a no-brainer.
| daly wrote:
| I was a developer for 50 years. Almost every other software
| developer I can think of "retired into management". I was offered
| a management position 8 times in my career and turned all of them
| down. Management is a skill that I don't naturally have and can't
| be bothered to learn.
| ipnon wrote:
| The day I become a manager is the day you pry a laptop out of
| my cold hands.
| nunez wrote:
| Another option only tangentially discussed: they go into
| consulting and specialize, making excellent, low-risk money in
| the process.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| > Clean Room Technician: You know what they do with engineers
| when they turn forty?
|
| > [to Aaron, who shakes his head]
|
| > Clean Room Technician: They take them out and shoot them.
|
| Dialogue from the 2004 movie Primer.
| wombatpm wrote:
| They get sent to a farm out in the country where they can play
| with the other developers.
| crate_barre wrote:
| This article is missing one important pivot:
|
| The Job Do'er:
|
| This person is qualified for the job, and does it. Stays prepped
| for interviews and moves companies/roles as needed to maximize
| income/happiness. This person does a job, somewhat acceptably,
| acceptable to the company that demands acceptable work and
| acceptable to a life that demands acceptable upkeep (bills and
| shit).
|
| So if you find yourself unable to become a manager, luckily for
| you, you can still do your job (boo hoo).
| Syzygies wrote:
| My father joined Kodak out of college, in 1951. A classmate who
| interviewed the same day ended up running the place.
|
| My father helped a senior programmer automate dozens of jobs,
| chemically testing their film processing plant. For this he was
| moved to their research labs. In the 1970's he invented the
| filter used in nearly all digital cameras:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
|
| He retired as Kodak's highest paid employee with no
| responsibilities for others. He was profoundly uncomfortable
| telling other people what to do.
|
| Some people just aren't cut out for management.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Bryce Bayer is your dad? That's quite the exceptional employee
| you're talking about then.
|
| I recently used his _other_ famous invention (Bayer order
| indices) to come up with a fast approximation algorithm for
| blue noise (still working out the kinks of an improved
| version).
|
| https://observablehq.com/@jobleonard/pseudo-blue-noise
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| This is something that really irks me about the tech industry. If
| you don't move up, you risk getting cut. Management will
| eventually phase out older developers in layoffs, and replace
| them with younger, cheaper talent. Big corporations especially. I
| know way too many developers who Never wanted to be in
| management, and eventually management became people younger than
| them, who preferred younger colleagues.
| playing_colours wrote:
| When we talk about niches for specialists compiler development
| and Linux kernel are usually mentioned as examples. What are the
| other good options where specialisation, long term investments
| are valued, and someone after 30 can focus on going deep into?
| yyyk wrote:
| >What happens to developers who never go into management?
|
| They could be merely 'normal developers', not very different from
| any other developer.
| andrew_ wrote:
| We start our own companies after seeing 20+ years of dubious
| decision making and pointless middle management.
| dathinab wrote:
| > For example, people often assume that any talented developer
| will end up becoming a manager.
|
| I believe this thinking is harmful for this Industry.
|
| While there is some overlap between a manager and software dev
| they are in the end two fundamental different jobs.
|
| Sure having some understanding of software is helpful as a
| manager but IMHO this only includes skills up to the "mid"/"just
| after junior" software dev level.
|
| Sure as software dev you also need to have some resource
| management skills (some time management, and some potential team
| lead skills) but as a manger you need much much more of this
| skills and apply them in many more ways.
|
| So if a senior software developer becomes a manager it's wasting
| their potential as software developer. Similar a excellent
| manager doesn't need _any_ programming skills, only some
| understanding of the programming job and it's hurdles (which
| might be simplest to learn by doing programming for a few years,
| but there could be much more efficient ways to learn this).
|
| So IMHO if you want to go into the management path its best to
| start early on, and end up there around the time you reach a mid-
| level skill set or earlier.
|
| Similar don't push senior engineers into management positions,
| being very good in one doesn't entail doesn't entail being good
| in the other.
|
| Also please don't go around spreading bs like "if a older
| software dev isn't a manager yet they are incompetent and
| shouldn't be hired".
|
| Our industry needs more old software dev, through only such ones
| which continue to learn and improve their skills. Not such ones
| which stagnated in the past.
| register wrote:
| I do not agree. In most of the cases a manager sits in the
| right meeting at the right place and right moment where a
| critical decision has to be taken. Those moments are often the
| ones that will determine how a project will go. Having
| management skills and being able to understand the big picture
| from a technical perspective makes all the difference in such
| situations. While it's true that the set of skills are
| orthogonal I strongly believe that a "technical manager" ,
| other skills being equals, will in average be able to produce
| better results over non technical managers. I am working in
| enterprise IT and I have seen many instances of "non technical
| managers" taking wrong decisions at the right moment just
| because of a lack of understanding of the possible
| consequences. Good technical managers are however quite rare
| because they need to combine two skill sets that are already
| rare alone. I believe that this is the reason why companies
| look just for "pure managers": for me it's more a matter of
| convenience rather than one of performance.
| temac wrote:
| I kind of agree with you, but the problem is that
| "management" is often (very) poorly defined. Is it people or
| project management? It is often implicitly the two without
| much rational. Even considering project management the style
| can vary greatly between somebody concentrating on filling
| various spreasheets vs somebody pressuring others all the
| time about deadline vs somebody wanting to ensure engineering
| is performed and not just mere coding vs somebody having
| broad picture ideas for future dev.
|
| It makes sense to have "managers" in fast foods. It's way
| harder to even just define the role in an environment where
| everybody is a knowledge worker. Maybe we should even stop
| using that term and stick with more precise role
| descriptions.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I agree that some titles could be changed not to have
| manager in the title and be a role instead. For example:
|
| Product manager -> product designer
|
| But what about the people who decide salaries, promotions,
| hiring, and reviews? Part of the role is "project
| coordinator" and another part is "staffing and
| compensation". Is there an alternative title for that?
| playing_colours wrote:
| I think the responsibilities of project coordinator /
| project manager can be a part of the work of senior IC
| (Principal Engineer) or someone like Agile Coach,
| Delivery Lead.
|
| Recently, I was a Chief Architect - an IC role - and
| organised and drove cross-team initiatives was a part of
| my work. It is not an easy skill, it needs practicing and
| the work is time consuming, may not be a fun quite often,
| but I think you do not absolutely have to assign it to a
| manager.
| VPwithSkillz wrote:
| Great reply, I sit in meetings and see management who have no
| technical clue making pivotal decisions, resetting timelines
| without consulting their Architects, and will decimate them
| with no mercy. Yeah, I'm a paper pusher now but keep my
| skills up at night by doing consulting gigs on the DL and
| swore when I got into management I'd stop these ignorant
| schmucks from making decisions affecting project and product
| success all while rubbing their noses in their idiocy.
| Publicly. Those decisions get reversed and they learn to
| consult with technical staff before opening their uniformed
| pie holes.
| ano88888 wrote:
| It is true but just like others said, if you don't have
| ambitions, the junior developer you train will quickly become
| you boss, have more pay and manage what you do or can't do (and
| possibly have the power to fire you too).
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I'd compare it to sports, there's a bit of skill overlap
| between playing ability and coaching but not much. The majority
| of great coaches were fairly average players, the majority of
| great players fail as coaches.
|
| Same for being an engineer manager and individual contributor,
| tons of great programmers are horrible managers and vice versa
|
| The key to a successful business is aligning incentives, make
| it so each skillset is rewarded properly for their
| contribution. Obviously a tough task. Most fail and great
| engineers have to become managers to make more money and it
| hurts both parties
| nix23 wrote:
| Exactly, it's like saying talented artist end up becoming
| Museum Managers.
| robofanatic wrote:
| very very few developers do the kind of work that can be
| compared to a talented artist.
| nix23 wrote:
| Talented developers.....it was a example, is it hurting
| your feelings?
| Gtex555 wrote:
| the program coming when someone who makes less money than you
| is managing you , doesnt really work. So managing is like a
| reward.
| dathinab wrote:
| > makes less money than you is managing you , doesn't really
| work
|
| It can, managing is (should be) a collaborative effort. It
| only is a problem if the manager manages in a non
| collaborative forceful top down manner.
|
| It's all a question about communication skills.
|
| Like in some sports you will find top players earning
| multiple times of what their trainer earns, and potentially
| having enough influence to get their trainer fired. They work
| together with the trainer for optimal results.
|
| Similar enough wealthy people hire fitness trainer, or people
| which manage their cullender, schedule, appointments and
| might even majorly decide career directions. And it still
| works even through the person in power is the person being
| managed.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Is that a mst klennddr ?
| dathinab wrote:
| What is a mst klennddr?
|
| Google translate says "cool calendar" which seems ...
| wrong?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Are you a Qawwali fan at all?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Haha qalandar has a few different letters but I still
| chuckled
| josephwegner wrote:
| Why? I make less money than every single one of my staff. I'm
| an EM, I manage 9 engineers, and never once has the fact that
| they make more money seemed relevant.
|
| _Maybe_ I could change careers and be an engineer and make as
| much of them, but I wouldn't want to. I'm a manager because I
| like being a manager. It'd be a QoL decrease for me to be an
| engineer just for the money.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Just have your staff+ engineers report into directors and VPs
| rather than line level managers.
| kcplate wrote:
| You need a line level manager to insulate the suits from
| developer lunacy.
| betaby wrote:
| More other way around
| marcinzm wrote:
| There's a reason good line level managers get called shit
| umbrellas for the team.
| kcplate wrote:
| Been on both sides of that line, in my experience there
| is FAR more lunacy among the development folks.
|
| But to your point, the lunatics always feel like they are
| the "normal ones"
| playing_colours wrote:
| It is often expected to be defined in the expectations
| towards engineers at Staff+ level that people on that
| level are good at communications and can balance
| technical and business points of view.
|
| Also, developers are often not skilled enough to hide
| their "lunacy" and they are sincerely open about it.
| Managers are more skilful at hiding malice, incompetence,
| pure wish for power, that makes them more harmful for a
| company.
| SnaKeZ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
| davnicwil wrote:
| > this only includes skills up to the "mid"/"just after junior"
| software dev level
|
| Not so sure about this.
|
| Usually part of the responsiblity of managers in software is
| making or at least guiding those making the bigger techincal
| calls that have long term and broad scope impact.
|
| These decisons typically benefit from a pretty decent
| assessment of technical risk, which derives from both a good
| first principles understanding of a proposal, and probably
| moreso, _lots_ of first-hand experience of similar things going
| wrong and right.
|
| It's not a coincidence that top level tech management at most
| big successful software companies have deep technical skills
| and backgrounds.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Is that true? In the companies I have worked for, the
| technical risk assessment and everything related to "is this
| a viable tech solution" is done by senior engineers. Managers
| barely limit themselves to agree with what senior engineers
| say.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yes, it is. A lot of companies run like you've seen, but
| that's not how it should be.
|
| For instance, if I have to talk to tech people about that
| aspect of a project I'm working on, if we're talking about
| technical risk, I should have some different perspectives
| from a senior engineer that will influence our back and
| forth. For example, it's common for engineers to switch
| jobs every year or two and knowing that means I would know
| to ask questions specifically about what our tech risk
| would look like if we don't update the stack/tools for the
| next five years (say if I know the exec team won't fund
| upgrades or the non-technical parts of the organization are
| resistant to change). Or if we'd be able to hire engineers
| to maintain whatever product in 3 years: Is it being
| taught? Are there enough engineers on the market with this
| expertise that we could replace someone if necessary? Can
| we AFFORD to? (Will the execs/HR pay for the expertise if
| it's a rare skillset?) Etc.
|
| And I wouldn't consider myself qualified to manage a team
| of engineers; I'd expect more skills and insight from
| people who are genuinely qualified.
| bjornsing wrote:
| 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.
| dathinab wrote:
| > 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.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > 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.
| topkai22 wrote:
| 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.
| bruckie wrote:
| 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". :)
| hawaiianbrah wrote:
| None of the companies I'm at paid managers more than ICs
| level-for-level.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| 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.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > 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.
| moosey wrote:
| 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.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > 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.
| csmpltn wrote:
| > "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"?
| andreilys wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| candiddevmike wrote:
| 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.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > 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.)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It may be harmful for the industry but good for the individual.
|
| Becoming a specialist is very dangerous, as your future is tied
| to a product, and the products don't love you back. Make the
| wrong choice and you're managing a Starbucks.
| JakeAl wrote:
| Nope. Starbucks won't hire you without restaurant management
| experience. You'd be lucky if they hired you as a barista.
| akomtu wrote:
| Without coffee making experience you'd be lucky to get a
| toilet cleaning job at Starbucks.
| mgaunard wrote:
| I don't quite agree. Managers will be the ones assessing the
| devs and making all sorts of decisions as to the overarching
| architecture or the software development process.
|
| Having a mediocre developer in that position will lead to all
| sorts of problems.
| lmilcin wrote:
| (BTW I am 40, have been working as dev for the past 21 years
| and I am now transitioning to my first non-development role
| ever after working as tech lead / senior dev for over a decade)
|
| > Sure having some understanding of software is helpful as a
| manager but IMHO this only includes skills up to the
| "mid"/"just after junior" software dev level.
|
| I disagree. There is a lot of useful skills that a developer
| _can_ pick up usually only after you are very comfortable with
| the coding and technical problem solving.
|
| Ability to improve processes, being able to influence morale of
| your team, ability to think though a coherent strategy for what
| you are working on, handling emergencies, preventing
| emergencies, creating space for your teammembers so that they
| can thrive, teaching others useful skills, managing up, and so
| on and so forth.
|
| > So if a senior software developer becomes a manager it's
| wasting their potential as software developer.
|
| Sure. But maybe they can now "leverage" (building towards that
| bullshit bingo card...) their experience in a position that has
| more impact?
| kcplate wrote:
| > For me ability to code (like knowledge of programming
| language) is a necessary but relatively minor ability of a
| good software developer.
|
| Absolutely. I have been in tech since the eighties and it's
| remarkable to me how all the other skills that used to be
| necessary to create quality systems have seemingly taken a
| backseat to this skill. There are far to many developers with
| a severe lack of good engineering and troubleshooting
| capabilities nowadays...but boy are they fluent in the
| language de jour
| bboylen wrote:
| What is the best way to develop engineering &
| troubleshooting capabilities?
|
| Definitely seems a lot less clear cut than just practicing
| a language
| kcplate wrote:
| I think to a certain degree it's just an innate capacity
| for creativity coupled with logic that gets refined in
| practice. If you don't have those core components in you
| you are pretty much at a disadvantage to develop them.
|
| To be honest in the last 10-15 years with the shift to
| Agile it really feels like the type of folks who become
| software devs prior to that shift represent about 15-20%
| of the new devs now. The rest are kind of just commodity
| devs. Give them good detailed requirements and they can
| churn out code. That 15-20% are the ones who can churn
| out something without a hyper level of detail or refined
| requirements.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| I'm 40 but I've been on both sides of the aisle. It's not
| just moving from a "development" into a "non-development"
| role. You're basically moving into an environment with very
| different incentives, interpersonal relationships and so on.
|
| As a tech lead / senior developer, you're very much part of
| the operational level, and your decisions are mostly tactical
| and working from an existing strategical framework which you
| don't control.
|
| That changes when you move into a (mid) management role. You
| now have to come up with overarching strategems, long term
| vision, be able to form strong alliances, navigate political
| landscapes, know who will fight you and why they will fight
| you, be able to broker deals and understand how your stance
| on a current issue creates much needed leverage down the
| road.
|
| Technical knowledge matters far less. Being prepared when
| going into a meeting room means knowing who sits in front of
| you, what drives their motivations, what they want / oppose,
| and having a deep understanding of what you can say, and -
| more importantly - how you are going to say it. People will
| try to get under your skin, not because they have a personal
| dislike of you, but simply because the position you were
| promoted / hired into may be perceived as threatening to
| them. You're skin needs to grow thick.
|
| At this level, the people you're going to work with don't
| care how the pie is being made. They want to leverage
| software to act on their larger strategic goals. You will
| have to promote technology not just because of its merits for
| developers, but above all because of the value it provides to
| stakeholders. You have to find selling points that resonate
| with the stakeholders you're supposed to cater to. And you
| have to ensure you can deliver on your word.
|
| So, how does this apply to software developers? When you're
| working at an operational level, dealing with day-to-day
| emergencies and issue queues, working with a small team of
| people, building / maintaining systems and applications,...
| you're not really exposed to all of the above. Your
| supervisor is supposed to shield you from all of this and
| defend the work you and your team is doing. When you move up
| into that (mid) managerial level, you're moving into a very
| different world which requires skills and experience you
| can't easily acquire on an operational level as an IC.
|
| Now, that doesn't mean it's impossible to grow into that
| level. You're transitioning into it, right? Your being
| recognized for your skills, the experience and the
| perspective you've grown over the past two decades. The big
| challenge ahead of you is learning how to actively "let go"
| of that operational level and delegate anything and
| everything operational so you can spend your time advocating
| for the stakeholders you're supposed to represent.
|
| However, making this career change isn't for everyone. Nor is
| it something that ought to be seen as a marker for "career
| success". There's a lot of merit in being a senior developer
| who is keenly aware of the decision making process upstream
| and how things move, so they can organize work on the
| operational level accordingly. And this includes taking the
| lead in making pragmatic technical decisions regarding
| architecture, incorporating technologies, programming
| practices, documentation, setting priorities and so on. This
| is what sets them apart from someone who's at the beginning
| of their career and still has a lot to figure out about
| themselves as well as the workplace and everything involved
| in the process of building software and delivering value.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > As a tech lead / senior developer, you're very much part
| of the operational level, and your decisions are mostly
| tactical and working from an existing strategical framework
| which you don't control.
|
| A (really) good dev will recognise where strategic
| framework falls short or is non-existent and will be able
| to find a way to fix it. He will know that he needs to
| build trust and budget it to get the really important stuff
| done. For a good tech lead this is significant part of
| engagement as there is typically no other very technical
| person that would be better positioned to do it.
|
| As a tech lead, for example, I am in a constant battle
| against complexity. Managers want to only add
| functionality, developers want to only add technology, and
| I try make people aware of how this ends if it is not
| supplemented with hefty effort to manage complexity. And
| this ideally ends in significant contribution to strategy
| if I can succeed or, if I can't, with inevitable problems
| later.
|
| > At this level, the people you're going to work with don't
| care how the pie is being made.
|
| They might not, but that does not mean that how the pie is
| made isn't influencing the outcome.
|
| A manager that has significant experience with development
| knows how the pie is made and can be very valuable if he is
| able to use that knowledge for better outcomes. There is of
| course risk that the knowledge is misused (like people
| using certain solutions just because they are familiar with
| them and not because they are right for the particular
| situation).
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| > A (really) good dev will recognise where strategic
| framework falls short or is non-existent and will be able
| to find a way to fix it. He will know that he needs to
| build trust and budget it to get the really important
| stuff done. For a good tech lead this is significant part
| of engagement as there is typically no other very
| technical person that would be better positioned to do
| it.
|
| This comes with some serious caveats. On an operational
| level, it is _never_ your responsibility to "fix the
| strategic framework where it falls short". You're not
| expected to, nor are you incentivized to do that and you
| certainly don't have the authority to do it.
|
| For instance, if you get inundated with deadlines and
| unreasonable requests, there's a handful of ways you
| could respond. You could go into crunch time / overtime
| until you burn out. You could draft a list of priorities
| and suggestions of a manageable workload and send it
| upstairs. You could even suggest reorganizing or
| expanding the team.
|
| However, you can't hire someone new yourself, you can't
| ignore planning or requests, you can't decide from one
| side what kind of value the team is going to deliver.
| Why? Because you are subordinate to the authority of
| management on an operational level.
|
| If you feel that shortcomings in the strategy of your
| employer impacts your work to the extent that what you do
| on a day to day basis doesn't align anymore with your
| views on how you want to contribute, well, that's a red
| flag.
|
| > As a tech lead, for example, I am in a constant battle
| against complexity.
|
| That's par for the course. On a fundamental level, you
| don't stand on equal footing with management. You can
| hope that your suggestions will be incorporated in the
| overarching strategy, but don't have the authority to
| actually make it so. At best, you may play your cards
| right and gain enough clout to exert influence from the
| sidelines.
|
| That changes when you move into management.
|
| As a manager, you will sign off on the solutions that
| needs to be build. You're accountable for the definition
| of the high-level requirements of a product / service,
| how it fits with available budget, how it matches with
| the envisioned value its going to provide to
| stakeholders. You might collaborate with experts in
| interaction design and design thinking to help guide this
| big-picture process. Depending on how much responsibility
| you're allotted, you may even have the authority to hire
| staff, organize teams, come up with your own projects and
| strategies and so on.
|
| Being able to draw from your experience with the overall
| process of software development may help you in your
| estimations and the outcomes ahead. However, the
| usefulness of deep technical knowledge on a managerial
| level is very limited. As manager, the one thing you
| can't do is apply that knowledge directly on a day to day
| basis. That's where you are expected to delegate towards
| the team you're managing.
|
| Indeed, having experience as a developer can even be
| disadvantageous. Your inherently biased towards
| particular tools and solutions and stepping back from
| them can be surprisingly hard. You also can't be overly
| sympathetic to the particular challenges faced by the
| development team. As an erstwhile developer, you might
| acutely relate to the pain of dealing with legacy and
| technical debt. But as a manager, you'll quickly find
| that you just can't afford addressing those as priority
| without potentially negatively impacting overarching
| goals, interests, budgets and so on.
|
| One of the biggest challenges you will face is to unlearn
| to purely think from the perspective of a developer in
| the trenches.
|
| Whether you like it or not, over the course of time, your
| technical knowledge will grow stale as technological
| progress replaces today's programming languages, IDE's,
| database systems, etc. If you keep on the managerial
| track, inevitably, there will come a day when you find
| yourself in a meeting with the next generation of
| developers and you can't readily bridge the gap between
| your and their technical expertise / perspective /
| knowledge.
|
| That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to be
| mindful that becoming a manager implies that you're not a
| developer / craftsman anymore.
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| > At this level, the people you're going to work with don't
| care how the pie is being made.
|
| Hear, hear... oh. Here be dragons. A manager at each rung
| of the ladder who doesn't have insight into the technical
| constraints will over-promise and embellish things, and the
| least technically capable will do it with the greatest
| zeal. And the grunts will be left with an impossible task
| of storming a well-protected fort with inadequate support.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am very very negative on "management" as a skill in the
| software world.
|
| There are a few key outcomes needed
|
| 1. staff work 2. Policy decisions 3. resource allocation
|
| 1. is working out how the various pieces will collide (ie how
| long it will take to march x thousand people through various
| roads as a good example of army staff work). This is absolutely
| a job to be replaced with software. Then all that's left is the
| trade off in options otherwise known as
|
| 2. policy decisions. And this includes making policy on the
| hoof. That's fine but I think companies are going to become
| more democratic and much more obvious what policy decisions are
| being made and when - and that will take oversight
|
| 3. resource allocation. Where to spend the budget? And again
| this is mostly about staff work and policy
|
| So i think the staff work (the helicopter view) will get
| commoditised, the policy decisions constantly reviewed and
| eventually replaced with democracy and frankly that's it.
|
| What we will need is lots of administrators .. oh not that will
| be replaced with software ...
| senko wrote:
| You forgot herding cats. Good luck automating that.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Cats respond to incentives.
|
| You only herd them when you want them to do something they
| do not understand or are not incentivised to do
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Cats often value their autonomy and sense of mystery over
| any particular incentive one can offer.
|
| Source: Currently trying to train a literal cat. And am a
| figurative cat myself.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| You are probably easier to train than your cat!
|
| My basic takeaway is that most jobs and businesses are
| terrible for society and badly organised and run. If a
| manager (investor / producer) wants to hire for that they
| need to pay well to herd cats
|
| If they instead organise things well, and even have a
| glorious vision then cats herd themselves. Why is Tesla
| doing so well? Why was Facebook or Google great places to
| work?
|
| But honestly, most businesses can be achieved without
| management _taking over_. A business is either within the
| phase space of engineering possibility or or is not - the
| electric vehicle was there and was so well recognised
| that Tesla actually got given grants by govenment to
| build it - a government department recognised what car
| manufacturers refused to see. One could imagine hundreds
| of engineers coming together without management to build
| that on some kickstarter like site.
|
| My view is leadership is the least important part of a
| successful business and "management" is the least
| important part of leadership.
|
| edit: i may be overly cynical and i really need to write
| up my thoughts more coherently
| sokoloff wrote:
| > My view is leadership is the least important part of a
| successful business
|
| Leadership is the part of the company that decides what
| the company will pursue. Tesla started making electric
| cars because Tesla leadership decided to. When they
| started making the Model 3 or PowerWalls or rolled out
| the SuperCharger network, it's because leadership decided
| to.
|
| > and "management" is the least important part of
| leadership.
|
| This part could very well be true.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> When they started making the Model 3 or PowerWalls or
| rolled out the SuperCharger network, it's because
| leadership decided to
|
| yes, and ...
|
| Look anything I say sounds like sour grapes but, honestly
| there were a thousand bloggers saying "someone should
| make electric cars", there were hundreds of engineers who
| had built prototypes in and out of major car companies.
| It was time. The technology was there.
|
| Leadership is not posting a vision up on a site or
| sending round a memo (ie deciding to).
|
| Leadership is having the capital in place (financial and
| reputation and network and that x factor), and risking
| it.
|
| I am not trying to belittle the leadership - but I am
| trying to right size it. Without the climate, without the
| skilled engineers and the cash and the government support
| and so on, leadership is just prattling on HN comments.
|
| You could pluck any fucker from HN and put them as CEO of
| any random tech company and their decisions would be
| within 10% of the original CEO.
|
| The hard part is not leading. We already know where we
| are going. The hard part is not staff work. The hard part
| is inspiring people so they don't fuck off and join the
| other guy with the same ideas but more charisma.
|
| Just like High frequency traders the CEO competition is
| other CEOs. And just like HFT the secret is not the
| special algorithm, it's just the doing of it that gives
| society benefit. And just like HFT there is a lot of
| sound and fury and we could probably get the same social
| benefit with a new market structure
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Different people have different incentives. No, throwing
| money at people does not solve every problem.
| 62951413 wrote:
| The most talented developers I have seen were highly-
| introverted intense guys. You know the type, it's like most of
| us only on steroids. They could probably be great architects
| but that role doesn't seem to exist anymore and wouldn't be on
| the managerial track anyway.
|
| As a side-note, I have no idea why we have "managers" in large
| companies. I see more and more that a "team lead" is just
| another developer who has to deal with spring planning and work
| assignment without much/any difference in compensation. A team
| "manager" doesn't touch/see any code at all and never impresses
| me with his technical insights. So other than hiring/firing and
| 1-on-1s I cannot see them doing anything which would justify
| the prestige and benefits.
| baskethead wrote:
| I'm an old guy. I have 20+ years on me as an IC and am going
| through interviews. I have or have had a total of 20 interviews.
|
| I can honestly say I don't feel any ageism. I do feel like the
| interview process is getting harder and harder though from an
| expectations perspective. I'm not sure if that's unconscious
| ageism but I think it's more that people's expectations for
| perfection have increased.
| hvgk wrote:
| I took a management position and delegate my management tasks out
| to people who want to do them on my team. I am still hands on and
| it allows people who want to get management experience to get it
| and allows me to land a management salary. Problem solved.
| black_13 wrote:
| I am going to become a manager: I need need the money and I am
| tired of dealing with bullshit and would rather serve it.
| BatFastard wrote:
| I am a 63 year old developer, three of my close friends are also
| developers in their 60's. One works for Lockheed on 3D engines,
| one works for Cisco, they are both treated very well by their
| companies. Myself and another friend work for a startup. We both
| enjoy the startup culture, and now that kids are away for their
| own lives, we have the time needed by startups. I have run into
| crazy hiring practices, but I have learned that when they ask me
| to balance a binary tree that the job is not for me.
|
| I hope to never stop coding, I really enjoy it!
| chalcolithic wrote:
| >when they ask me to balance a binary tree that the job is not
| for me.
|
| Could you please elaborate? I reject offers from the companies
| that never made me write any code during the hiring process for
| the fear of having incompetent coworkers.
| VLM wrote:
| LOL its an incompetent manager detector, not an incompetent
| coworker filter.
|
| First of all it shows your future boss doesn't spec and
| doesn't care. From memory there are two solutions one has
| essentially zero memory cost but has a speed of O(nLogn) and
| the other has brutal O(n) memory cost and is about O(n)
| speed. Is memory so cheap for your application that you can
| double it for a mere log N speed improvement? Is N big enough
| of a number to matter? Its absolutely savage that in 2021
| there's still companies hiring that can't pass Spolsky's
| hiring list from decades ago. A place that doesn't spec is a
| place that doesn't use source control, doesn't test before
| deployment, doesn't rationally schedule, its just a gang
| cowboys crashing it with no survivors. They don't spec, Run
| Away.
|
| Secondly it shows a dangerous level of NIH syndrome. Its
| almost but not quite as dumb as trying to roll your own
| crypto. If the job is writing a database or maybe a
| filesystem or a sorting standard library type code, it gets a
| free pass. Any other workplace, if you see an application for
| a database, use a database, or import a known good licensed
| library for DB or filesystem work. If you're interviewing
| for, maybe, a 3-d engine game dev position, its legit to talk
| about something like how the 80s were an era of rapid
| theoretical development in hidden line removal algorithms,
| because they were and its cool. But if the interviewer is
| like LOL no we're going to talk about how you'd write a tree
| balancer for a filesystem, that's so deep in the NIH I'd run
| away. That project is doomed.
|
| Third reason is its not terribly difficult to blast thru that
| algo the simple way where you traverse nodes and insert into
| a self balancing tree, or the memory expensive solution where
| you store into a temporary sorted array and then read out in
| a tricky fashion into a new tree (which is faster than one at
| a time because mumble something honestly who cares for 99% of
| jobs). Its probably about two to six screen fulls of Python.
| The real problem is its a cultural indicator of here's some
| flaming hoops to jump thru. The stereotype is we're a kinder
| gentler more civilized culture because we no longer abuse
| dolphins into jumping thru flaming hoops for our amusement,
| now that we're better people look at our halos as we abuse
| our fellow humans into jumping thru flaming hoops for our
| amusement. Just a workplace culture I'd run away from if I
| saw it.
|
| Forth reason is I've been around the block and when the
| interviewer knows what they're doing and what you'd be doing
| they tend to talk about that specifically. When they have no
| idea WTF either they or you would be doing, that's when they
| whip out "I'm bored lets fill time by having you implement
| Bresenham's line algo in STM32 assembly language for lulz".
| The problem isn't the algo, and the problem isn't learning
| the algo, its that the hiring process consists of people who
| have no idea what they're doing and no idea what you'd be
| doing, so working there would be hell on earth. You're
| interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you, and
| they just told you they have no idea whats going on. Good
| luck there...
| emrah wrote:
| It makes sense to multiply the effectiveness of talented
| engineers by training them to be technical leads, but management
| is a completely different beast
| max002 wrote:
| Im 35, programming since 15. great dev, never gonna be manager,
| simply dont want the responsibility and headache. Im good with
| code, not with managing people who code. The assumption that devs
| should go into managment seems alien to me :D but nice art
| [deleted]
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| My fear is the joke from the movie Primer: -
| "How did you get over here?" - "Do you know what
| they do with engineers when they turn forty? They take them
| out and shoot them."
|
| I've read in other threads that the ageism fear is overblown,
| and also that it's not overblown at all.
|
| My plan is to develop enough of a professional network
| (whatever that means) that I won't be doing leetcode problems
| for a twenty-five-year-old interviewer when I'm fifty.
| pigbearpig wrote:
| These code schools are so ridiculous. Anyone can code in 12
| weeks! Also, there are only 4 types of developers and good ones
| post blogs and do TED talks. Such bullshit.
| captainmuon wrote:
| If you have some people who do the work at hand, and some people
| who manage other people, you automatically put the managers in
| charge (because it doesn't make sense the other way around). And
| then you get the hierarchies we are used to, with managers and
| individual contributors. That's really a pity.
|
| In German there is a phrase that translates to "content" or
| "substantive" work (inhaltlich). You use it in contrast to non-
| content or administrative tasks that enables the main work. It is
| like a neutral way of saying "actual work" without deriding the
| other kinds of tasks. I'm not really sure how to translate it
| properly.
|
| As an experienced developer, I would really like to have a job
| with not much managerial responsibility, but a lot of "content"
| responsibility. Not a manager, so I wouldn't tell somebody how to
| organize their work, but I get to make larger technical and
| strategic decisions. Unfortunately such architectural positions
| (or maybe CTO) are very rare, even though I know a lot of
| companies could use benefit from somebody in this role, who would
| keep the greater picture in mind, make technological decisions,
| teach employees, and so on.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Inhaltlich sounds similar to Cal Newport's idea of Deep
| Work[0]. I know I've found that framework pretty helpful. It's
| about work that requires in-depth thinking + time with a lack
| of distractions vs work that you can do without those things
| (like making phone calls, etc.).
|
| [0]: https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/
| [deleted]
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >If you have some people who do the work at hand, and some
| people who manage other people, you automatically put the
| managers in charge (because it doesn't make sense the other way
| around). And then you get the hierarchies we are used to, with
| managers and individual contributors. That's really a pity.
|
| The novel "Animal Farm" by George Orwell highlights that aspect
| of human behavior. But I don't think it necessarily has to be
| that way. Enlightened engineers (a rarity) are aware of this
| and might be able to put in checks and balances.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Haven't read this yet, but I'm having a hard time understanding
| the connection.
|
| Pretty much everywhere I've been, these are independent paths.
| Sure, one can flip to the other side... But they're distinct
| ladders to climb
|
| For the technical side you end up with some managerial tasks,
| like making sure your project is staying on time or deciding what
| to do when a feature tests stability. You probably do less work
| in the weeds, but still guide the technical direction
|
| The other side is much more about people and the business in my
| experience. While the technical/development side maintains a lot
| of their focus
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| I work with a developer who's in his 50s. He chose not only to
| stay in development but also to stay on the front end where he
| turns out beautiful and beautifully effective UIs using Angular.
|
| He enjoys his job, earns great pay and plenty of stock and has
| the respect of his managers and junior colleagues. He has helped
| the engineers around him perform to a higher level and teaches,
| but he loves creating through code and is very good at it. He
| also has earned enough trust and is productive enough that when
| he says "The snow is great today, so I'll be skiing," that's just
| understood as his privilege.
|
| So that's what happened to one person.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Those people are in precarious positions. All it takes is one
| bad manager to join the team and misunderstand his value before
| he loses all his power. I've found those people usually don't
| create as much value as they think anyway. It takes an
| extraordinary IC to match the business value of a decent
| manager.
| [deleted]
| lcuff wrote:
| I'm a developer who worked for 35 years and never became a
| manager. I wouldn't say I fit into any of these classifications.
| I worked in the defense industry for 5 years, then switched to
| commercial software. I worked with several different languages in
| companies with very different products. I was constantly
| learning, but never thought of myself as a 'super developer'. I
| learned new languages and new product areas: C/Bash for a company
| building ethernet hardware in the '80s. (A full TCP/IP stack ran
| on the board). Switched to a company building software for the
| Mac. (C and Pascal). Did contract work for modem companies.
| Learned Perl (Bleah) when working for an Internet Advertising
| company. Learned Ruby on Rails working for a company that was
| doing analysis on Air-conditioning systems in skyscrapers in
| order to save the building operators money and energy. I stayed
| very interested and involved. Did my best work when my manager
| could carve out a project that I could work on by myself and be
| done in 3 months or so, without needing any supervision.
|
| "Management skills" is a huge misnomer in my mind. I wasn't
| management material, and not especially good on a team, because
| I'd get angry when people disagreed with me. Peter Drucker said
| the most important part of being a manager was having character.
| Not something one can acquire in any easy way. I got a lot of
| therapy to deal with my own anger, so that helped.
| u_y wrote:
| The article implicitly conditions the strategy space on remaining
| an employee (or an employee-equivalent contractor) of a tech
| company.
|
| Somewhat surprisigly it omits the relatively common option of
| becoming a long term planner (a.k.a. "paper pusher"), whether in
| product or engineering.
|
| The options space outside of the Borg includes the following
| areas: - Becoming an engineering associate at a non technical
| organization, for example by automating or adapting standard tech
| tools to legacy industries. - Becoming a researcher (whether in
| an engineering field or one that requires engineering ability,
| e.g. computational biology - warmly recommended, BTW) - Starting
| your own business that creates platforms/business cases that
| would otherwise not exist.
| [deleted]
| bertr4nd wrote:
| Recently I've found myself wondering about the average stress
| levels of managers versus senior engineers. I'm at a big tech
| company that has roughly parallel tracks up to a quite high
| level, so I'm not hurting for income, but I see a lot of
| VPs/directors taking vacations, generally seeming well balanced
| in work/life. Meanwhile, I haven't taken a legit vacation in 2.5
| years (ok, the pandemic and small kids are partially to blame)
| and am constantly a ball of anxiety over whether my technical
| ideas are up to snuff, whether we're on the right track
| implementing them, etc. I wonder what stresses I'd find on the
| management track.
| jollybean wrote:
| Most middle management work is brutal.
|
| Director level is probably the worst - all of the grind but
| none of the glory.
|
| VP at least you have some power and a lot more money, it
| 'feels' like something.
|
| I think companies should pay technical people the same as
| managers up to at least director and there should be at least
| some parrallel technical tracks right up to the top i.e.
| Directors have Architects, VP's have Systems/Strategy
| Architects etc..
| jcadam wrote:
| Some companies have a technical track culminating in
| "Technical Fellow." Supposedly equivalent to a VP level
| executive. I worked at Boeing many years ago, back before the
| engineering culture had been fully snuffed out, and technical
| fellows commanded a huge amount of respect.
| greymalik wrote:
| Have you considered that this may be a problem with your
| workplace culture or your own mindset and not inherent to the
| job track?
| bertr4nd wrote:
| Oh sure, I mean, there are tons of contributing factors to
| human happiness and one's specific job function in a specific
| company isn't a complete determinant. A lot of my anxiety is
| directly attributable to a tendency towards intense self-
| criticism, which is going to follow me anywhere.
| FlyingAvatar wrote:
| I am curious what prevents you from taking a vacation?
|
| People on my team are actively encouraged to use their PTO on
| an on-going basis.
| astura wrote:
| Right? At my company you're actually required to use at least
| specific amount of PTO every year, like around 15 days I
| think.
| drunkpotato wrote:
| Take a vacation! The company will be okay without you for a
| while.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm about to say stuff that are just my
| impressions, without a lot of "I think" or "I believe." Take
| those as implied.
|
| Generally the stress of management is in coordinating various
| personalities and balancing competing priorities, while being
| on the hook for delivering results without having any direct
| impact on whether a project gets done to a high degree of
| quality. They rely on others' expertise, some of whine may not
| be that reliable, and it's stressful!
|
| Directors and VPs have that stress plus they are more directly
| accountable to financial results. However, they have to be
| cheerful and optimistic and never show weakness or worry to an
| almost psychopathic degree. This may look like a good work/life
| balance externally but internally "work brain" and the weight
| of stress are relentless. The bad ones sublimate stress and
| occasionally explode and yell at their subordinates.
|
| To engineers none of this looks like "work" because none of it
| produces concrete results. (I haven't mentioned the endless
| word docs to read and write, and the spreadsheets, oh god the
| endless spreadsheets.) But it does accumulate a lot of stress
| and anxiety.
|
| On the vacation side of things, seriously, take a vacation! It
| will be okay!
| cdavid wrote:
| As a manager of managers, I can confirm this is a fairly
| accurate of my job, in some aspects at least. The lack of
| concrete results is maybe the most frustrating as a former
| engineer (it is like your compilation cycles takes months if
| not quarters).
| bertr4nd wrote:
| This makes a huge amount of sense. I hadn't considered how
| high level managers really can't afford to project their
| stress publicly (bad for morale!) so I'm probably seeing an
| extremely airbrushed picture of their lives.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yes, + they have to make impossible choices. There's a
| product right now at work we're debating killing and the
| decision literally comes down to evaluating whether losing
| an important organizational partnership or taking a
| reputation hit would be worse for the company. There's not
| a right answer; that's just fortune telling and having to
| own the results.
| jghn wrote:
| Fwiw I've spent the past few years pondering going back to
| being an IC to reduce stress. There's probably a grass is
| greener effect here.
|
| It's interesting though. I do put in fewer hours as a manager.
| At the same time as I've progressed up the management ladder my
| anxiety levels have followed. Quality of life has suffered.
| I've learned to live with near constant stress headaches,
| frequent jaw pain, and a host of other issues.
| danrocks wrote:
| > Fwiw I've spent the past few years pondering going back to
| being an IC to reduce stress. There's probably a grass is
| greener effect here.
|
| If you are a good manager now, you will let it transpire in
| your IC work and you will eventually be asked to step back
| into a manager role, because the team asked so.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| It's different depending on the company. I've seen companies
| that can have very technical managers and this is good. I've
| also seen companies where managers like to play engineer, but
| badly. They don't relegate until it's a problem and may or may
| not focus on correcting design issues.
|
| I have had to say in a meeting. Stop engineering the product
| and have the engineers handle the development life cycle.
|
| Regardless, life won't change just because the duties do. You
| have to make time off happen. The market is so starved for
| talent you can go somewhere else over night.
| danrocks wrote:
| I am a manager of managers.
|
| Haven't taken any vacations of more than 5 days since 2011.
|
| Constantly worry about my technical skills becoming obsolete -
| hence I have to do coding on the side.
|
| Constantly worry about whether my managers will practice what I
| preach (kindness, coaching, caring, etc.) with their team.
|
| Constantly worry about multiple deadlines for multiple
| projects, all under my responsibility but not direct control
| (I'm not a direct manager).
|
| Hire 10-15 people at a time, campaign for some of them, they
| disappoint, become a burden for others and risk destroying the
| team - have to worry about that as well.
|
| Get an e-mail at 10pm on a Friday that your best developer has
| been hired by Google at 2x the pay and there's nothing I can do
| about it. Another e-mail at Monday 11am saying that your worst
| developer has ALSO been hired by Google at 2x the pay. Spend
| 24/7/365 on how to prevent your entire team from jumping ship
| because of pay I cannot match.
|
| Worry about managing up, sideways, down, and in the fourth
| dimension as well.
|
| Kill to just be a developer, step back into IC role. Do well,
| less stress, gets asked to become a manager again because the
| previous 3 have been a disaster and the team elected you.
|
| Go back to #1, rinse, repeat.
| aliswe wrote:
| if you are managing managers, they should be taking the
| responsibilty of the operations (if even them!) - not you.
|
| you should only touch your own buttons, not others', and
| whats outside of that is not your (id like to say problem,
| but thats not correct) fault.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| If you think of it, a large part of the stress is really need
| not needed ( some of it will be always there) if there is a
| collective will of the management. It's largely the
| management to blame, not the role.
| baskethead wrote:
| You should also join Google as an IC. Sounds like you would
| be much happier.
| ipnon wrote:
| The corollary is it's easy to earn favor with your manager by
| borrowing tasks from them. They always have too much to do.
| danrocks wrote:
| In general, yes. I sleep a tiny bit better when someone
| takes something over from me. If they complete that well, I
| will go to bat for them to get them recognized.
| forty wrote:
| Eventually, they die.
|
| Just like everyone else :)
| _nalply wrote:
| Option #5 -- The retired developer
|
| Developers can get jaded. If they are lucky and diligent, they
| might be able to retire early. After retirement they could
| continue programming in FOSS or private projects, if they love
| programming. This way they won't have to mollify annoying
| managers or customers and work around them. They won't need to
| participate in office politics, but of course if they work in
| FOSS projects they will continue to have to cope with politics,
| just different one. If they don't love programming, they could
| take up different hobbies or even start something completely
| different.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I now work as a manager. I used to be an IC.
|
| Without becoming a manager, an IC won't see the bigger picture
| and is more likely to feel like they're constantly being pushed
| around.
|
| Being a manager even just for a little while will give an IC a
| perspective that will allow them to negotiate better for
| themselves and their teams.
| nickjj wrote:
| I definitely wouldn't classify myself as the author's "super
| developer" but I fall inline with what he described it as.
|
| Isn't this just a case of someone being into what they're doing
| while continuously learning, applying and building things?
|
| I've been at this for ~20 years and every day I wake up, all I
| really think about is what to learn, apply and improve upon. This
| comes in the form of everything (coding, project planning /
| architecture, assisting other devs whenever I can, making videos,
| writing blog posts, running a podcast, etc.).
|
| Life would feel like torture if I couldn't do this and I know
| with absolute certainty I'll never go into management and I'll
| never stop what I'm doing until I'm dead. Money is really
| important but it doesn't drive me, otherwise I would have stopped
| doing most of the things on my list because none of them make any
| amount of money that's comparable to billable hours or a salary
| rate.
|
| At the same time I imagine there's lots of folks out there who go
| from developer to manager because that's what drives them and
| it's not because of money. I think those are the best types of
| managers. They know tech and how developers operate. They would
| be a welcome addition to any team.
| beardyw wrote:
| Now retired, but that is the only one which fitted me. Who
| knew? I never felt very super. I am still learning new stuff
| and coding for fun.
| g051051 wrote:
| > What if you never take that promotion?
|
| Flawed premise. Why does everyone assume it's a promotion?
|
| > For example, people often assume that any talented developer
| will end up becoming a manager.
|
| I assume the opposite (and it's been true the vast majority of
| times over a 30+ year career).
| b0rsuk wrote:
| > Flawed premise. Why does everyone assume it's a promotion?
|
| Most people understand raise in human hierarchy as a promotion.
| Few deal with increasingly difficult technical tasks on the
| daily basis.
| kohlerm wrote:
| What about 4. Become a Chief Architect, Product Architect, how
| ever you won't to call it, Usually guiding other architects,
| making strategic technical decisions.
| okareaman wrote:
| Let me put it this way: There is no love for old developers
| unless you are at the top like Anders Hejlsberg. Ageism is
| rampant in Silicon Valley. Older developers have some good
| qualities, like experience from fighting all the battles, and
| some bad qualities, like a resistance to moving out of
| technologies they are entrenched in. Younger developers offer
| companies more of a blank slate that can be molded, a willingness
| to spend long hours on technology that may not have much of a
| chance of succeeding (but there's a chance!) the stamina to put
| in long hours and less family obligations to worry about. I
| understand the preference for younger developers in the valley.
|
| My recommendation to developers turning 40 if they don't want to
| be a manager is to start your own business and be your own boss.
| It doesn't matter what it is, but that way you wont have to face
| an increasingly hostile hiring environment.
|
| Heck I've even thought about finding a young developer as a front
| and then writing all their code for them behind the scenes!
| aix1 wrote:
| I don't know if my experience is representative, but I'm well
| over 40 and haven't felt this one bit.
| okareaman wrote:
| I'm glad for you. If you Google "ageism in silicon valley"
| you might a feel for what some other people are experiencing.
| SnaKeZ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
| throway453sde wrote:
| Bad. Very bad. You may 50% more at the very best case at the cost
| of being tied to your current organization. The problem with
| manager job is there is no way to prove your individual value.
| This is very problematic during job switch.
| everdrive wrote:
| I've always wondered in these cases -- are we talking about a
| situation where "failure" means making less money than when you
| were 35, but by any objective measure still bringing in a very
| good paycheck? ie, Perhaps you used to make $170k, and now you
| "only" make $130k? Or are we talking about a situation where you
| get to a certain age and you literally can't find any work?
| pictur wrote:
| The company I work for has too many managers with insufficient
| technical knowledge. that means witnessing the absurd battles of
| egos. I don't want to be one of them. Management and technical
| architecture are very different concepts, but people don't
| understand that. I find that making someone with insufficient
| technical knowledge a manager often makes that person a bad
| manager.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Middle 50s programmer here.
|
| I'd say the author forgot 'Survivor'. It's possible to remain a
| higher-level programmer, just switching projects from time to
| time as your work ages out.
|
| Advice to the younger generation: About 25 years ago, a fellow
| programmer told me he was once in management, but switched back
| to programming. At the time, I though management was the logical
| career progression (an idea I no longer hold). I asked him why he
| left management. He replied "Because in management, they nip at
| you from the top and they nip at you from the bottom." Meaning
| that you still have a boss, but you also have underlings that
| want things from you. It was great advice.
| jcadam wrote:
| I've known several who did the same. I was an Army officer
| before I went into software development, and have little
| interest in being in charge of other people again. The only
| painful aspect of this is being subjected to the poor
| "leadership" of others - when you know you could do a better
| job of it. Which is also why the #1 thing that can keep me at a
| company these days is when I see it has good leadership. I know
| it's rare.
| marcinzm wrote:
| This article misses the most common path: technical leadership.
| That covers staff, principle, architect, tech lead and so on. You
| may be a specialist but hands on coding isn't your main
| contribution. You provide technical direction and guidance to a
| team, project or whole company. Pays very nicely at a large tech
| company.
| BrandonM wrote:
| I thought the same. For anyone seeking more info on those
| career tracks, https://staffeng.com/ is a great resource.
| izacus wrote:
| In huge majority of the companies those roles come with
| managing people as well, especially if the person wants to be
| compensated more over time.
| marcinzm wrote:
| That's not the case in large tech companies from what I've
| seen. And if you actually want money you should be aiming for
| those.
| BrandonM wrote:
| My 10-year path at a 4->400-person startup has been Lead
| Software Engineer -> Director of Infrastructure -> Principal
| Software Engineer. I'm making more total compensation today
| than ever, with no reports.
|
| I lead complicated initiatives and advise a lot of feature
| work. This means a lot of meetings, document-based
| collaboration, and process-oriented thinking. But I still
| program, and I don't feel accountable for others' work output
| or behavior or morale the way I did when I was a manager.
| s_Hogg wrote:
| They live happily ever after because that's perfectly possible
| without being a big wheel at the box factory, case closed.
| mr_tristan wrote:
| FWIW I found this book to be a better survey of ways an
| experienced dev can take their career: https://staffeng.com/book
|
| This article seems a little flippant. I've found very few
| "specialists", personally, or legacy coders. Most of the time
| experienced devs tend to become leads or architects. Sometimes
| leads do management, sometimes not.
|
| I've been an engineer for over 20 years now, and I'm definitely
| seeing more places defining very senior IC positions now than
| when I started. But I don't know it will ever be super
| consistent.
|
| Everything, such as where I work or my career trajectory, is
| quite fluid. I've realized and accepted as a more experienced
| dev, I am the one that has to lead the transition to, say,
| driving new product or technical directions instead of
| management. And I need to be at a place where I can make that
| happen. So far, that's never been a static, predictable
| situation; but largely because of how the business itself is. In
| the last 10 years, a major company event, such as an acquisition,
| or a major leadership change like the CEO quitting, completely
| shifted the dynamics of the org. Usually negatively. So, I read
| the tea leaves, see if I have any ability to drive good
| directions. When the answer has been no, I move on to the next
| one.
|
| Basically I'm seeing a lot of people expecting structure where
| there won't be. Nobody will pave a clear career trajectory for
| you after about a decade. So I find it's more important to ask
| "how can I negotiate what I want here" instead of "what title
| will I have".
| technotarek wrote:
| I'll offer a 5th -- a twist on the legacy developer that is the
| opposite of the described. On an enterprise app for a smaller
| business, you'll find that a legacy developer is one of few, if
| not the only, who fully understands the app, it's architecture
| from A to Z and the data model from top to bottom. Thus, they are
| incredibly valuable. In the right role, they continue to tinker
| without being a manager and more junior devs handle the rote.
| technotarek wrote:
| I'll add, in most cases I'm probably describing an app with
| incredible technical debt, but that's not at all unusual in the
| real world, especially in non tech industries.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| Managers control the money. They hire, they fire, the approve or
| disapprove promotions. That's _fundamentally_ more power than
| writing code. It would be nice to be able to ignore this, but
| things like paying for housing, paying for kids' education, etc
| means you can't really just put that aside.
|
| If you want to stay in a technical track, you need to offset your
| natural disadvantage here. You can't _just_ be writing code, you
| need to make sure you're actively -- and visibly! -- adding a lot
| of value as a tech lead. Even if you're not formally managing
| people, you're going to be coaching and mentoring engineers,
| because being able to tie your org's goals into a technical
| vision is the easy part -- the hard part is turning that vision
| into code that will be mostly written by not-you. And that's all
| people skills, involving people who do not report to you. IOW,
| there's still a lot of "management" work if you want to stay in
| the technical track.
|
| I recently did a stint in the management track but have gone back
| to the technical one because I get a lot out of technical work
| and found I need that to sustain me and give me energy. I found I
| can do the management part, and didn't even mind most of it, but
| it wasn't sustaining me -- an important consideration since,
| while I've been working for a while, I have a long while to work
| yet. But it did help clarify where I need to grow if I'm
| committed to staying "technical".
| lkrubner wrote:
| Another pattern I've seen is the software developer who is
| promoted to high level manager, but they remain focused on the
| work being done by the software developers. On this front they
| are very good: mentoring, teaching, removing obstacles. But
| part of their job is also to now form a better understanding of
| the other parts of the business: how does the work of the
| software developers overlap with that of the marketing team,
| the sales team, the operations team, the financial team, the
| inventory team, etc. These newly promoted managers don't seem
| to realize that their new authority means they must now focus
| on more than tech. I've known developers who get promoted to
| CTO, and they are loved by the software developers at the
| company, but they are hated by the CMO, CFO, CCO and
| eventually, after enough complaints, they are hated by the CEO,
| at which point they are fired.
|
| I write about this in some detail here:
|
| https://demodexio.substack.com/p/should-top-managers-focus-o...
|
| 'This CTO is loved by the software developers but disliked by
| their peers. The CMO feels unheard, the CFO thinks the CTO
| doesn't show enough concern for the budget, the Chief Content
| Officer (CCO) feels that their team is crippled because the CTO
| doesn't understand their publishing needs. Such moments can
| undermine the career of a CTO. I'm aware of at least one case
| where, 10 years after the situation arose, the CMO and CFO and
| COO, who had all moved on to new jobs at new companies, were
| still whispering rumors about the CTO. When the CTO applied for
| a new job, and the company asked his former peers what they
| thought of him, they were told "He is uncooperative, he is not
| a team player." So clearly, in that case, it would have been
| better for the CTO if he'd spent less time with his tech team,
| and more time with his C-level peers. Or rather, there must
| have been some particular moment in the growing history of the
| company when it would have been best for the CTO to switch his
| focus away from tech and towards his peers, but the CTO missed
| that moment, much to the irritation of his peers."
| bengold14 wrote:
| > They start their career at age 24 and, because they have a
| Master's degree, they skip over the long years in the
| trenches working as a computer programmer. Instead, their
| first job is often as CTO of some medium sized company.
|
| If this is actually in your book I would remove it. This
| totally destroys your credibility because:
|
| A. You're talking about a 7 person startup, not a "medium
| sized company" B. You're talking about the worst managed
| medium sized company I've ever heard of, where they would put
| a 24 y.o. masters student with no real world experience in
| charge of anyone. C. It's not a true anecdote
|
| Any of the above options lead me as a reader to think that
| either you don't have experience in the industry, have
| experience with poorly managed companies or are making up
| scenarios to fit your narrative
| karmakaze wrote:
| I'm not liking this limited number of options.
|
| > Option #1 - The Specialist
|
| I would say that I've been doing this my entire career in
| different specializations: T-shaped, Pi-shaped, TTT-shaped...
|
| > Option #2 - The Super Developer
|
| After accumulating knowledge in a number of specializations and
| contexts, environments, I'd say I'm about here now but want to
| change into something that's still not management.
|
| > Option #3 - The Legacy Developer
|
| I've been this at a number of companies where I've stayed 5+
| years.
|
| > Option #4 - The Career Switcher
|
| Not at all interesting, unless it's perhaps a startup with a co-
| founder and I'm the tech-side.
|
| The Option #5 that I'd like to get into is a tech mentor/advisor.
| You know how much better a movie is that has a 'is this accurate
| or dumb?' research person/team? Well, we need these roles filled
| in tech companies too. Working in one project has key moments
| where I can fill this role but then I'm then later a
| productive/super developer after the concepts and designs are
| sorted out. The later stage work can be filled by other sr devs.
| Reading a tech design proposal and asking good questions,
| exploring 2nd-order effects, or identifying scaling problems that
| could arise are the sorts of things I feel I provide the most
| value.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| those types of roles are not usually salaried, or at most, very
| early-stage CTO type positions that quickly ask you to name
| your less-expensive replacements
|
| you can more easily find that kind of work by offering
| consulting services and building/maintaining a network of
| entrepreneurs who stumble into those problems often enough to
| fill your schedule
|
| being #2 Super Developer long enough to get your name out there
| is a good first step into that world ;)
| est31 wrote:
| If you want to go into management, then why do you waste 10+
| years going from junior to senior to principal and so on until
| you finally get to manage your first small team? The people who
| went for management from the start would be way ahead of you
| then, no?
| lrem wrote:
| I work in Google and have seen distinguished engineers switch
| to management. They typically get a small number of direct
| reports, all of them directors.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| I wouldn't respect a manager who hadn't done the job itself.
| vincnetas wrote:
| if manager knows how to code he will try code using your
| hands. aka micromanaging. you will get comments like "well
| just add an 'IF' here and case closed". you don't want
| manager like this.
| djmips wrote:
| That's malarkey. It may happen that way but it's certainly
| not common in my experience.
| thesumofall wrote:
| Some of the better managers I've seen had no background
| whatsoever in the field they were managing. But they were
| great at listening, working with people, managing conflicting
| interests, and taking decisions after consideration of
| relevant input
| Aeolun wrote:
| Because you end up being much more effective if you know what
| you are doing?
|
| Managing a team of developers without any idea how to do the
| work is a disaster.
|
| Of course, having some experience doesn't guarantee you'll be
| an effective manager, but without it you're almost guaranteed
| to fail.
| danbruc wrote:
| So am I guaranteed to fail at developing a platform for
| selling used cars if I have never worked as a used car
| salesman and have no idea how they work? Of course not, I am
| supposed to acquire the necessary understanding by talking to
| users and subject matter experts. I think the same holds for
| managers, you can understand and manage a software
| development process without having been a developer. Does
| experience help, could former used car salesman develop the
| platform better, could former developers manage the team
| better? Sure, but only if they are also good in their current
| role, if they are good developers or a good manager. And
| being good in your current role comes first, having
| experience in the field you are writing software for or that
| you are managing is an added bonus.
| marcinzm wrote:
| That's only the case if the manager meddles in technology and
| doesn't know how to delegate properly (or hire properly). I
| would say a manager who does those things is inherently a
| manager who can't scale and is unlikely to ever work well
| with senior technical people.
|
| As a manager my goal is to use as little of my technical
| knowledge as possible but rather to let my senior technical
| leaders do that part instead. I've got so many other things
| to handle and deal with that being technical except at a high
| level seems silly.
| vp8989 wrote:
| "I've got so many other things to handle and deal with that
| being technical except at a high level seems silly."
|
| Like what?
| marcinzm wrote:
| I probably missed some but a general overview:
|
| - Helping figure out the right goals and metrics for the
| team and ensuring everyone is on the same page.
|
| - Holding 1-on-1s with team members, non-technical
| feedback and yearly reviews. Seriously, yearly reviews
| are a massive time sink if you actually care and spend
| time on them.
|
| - Passing around information to the team and making sure
| they are involved in the right meeting/conversations.
|
| - Attending various management meetings that usually
| could be replaced with a wiki page.
|
| - Resolving non-technical issues my team members are
| having. This includes listening to venting sessions,
| complaints and general bitching. Need to handle these
| situations in a diplomatic non-judgemental way.
|
| - Keep track of team non-technical blockers (people,
| process, etc.) and try to resolve them (short or long
| term). This includes resolving product management issues
| and other teams blocking my team.
|
| - Keeping stakeholders close and happy
|
| - Selling the team, it's vision and achievements broadly
|
| - Hiring
|
| - Planning team promotions and executing on those plans.
| This includes telling your team members what they need to
| do to get promoted and then ensuring those promotions
| happen.
|
| - Non-toxic (or toxic depending on the company) politics
|
| - Talking to random people in the company for networking.
| It's amazing how much people from HR will tell you if you
| are friendly and get coffee with them.
| djmips wrote:
| Sounds like a lot of useful stuff but you'd still be
| better if you were more technically knowledgeable.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I am and like I said I'm actively trying to not leverage
| that skillset. I'm not in the weeds anymore and I cannot
| be due to the other things I'm responsible for. Someone
| making technical decisions who used to be an expert,
| isn't an expert anymore but can override decisions is a
| horrible mix.
| Aeolun wrote:
| There's exceptions to any rule. So far working for
| nontechnical managers has been invariably exhausting. I
| don't doubt that managers exist where this isn't true.
|
| Even if they trust me to provide them with estimates (and
| they understand that 9 women cannot have a baby in a
| month). I have to spend a lot of time just constantly
| communicating the information they need, and why certain
| things need to happen so they can tell (and satisfy) their
| stakeholders.
| marcinzm wrote:
| In most places I've seen it's the non-technical PMs that
| deal with stakeholders so having a technical manager
| doesn't help that much except as an escalation point. And
| more broadly I feel if you're having to explain technical
| information to stakeholders then you've failed in much
| deeper ways. The person handling them should have built a
| good reputation of trust and provided good communication
| on what stakeholders really value. Very rarely have I
| seen them to really value technical details but rather
| ask for them when they simply don't trust the team
| anymore.
| darkwater wrote:
| I still don't buy this. You talk about scaling the team:
| how can a manager says to HR "I need N new hires in 2022
| because we have projects X Y and Z" if you don't have the
| technical knowledge and experience to know how complicated
| those projects can be? How are you going to protect your
| team from extra work or starting a stupid project if you
| cannot recognize it? Those are tech skills and a good
| manager must have them.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I'm very confused, is your team made of nothing but
| juniors? Or are senior engineers not trusted at all? I
| simply ask my tech leads and senior engineers to give me
| an estimate. Then I trust them.
|
| In my experience engineers hate it when an out of touch
| manager makes an estimate on their behalf and then they
| are forced to do crunch time to meet it.
|
| edit: Also most projects come via the PM who would
| coordinate with the tech leads directly for planning and
| scoping.
| darkwater wrote:
| Obviously you ask the team but many times you might be in
| some meeting and it's just you because you don't want to
| drag an engineer in yet another meeting... isn't what
| they all hate? I don't really see technical knowledge in
| an engineering manager as a bad thing, really.
| marcinzm wrote:
| There should be a process for project planning other than
| "a manager was in a meeting and agreed to it." That
| process should not require people to show up in meetings.
|
| This brings up my overall view that being technical can
| often make a manager take short term shortcuts. That
| works right until it no longer does and then you have a
| broken team and culture and processes. Not thinking
| technically means you are forced to implement good long
| term processes and not keep monkey patching things. For
| example, if the managers keeps making these decisions in
| meetings then senior engineers will wonder how they can
| have their voice heard except by going into management.
| VLM wrote:
| If your technical knowledge is 20 years out of date, as an
| individual contributor you can't be hired although worst case
| you can't do much damage. On the other hand if your technical
| knowledge is 20 years out of date, then its much safer for
| the company to put you in charge of direction and goal
| setting and hiring decisions and so forth.
|
| A Visual Basic 6 programmer "can't" be hired to program in
| Javascript, although its the same people and skills 25 years
| apart. However put that VB6 programmer in a management role
| and somehow that completely obsolete technical skillset is
| "invaluable", LOL.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yes, because from a business standpoint, you should care
| where your product is going to be after 20 years, and the
| VB6 programmer knows that eventually JS might not be a
| thing and will think of architecture decisions like 'we'll
| have to transition this to another language, how should we
| make that process easier?'
|
| Likewise, some lessons transfer. "Huh, that time we were
| working on Thing X and relying solely on Bob's
| technological expertise we were completely screwed and the
| company went under after after Bob had an aneurysm, I
| should make sure there are no single points of failure on
| the team knowledge wise."
|
| Or "Man, we built such a beautiful Visual Basic 6 program,
| but the interface was so bad nobody used it and we failed.
| Let's make sure our front end and back end people are
| communicating properly." Or, "This was the most elegant
| technical solution, but then it turned out nobody had the
| resources to run it. So let's make sure to do our user
| testing and make sure we're designing appropriately."
| oakfr wrote:
| Indeed. Also, you have plenty of time do to both. Start as an
| engineer at 22, write code for 15 years. Switch to management
| at 37. That still leaves you with 15+ years to climb the
| career ladder.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Please stop the madness !
|
| there is only one distinction that matters - do you own a budget?
| In other words has the company give you at least 10x your own
| salary to spend on your signature alone? If not you are not a
| manager, no matter your job title (including Project Managers!)
|
| Everyone else is a work for hire.
|
| Is it the best way of arranging things? Hell no. My bet is voting
| on projects to be funded by the the employees will be
| transformative
|
| And if we clarify things like that, other things become easier -
| why should a manager be the arbiter of technical decisions? They
| should not - it's like hiring a dog and barking yourself.
|
| Hire people, be clear in the outcomes do not confuse operations
| and development and release often.
| cyb_ wrote:
| I've never seen this to be true in any of the mature, publicly
| traded companies that I have worked at. It also seems like poor
| corporate governance to let someone spend millions without
| proper review. Consider the opportunities for fraud, waste,
| embezzlement, scams, etc.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am not sure I understand.
|
| At mature public companies there are people with sign off on
| millions and often billions of spend. Choice between this
| supplier or that? Between a factory in Vietnam or Ohio? 100
| Million on the nose and his / her signature is the final
| decision.
|
| There is obviously auditors to catch the worst corruption and
| a process as to how a decision gets made (usually with an eye
| on the auditors) but yes. It's that person who makes the
| call.
|
| Do they do it on a whim ? Unlikely but do they also give a
| monkeys what the devlead on the third floor thinks?
| rightbyte wrote:
| How would making decisions by committees lead to more scams
| or fraud then one man decisions?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| On the corruption front ... hell yes! Ok there is rarely the
| envelope of tenners dropped on the desk, but tell me, if the
| SVP with millions to spend on a supplier happens to serve on
| the board of the Gotham Orphanage alongside the CEO of a
| major supplier, is that corruption ? What about the
| understanding they have of "working together in the future"?
| And the nice directorship waiting on the suppliers board ?
|
| We live in a world where Air Force Generals join boards of
| air plane manufacturers, so a quiet understanding between
| suppliers and buyers will easily pass muster. Is it
| corruption ?
| dasloop wrote:
| What happens to [pilots,doctors,actors...] who never go into
| management?
| rootbear wrote:
| Pilots retire at the mandatory retirement age of 65, which a
| friend of mine will do next year. He'd rather keep flying and I
| imagine his employer would prefer that too, given the pilot
| shortage. But he will also admit that the job his harder on him
| now than it was when he was 25, so the rule arguably makes
| sense.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Don't know about pilots, but I'd think doctors and actors are
| near the extreme ends of the age discrimination spectrum. Ie.
| being an old doctor makes you credible, being an old actor (or
| especially actress) severely impinges on your options and
| expectations. Being an old developer is probably somewhere in
| between.
| djmips wrote:
| Pilots are closer to doctors and as long as they pass
| physical, they wear their hours like a badge of honor.
| threatofrain wrote:
| AFAIK, medicine is a special profession in that the
| practitioners are often interest owners.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Unfortunately in many places of the US this is starting to
| change. Companies like Advent Health (used to be Florida
| Hospital) have been seizing control of medical practices from
| the doctors.
|
| The common scheme is to offer logistical support (dealing
| with paperwork, IT, etc) in exchange for joining under their
| umbrella (with the implicit or sometimes not so implicit
| promise that otherwise they exert no influence over the
| operation of the practice). Then after a few months to a year
| they start making sweeping changes restricting what patients
| the doctor is allowed to see, what treatments they are
| allowed to provide or suggest, how much they can charge, and
| where they are allowed to see or treat their patients.
| Essentially resting any autonomy the doctors had over their
| practice.
|
| This is what happened to our PCP and many other doctors in
| Florida. They were given an ultimatum and any patients who
| didn't fit the profile Advent had selected for them were
| forced to leave them for some other doctor.
|
| Nowadays the only doctors with any "real" autonomy are
| surgeons and even then the actual autonomy they have is being
| increasingly encroached upon.
|
| I'm not sure how common this is in other regions but at least
| in Florida it is becoming increasingly difficult to find
| Doctors who haven't been effectively tricked into forfeiting
| control of their practices and reduced to employees for large
| corporations.
| VLM wrote:
| SaaS and outsourcing your core competencies always ends up
| like that, not strictly a medical industry problem.
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| Barely any mention of contracting outside of "the crusty old
| legacy developer"?
|
| That's pretty much the #1 route for people I know, get out of the
| full time lackey game and chill.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| In my experience (from Europe), contractors are more of a
| lackeys, because they are worried about their contracts
| extensions. So, in practice, they try much harder. The only
| good part about being a contractor (except the usually much
| larger pay) is the fact that you're invisible to HR and their
| games. No yearly reviews, no development plans, no promotions -
| you just negotiate your rate with your hiring manager without
| all the charades.
| cardosof wrote:
| Maybe that's an EU thing? In the US it's almost as easy
| firing an employee as firing a contractor.
| max002 wrote:
| Yes, in EUrope its much harder to fire employ than
| contractor. In some countries you need stuff like 3 written
| warnings and so on
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I do not recognize your parents experience in the EU, but
| yes, here employees are very protected while contractors
| are not. Still, outside the certainly of employment, even
| in the EU, I know only positives when contracting. Things
| like tax and insurance optimizing you cannot really do as
| employee and now with WFH, it is possible to optimize even
| more. And if you have a trackrecord, it is easy to get
| other projects. Note: I am getting close to 50y/old.
|
| Edit; another thing which you can do as contractor and
| typically not as employee, is take retainers. When a
| project is done and the company does not need me anymore,
| they can retain me for n hours per months that I will spend
| on that project no matter what else I am doing; and they
| pay no matter if they use the hours or not. Similar is, and
| I have done that too, an SLA on the project you helped
| deliver. But that is far more dangerous as others might
| have continued working on it, so I don't do that anymore.
| [deleted]
| max002 wrote:
| I dont (try much harder) :) and as you said, i keep bumping
| the rates after some time and work is done and customers are
| happy. No agile meetings (those extras that are not really in
| agile apirit, but managers think they are :D). I get to work
| on what i wqnt and when i want. Its fun, but as dev you
| should be full stack for it or have someone ready to come in
| when you hit the wall while configuring servers or needing to
| use some tech that you'd need to learn and its no time/place
| for learning.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > I dont (try much harder) :)
|
| Perhaps you don't notice how little the full-time people
| are trying :) It's not hard to try harder than them.
|
| BTW now I'm curious. It sounds to me like you're talking
| about very different contracting that I am? I have never
| seen a larger company allow contractors to skip the agile
| ceremonies. They're always treated exactly as an employee
| in this regard - they're basically "temporary" augmentation
| of the staff, because company is not able to hire enough
| permanent people. (BTW this "permanent" state usually
| extends into years of staying at that company). Is this the
| kind of contracting you do, or do you do something else?
| mdpye wrote:
| In the UK, and I think the rest of Europe, things like
| tax have recently been changing to strongly discourage
| this. Contractors now have to be hired for specific
| projects with identified goals and deliverables or the
| whole thing starts to get unattractive expensive.
|
| Of course, it's all paperwork that can be bullshitted,
| but it's had at least some effect in my experience.
| kortilla wrote:
| You're describing people contracted to be an employee.
| Basically just hours with no specific deliverables.
|
| GP is describing people contracted to deliver a
| product/service.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Who hires such contractors? All the major companies have
| their own tech departments and write software in-house
| (or outsource it whole-sale to giants like TCS). That
| mostly leaves smaller non-tech companies. Do they have
| the money to pay a competitive rate?
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| This sounds like basically just having an employee but
| with different legal standing as a loophole or something.
|
| Contracting is completely different, you generally define
| a set project to complete, do it, and get out.
|
| In the UK there's something valled IR35 which means that
| in order for you to be considered an independent entity
| for tax purposes you should have full control over
| working hours, practices, etc.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Is the IR35 really having the intended effect? I've
| contracted in the UK pre-IR35, and I was essentially just
| an employee who paid much lower taxes (and was easier to
| fire, didn't have paid vacation etc.). I've met lots of
| people who contracted exactly the same way. Is it really
| different now?
| yosito wrote:
| > they may take peripheral jobs as consultants, verifying
| products rather than creating them
|
| What does "verifying products" mean?
| momirlan wrote:
| Quite common: developer->designer->architect Variations: solution
| architect, data architect, strategist And of course:
| permanent->contract->entrepreneur
| juancn wrote:
| Technical leaders do exist and mentoring is a huge part of it,
| you need to figure out a way to be a multiplier, without being a
| manager.
|
| If you want more money, you need to have more impact, but there
| are so many hours in a day, so you need to delegate, help others
| grow and look for large scale patterns that are easier to see
| with experience.
|
| If you do code, you must choose wisely what's the best use of
| your time, sometimes you do what nobody else dares to (take
| calculated risks), small interventions to teach and speed up a
| project, or just plain do what needs to be done (even if it's
| boring as fuck) to let others grow and add value.
|
| You also need to develop a good working relationship with other
| leaders (technical and otherwise). It's imperative that they
| trust you, so your integrity must be beyond reproach. Understand
| their goals and objectives and help get the company to a better
| place.
|
| In many cases, leading is a lot about emotions, people get
| scared/nervous when facing uncertain situations (think production
| incidents, external threats, etc.), it's in these situations that
| you need to be a reassuring presence, using your technical skills
| to break down a problem and give clear steps and criteria to
| attack whatever issue is at hand. Be calm and focus on the
| objective reality as much as possible. Give clear instructions
| and lean on more managerial roles to help track down tasks and
| deal with minutia.
|
| In all, I think a technical career starts with focus on the
| technical stuff, the science and technology, but as the problems
| become larger and more challenging, you need to start to pay
| attention to the people side of it, software is a team sport
| after all.
| Fissionary wrote:
| > Christopher McCandless of Into the Wild fame once said that
| "careers are an invention of the 20th century"
|
| As an aside, careers (for public officials, at least) have
| existed since Ancient Rome:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Yeah I'm not sure about quoting Christopher McCandless so
| much... I was fascinated by him as well but end of the day he
| was a super young dude who decided to go into the wild with
| insufficient preparation, on purpose, and died of hunger. It is
| what it is. He never amounted to become Yoda or Ghandi or
| anything that we should be so comfortable in quoting him.
| claviska wrote:
| Depends on what you consider management. A people manager is a
| different set of skills than a product manager or tech lead, for
| example.
|
| It also depends on the company. Some orgs let you level up past
| senior to principal/staff/partner without becoming a manager.
| Others reserve those titles for leadership roles.
|
| In my org, there are seniors who are old and gray happily
| cranking out code and having fun with their job. They're clearly
| happy not stepping into the realm of management, because they're
| still well-compensated and their stress levels are low without
| the added responsibility.
|
| Your career is what you make it. I'd suggest focusing on what
| _you_ want to do, as long as you're content with your position.
| makach wrote:
| We go into security
| zerr wrote:
| What happens to carpenters who never go into barbery?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well the carpenters get better and better at carpentry and
| raise their prices each year because there isn't any
| significant changes in the technology of carpentry at least
| once a decade making carpentry skills obsolete in the eyes of
| the marketplace.
| djmips wrote:
| Shoulda been a carpenter...
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > because there isn't any significant changes in the
| technology of carpentry at least once a decade making
| carpentry skills obsolete in the eyes of the marketplace
|
| That's a bit extreme I think. Tech changes yes. But let's say
| you were a a C#/C++/Java/Python/Ruby dev 10 years ago - how
| bad has it all changed in the last 10 years that your entire
| experience is somehow nullified? I'm not denying that some
| higher-ups like to adopt this line of thinking to justify
| hiring cheap juniors. Self respecting engineering companies
| don't really buy this bull.
| teambob wrote:
| I ended up finding "architect" is the role I enjoy. Still very
| technical but involves talking to people (I have always been a
| slight expert).
|
| It also suits my "management" style which I learned with
| volunteers, instead of workers
| ozzythecat wrote:
| > What if you never take that promotion?
|
| It's not a promotion. It's an entirely different job. You now
| manage people, influence and have control over their careers,
| performance management, as well as obviously working budgets,
| roadmap, etc.
|
| In my opinion, it's a downgrade. I've found few managers in my
| career to be effective leaders. Most of my managers relied on the
| senior engineers to essentially drive the roadmap, do the
| estimates, lead design, break down the work, delegate, and lead
| the implementation.
|
| This is generally the trend I see at Amazon at least. The
| managers who are good are extremely driven and dive super deep
| into the tech, while showing humility and empathy. They grow
| their people, get them the right opportunities, and are people
| you want to be around.
|
| But there are waaaayyy too many managers who simply can't cut it
| as engineers and switch from the engineering path to manager
| path. These folks actually add very little value.
|
| Actually the best managers I've worked with are all former
| engineers who didn't want to become managers but took on the role
| because they knew they could fulfill the need.
| nojito wrote:
| >Most of my managers relied on the senior engineers to
| essentially drive the roadmap, do the estimates, lead design,
| break down the work, delegate, and lead the implementation.
|
| You mean they were good managers who know how to bring out the
| best out of their engineers?
|
| Some of the best managers out there today can't code out of a
| wet paper bag and yet generate billions of value for their
| companies.
| bufordtwain wrote:
| From my experience so far, you can keep plodding along as a
| regular developer as you get older. Your salary will plateau
| eventually. The plateau is high relative to most other jobs.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| My dad is in his late 60's and still working as a programmer.
|
| He works from home, more or less at his own convenience.
|
| Zero interest in retiring.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| How does he feel cognitively?
| jamil7 wrote:
| Not OP and anecdata but our CTO is in his 60s and contributes
| a lot of code to a fairly modern stack, he doesn't appear to
| have any trouble keeping up.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Not really sure how to answer that. He's obviously slower
| than he used to be, but can still do the job.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| My father (not a programmer, but an administrative clerk)
| would say that he's slower but he can instead rely on
| experience more.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| I'd love to program until I am in my 70's (if programming
| still exists) this is why I ask.
| dasloop wrote:
| And irrelevant to the conversation unless managers are
| better protected for cognitive loss (I doubt it) or
| managers requires less cognitive load (I doubt that too,
| but you can make a joke about that :)
| pawelmurias wrote:
| It's none obvious that various cognitive skills (and the
| amount of energy/motivations) decline at the same rates
| and that managing and programming requires the same
| skills.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| People taking offense at this and kneejerk downvoting (or
| making ridiculous "NO U" comments): chill the fuck out. It's
| just a question. This is a legitimate thing to discuss.
|
| I feel that my cognitive peak is already way behind me and
| I'm 35. 25 felt like my golden age of creativity and
| cognitive performance: no longer the erratic bullshit of the
| coming of age teenage years, no responsibilities, a job with
| loads of freedom. Such a contrast from my life now at 35 with
| kids, where I still love my job but must actively pace my
| expenditure of mental capacity to avoid crash and burn.
|
| I want to hear from people how they feel cognitively in their
| 60s. How is it when kids leave home? How is it when you trade
| agility for experience? I want to know what it's like, as it
| is inevitable and real, in my own experience, to lose brain
| power as I age.
| nix23 wrote:
| WOW, what a question....most probably better then you, when
| reading your comment.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| I generally don't answer to random trolls, but if you want
| to understand the intention of this question, read my other
| comments.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In today's software industry, I've found that older technical
| specialists aren't particularly welcomed; regardless of their
| ability or skills. Just being older is enough. If they have a
| significant reputation, or long-term employment at a single
| place, prospects are better.
|
| I was a manager, in addition to being a technical specialist, for
| a long time. It was a fairly small, highly-skilled team. As time
| went on, my management duties replaced my technical ones, and I
| was forced to do technical work on the side (open source work),
| in order to maintain my technical edge. This resulted in my
| having a fairly significant technical portfolio, by the time I
| left my job.
|
| I have encountered very few good managers, in my career. I have
| seen some great technicians destroyed by becoming managers.
|
| I think the industry's refusal to cultivate lifetime technical
| careers has resulted in a lot of problems, but it is not anything
| that has been studied, in any meaningful way (of which I'm
| aware). I only have personal anecdata, which, by itself, isn't
| particularly relevant, in the big picture.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Simple problem:
|
| Developers want more money for more experience.
|
| At a certain point, more experience does not make them more
| effective developers.
|
| If they want to justify higher salaries, but can not be more
| effective on their own, they need to multiply their experience
| by making other developers more effective.
|
| The organizational problem is that most companies see
| management as the only way to do that, but not everyone can and
| likes to be a manager.
|
| We as developers have to make sure we promote mentoring, tool
| and framework building, system architecture and such topics as
| viable paths upward. Otherwise, managers will only have
| managing as an idea of how someone can create more value.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| In the early years of my career I was the hot-shot developer
| that outproduced everyone. It was fun, but ultimately
| unrewarding. Some people don't mind but most people dislike
| others who are conspicuously better/faster than them. In a
| "team sport" like development, this was a bad strategy.
|
| Now the analogy I like to use is a rising tide raises all
| ships. Instead of being the individual hot-shot I do
| everything I can to make everyone else a hot-shot. If they
| are talking in a meeting and I think a nudge needs to be
| made, I just 1:1 message them with a tip and then let them
| say it instead of speaking up. I do more training of juniors
| and even seniors, teaching devs how to think through complex
| problems. Now my teams are more productive, most of the
| people like me and want to be working with me, and my income
| has skyrocketed as a result. Of course, I did have to escape
| from traditional office hierarchies and go into consulting to
| really increase the $.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I agree with one caveat: the degree to which more experience
| means more productive depends to a large extent on two
| factors:
|
| 1) The experience. 2) The job.
|
| Having 10 years hacking on one system probably won't make you
| anymore productive than 3. At that point you're a factory
| worker, and you can't only put so much expertise into
| flipping a few switches and following traces.
|
| However, having 20 years of diverse technical experience will
| make you more productive than 15 if the job requires the
| breadth you've developed.
|
| I'm 12 years in and have moved into Startups for just that
| reason. You get to learn more numerous things, and you get to
| use all of them. I've been at my current job 6 months and
| I've worked with 4 languages, more libraries than I can
| count, 2 third parties, blah blah blah. If I went back in
| time even 3 years of experience, I would definitely be less
| effective. If I went back 5, I'd be struggling.
| base698 wrote:
| Often said as, you can have 10 years of experience or 10
| one year experiences.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I work for a small company, and one of the things I enjoy
| is we're always spinning up new ideas to see if they work.
| We tend to spend half time on new stuff and half time on
| maintenance.
|
| This has given me a lot of exposure to different things
| over the years. It's mostly web stuff, but one of the more
| interesting ones was interfacing with hardware for a
| warehouse app that we built to make the shipping process
| less error prone and more efficient.
| mcgooiggy wrote:
| I took an alternative approach, I was living in london, so I
| moved to Portugal. a remote London Dev contracting, and the
| wage is more than enough over here
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Excellent point.
|
| Training and mentoring are extremely important.
|
| Last night, I had dinner with a friend of mine, who is a
| former Marine. He told me that the "best of the best" become
| DIs (Drill Instructors). He had tremendous respect for his
| DIs, and described them as "almost superhuman."
|
| DIs are always noncoms, but tend to be highly experienced.
| They are also good trainers. Being a good trainer is a fairly
| specialized skillset, and many techs aren't able to adapt to
| that, either.
|
| In my case, money has never been the point. I'm a high school
| dropout, with a GED, and never really got paid as much as
| even many entry-level kids are, these days. Nonetheless, I
| lived frugally and sensibly, and have been able to survive
| being tossed out into the trash. Many of my peers do not have
| that capability.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I wonder if the lack of cultivation is partially due to
| mismatched incentives: It's often impossible to be a successful
| manager without embedding yourself in a particular social
| network and organizational culture; making management the
| 'reward' for a good developer means that the good developers
| can be, for lack of a better term, brainwashed into corporate
| culture.
|
| Older and more experienced technical specialists are more of a
| threat. Cultivating those people would mean giving them
| mentorship and resources, and older tech specialists are the
| population that's most likely to be a.) able to leave/have
| transferrable skills/not be as reliant on the companies as the
| managers, b.) old enough to stand up for their juniors - can't
| have someone on the team telling them NOT to work 14 hour
| days/killing themselves grinding to work at FAANG, and c.)
| they're most likely to have the organizational and long-term
| thinking/architectural skills to compete.
|
| Cultivating older technical specialists could be seen, by tech
| execs, as training in and investing in their own competition.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The team that I ran was composed of experienced C++
| developers, working on image processing pipeline stuff
| (propellor-beanie territory). They also weren't being paid
| particularly well, compared to what they could have gotten at
| other places.
|
| As a manager, it was my job to retain them; which I did
| -quite well. I did this via a combination of maintaining my
| own technical prowess (on my own time, as my company was _no
| support at all_ on this), empowering my employees, staying
| out of their hair, learning the individual drivers of each of
| my team members, not nickle-and-dimeing them, supporting
| their training and personal /career development, and not
| playing political games. I never lied to them, and used
| carrots far more often than sticks. I also -very importantly-
| shielded them from a rather rapacious HR department, and
| terrible upper-level management.
|
| I didn't give a damn about whether or not they wanted to
| replace me (I don't think it ever crossed their minds).
|
| Basically, I became the manager that I always wished I had.
| jleyank wrote:
| Are you in it for the hacking, or for the results, or the money,
| or the power? Do you want to talk about and facilitate work, or
| do the work?
|
| Somebody has to design, write and most importantly debug the
| work. You can do it with a number of good people, a herd of cats
| or some mixture of the two. If you assume the head shed exists to
| keep the company alive, every other manager exists to enable the
| "doing the work" people to operate without interruption.
| dmclamb wrote:
| Transition to information security. A challenging career that may
| pay well.
| stevenalowe wrote:
| They live happily ever after
| mastersip wrote:
| I DISAGREE.
|
| PLEASE LET US NOT GENERALIZE ALL DEVELOPERS INTO JUST 4 TYPES.
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