[HN Gopher] Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, D...
___________________________________________________________________
Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP
(2015)
Author : AnhTho_FR
Score : 371 points
Date : 2025-03-21 10:49 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kellblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kellblog.com)
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "It's like saying with $3.65 I can buy either a grande non-fat
| latte or a head of organic lettuce"_
|
| Ah, 2015.
| apwell23 wrote:
| i smiled at that too. miss those innocent times.
| xandrius wrote:
| Is it innocent because prices seem cheaper to us today?
| lifty wrote:
| Find a better unit to report your costs in. Like hours of
| work, or any other hard asset (real estate, gold, bitcoin
| etc.). Otherwise you are bound to be disappointed every year.
| oez wrote:
| I would like to know your definition of a hard asset if you
| consider bitcoin one.
| lifty wrote:
| Indeed I haven't used that term correctly. What I meant,
| is some kind of asset that is not easily inflated,
| something that in the long term can retain its exchange
| value better. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and
| especially with bitcoin, it super volatile. But you have
| a better chance of judging your purchase power based on
| that.
| hnb2137 wrote:
| How many Big Macs?
| Thrymr wrote:
| or grande non-fat lattes?
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| It is a good read. It is early so I can't help wondering if I am
| nodding, because it hits close to home or coffee did not hit yet,
| but I think I agree with the author here.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's an interesting read an hard to disagree with.
|
| More interesting perhaps for the typical employee is how they
| would get to such a position, starting in a junior position.
|
| One key advice here is to stop behaving like an employee. By
| that I mean to start reflecting on what it is you are doing,
| what you are being asked to do, why you are being asked to do,
| etc. Apply some critical thinking. Ask questions if you don't
| understand something. Not to be obnoxious but to educate
| yourself. What would you do if you were in charge? Try to come
| up with ideas on how to your work better. Try to do those
| things. Get feedback on how you are doing. This is not about
| seeking conflict but simply seeking understanding and more
| control over what it is you do. You can't hope to manage others
| if you can't manage yourself.
|
| Once you are in control of what you do, the rest comes
| naturally. Whether that's via promotions, new jobs, or starting
| your own business. It all starts with challenging the notion
| that you are just there to do whatever it is you are told to
| do. That's what employees do.
|
| Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with being a good
| employee. Good, loyal employees are great to have. If you run a
| team, company or whatever, you need those to get stuff done.
| But they'll never run things for you. That's your job. And
| having too many captains on the ship is also not great. Good to
| reflect on the next time you have a work conflict. It's not
| always about being right.
|
| Employees are mostly just reacting to inputs around them (from
| their boss, colleagues, whatever) but rarely act pro-actively.
| Reacting pro-actively, without being told, is the key
| difference. Some people do that naturally and can't stop
| themselves doing that, other people simply don't have that in
| them. Nothing wrong with that. Figure out which you are early
| and then act accordingly.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > [Leveling] conflates career development and salary negotiation.
| It encourages a mindset of saying, "what must I do to make L10"
| when you want to say, "I want a $10K raise."
|
| It's not obvious to me why this is a bad thing. I agree that
| incentivising a box-ticking mindset discourages ownership and
| initiative. But for software engineers I feel like there has to
| be _some_ methodical (and transparent) way for raises to be
| assigned, and for it to relate to skills and traits. Otherwise
| you can easily end up in a situation where people are rewarded
| for being bolshy and savvy rather than valuable to the company.
|
| Am I missing something here?
| WJW wrote:
| I think that what you are missing is that "what must I do to
| make L10" and "what is valuable to the company" are typically
| somewhat orthogonal. A prototypical example is that almost
| every career ladder out there mentions things like "impact" and
| architect/systems design work rather than often more valuable
| maintenance work that keeps current systems running. In
| addition, measuring the contribution of any individual to a
| team effort is always difficult, in some cases pretty much
| impossible until years later. This means that it is always
| possible to game such career frameworks by focusing only on the
| things the framework rewards and skipping everything else.
|
| In short, encouraging people to get to the next career level in
| a well-defined framework is exactly the type of "situation
| where people are rewarded for being bolshy and savvy rather
| than being valuable to the company" that you mention as being
| undesirable.
| hiatus wrote:
| If following the framework does not provide value to the
| company, the framework is obviously flawed.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| the frameworks are always flawed
|
| the best leaders know this
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sure, but does that mean the framework shouldn't exist?
| Something can be flawed and still provide some value.
|
| In the case of leveling, I'd suggest the levels are
| guidelines and not policy. As soon as they become policy,
| management cannot work around them adequately, and they
| begin to detract value.
|
| For example, at my employer, we have levels (within job
| families, I haven't seen a level grid that has engineers
| and personal assistants). But, I've never had to tick
| every single box to get an employee promoted. I have to
| make my case, and I do use the levels as a guideline, but
| I've never felt it necessary to absolutely follow every
| item.
| ketzo wrote:
| Well, that's sort of the author's point -- _every_
| framework is focused on _something_ other than simple
| salary numbers, which definitionally means it is focused on
| something other than the dollar value provided to the
| company.
|
| We recognize that they can still be a useful tool, because
| 1) assigning dollar values to employees is an inexact
| science that's hard to standardize over an organization and
| 2) ICs like at least _some_ direction about what they need
| to do to be eligible for more money aside from just
| "provide more value"
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I think the problem that developers may feel is that they want
| to earn more money for being a better developer, but not
| nessicarily accept more responsibility or spend less time
| developing code.
|
| I do agree with you that clear progression frameworks are a
| necessity for transparency and goals for developers, but some
| may feel daunted by a jump up meaning they don't get to write
| as much code if L39 (or whatever) starts including
| responsibilites that pushes you into meetings and convincing.
| margorczynski wrote:
| > I think the problem that developers may feel is that they
| want to earn more money for being a better developer, but not
| nessicarily accept more responsibility or spend less time
| developing code.
|
| Well the problem is some people don't get there is a limit of
| how much impact and additional revenue you can create for the
| company by writing better/more code. And that would serve as
| a basis for paying you more.
|
| The thing is a guy helping out via mentoring 10 other people
| or recruiting better talent will create much more impact on
| how the company functions than if he wrote 2x better code or
| 2x faster. There is simply in almost all engineering effort a
| hard limit of how much a single person can contribute.
| betaby wrote:
| > The thing is a guy helping out via mentoring 10 other
| people or recruiting >better talent will create much more
| impact on how the company functions than if he wrote 2x
| better code or 2x faster. There is simply in almost all
| engineering effort a hard limit of how much a single person
| can contribute.
|
| Very debatable. Not at all true where I work ( worked ).
| Better code clearly larger impact on larger timeframes (
| think 5+ year ) that perpetually retraining incoming
| juniors.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Pay and rank have a connection but not a direct connection.
|
| What is the value of your work? Is your impact worth millions
| to the company? Is it worth just your salary? Are you in an
| overhead function that enables the rest of the business? Do you
| work on just new business ideas that have no value now but
| maybe a lot later? Can you do things that others can not or
| will not?
|
| The answers to these questions and your ability to negotiate
| will dictate your pay. The fact is that being savvy and being
| able to navigate politics/being well liked, intentionally or
| otherwise, is hugely important. Most companies don't make it
| particularly clear how to progress or how a manager should
| compensate the team aside from a rough rubric on how to get
| there. Most years an HR BP says to me "you have a X% budget, we
| recommend an (X - 2)% COLA and the rest is for your merit
| raises." At some places they just ask for a stack rank and come
| up with the number. In either system, demonstrated
| effectiveness and willingness to work well with people (aka
| being savvy, political, likable, full of BS, etc - pick your
| favorite) affects your ability to get more than that Cost of
| Living Adjustment. When it's promotion time, a good manager
| will make sure your skills fit the role. A bad one just picks
| someone based on their biases - positive in your favor in the
| short term, bad for your career if you never catch up to what
| is needed to do the job.
|
| Now this is the time to draw the line at pay vs rank. Most of
| leveling and rank is about org design and you can be a Director
| making 70K or a Director making 300K in the same type of
| software role in the same vertical.
|
| Leveling is an HR and management thing. Value is what you
| provide and should be compensated for. Bands are there to keep
| things from being completely insane. Levels are a guide for
| what should be.
|
| If you were able to change your title at work to "Professional
| Enthusiast" and your level to L-1, but did all the same work
| and were just as effective, would you want your pay to be any
| different? Again, let's differentiate value and compensation
| from the rest of the structural stuff.
|
| These management constructs are checks and balances on both
| good and bad managers alike. Even if you do a great job as a
| manager and someone is ready to be promoted, your HR BP can
| have the bad news that there is no money for that promotion and
| to assign no new responsibilities ("no free consulting" as I
| have had to tell my reports in this situation). Conversely the
| money could be there but the space for the role is not. Do you
| really want to work somewhere that has 1000 people and 100 VPs?
| Who exactly is in charge? Is it VP Tom who is a peer of VP
| Jimmy who reports to VP Marry who reports to SVP Sarah? Heck
| no, just break the bands. Every time I've had a long tenured
| Staff/Principle engineer they're sitting at 25% over what the
| band says they should make and no one in HR or the SLT ever
| complains. They see that and they know exactly who that person
| is.
|
| In turn, all of this exists to solve the problem of org design
| and hierarchy. Leveling is a tool against title inflation. Need
| to restrict movement into senior management? Get pickier in
| your leveling. Need to retain people? Give them a bonus
| structure or widen bands. Titles are nice and all but they
| don't buy private school tuitions, sports cars, and fancy
| vacations. My L4 employees that could afford a new condo and a
| vacation to Bali were never all that upset they were never
| going to see L3 and L2 due to org design constraints.
|
| I myself am a slightly funny example. I moved from a
| multinational based in Europe to a small software company in
| California. My title went from Director (L3 there, Senior
| directors and in between to VP got point numbers) to Senior
| Manager (L4.X on the old scale but an effective L3) and my span
| of control from 30-60 to 6. My job is basically the same except
| for the number of people in my span of control (in the former
| job the same number of Managers and Staff engineers reported to
| me directly). We don't have a CTO and there are two VPs where
| one has a "Head of" title. There are a couple Directors as well
| (call them effective L2 here). Effectively my title has changed
| but my level has not. The pay also went up a little bit with
| the move.
|
| There is really no where for me to go in this hierarchy since
| we're pretty small. If/when they add a CTO, down the ladder I
| go, a CTO level is added, and more restrictions are placed to
| stratify the leveling to match the stratification of the jobs.
| What will a CTO do over the current Head of Tech? Not sure as
| my skip level does everything all the other CTOs I've worked
| for has done. I'm sure they'll come up with something for my
| current Skip Level to _stop_ doing though.
|
| In some companies I've worked and famously at Google, you have
| ICs that are at the VP level, by either title or level, that
| aside from having to go to a few mandatory Senior Management
| type meetings are exceptionally well paid Staff/Principle
| engineers. There's nothing wrong with this so long as the title
| is not abused and the value is there. It tends to look crazy
| though. Why do these situations exist? Someone needed to pay
| them X to get into the business and X happened to be in the
| band for VP. Or, they were part of an acquisition and actually
| stuck around. They needed some significant title and to report
| to the CEO and it happens that VP is the currency available for
| that even though they're not doing that work. At my last job we
| didn't do this and at one point a CTO of an acquisition
| actually reported to me, a Director.
|
| It's the holes in the way things work that best betray that
| value and title are not directly connected but management come
| as close as possible just to make it possible to figure out
| what the heck is going on at a glance. In turn, ask for that
| 10k if you think you're worth it. It may be easier to get it
| than to get the level bump.
| matt_s wrote:
| > Otherwise you can easily end up in a situation where people
| are rewarded for being bolshy and savvy rather than valuable to
| the company.
|
| This is how it works though. If you have someone that is quiet
| and does amazing work but doesn't seek out promotions and
| doesn't actively market their accomplishments then it could
| happen that they will lag on salary over time. If there are
| good managers advocating for their people then this will happen
| less.
|
| Its a really simple conversation for a manager to have with
| their mgmt and HR about person X's salary is behind market, Y
| and Z are in same title so I think we need to bump them up a
| little to keep pace. A good organization will recognize that
| and help make something happen. Bad organizations will have an
| attitude of not doing anything until its too late. If you work
| in a bad organization then the path to get raises there is to
| do the work yourself, go out to the market, interview and get
| offer(s) and bring them back and/or just leave. I say good/bad
| organizations but really its not binary, there are situations
| companies may be in where raises or market based increases
| aren't possible, there might be bad executives but good
| managers, etc. YMMV.
| munificent wrote:
| _> If you have someone that is quiet and does amazing work
| but doesn 't seek out promotions and doesn't actively market
| their accomplishments then it could happen that they will lag
| on salary over time._
|
| This is a win from the business's perspective. They are
| getting greater value for lower cost.
|
| In my more cynical moments, I sometimes suspect that tech
| companies deliberately target the sort of low self-esteem
| perfectionist types for which this behavior is common
| specifically because the company sees an arbitrage
| opportunity between what the employee is worth and what the
| employee believes they are worth.
| re-thc wrote:
| > It encourages a mindset of saying, "what must I do to make
| L10" when you want to say, "I want a $10K raise."
|
| > It's not obvious to me why this is a bad thing.
|
| In most cases, level isn't the gaming type level. Level these
| days is more like different jobs. What used to be analyst,
| architect, tech lead etc are all disguised as "level".
|
| As you rise in levels you might code less and focus on system
| design, coordinating, mentoring or something else. Is it really
| "career development"? It's moving sideways.
|
| > Am I missing something here?
|
| Yes, reward people for ownership, and getting better at their
| job. That's not what the current level system is.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I guess it depends on where you work. I've moved up four
| "levels" since I started and I basically just do the same
| thing. You could argue I should have been the higher level
| from the start and it took a while to get recognized.
| alistairSH wrote:
| This varies by employer.
|
| At my employer, we have several job families that encompass
| "software developer"... software engineer, cloud engineer,
| architect, and technical fellow.
|
| With the two engineering roles, there are levels... software
| engineer I, II, III, Lead, Principal. Architect starts with
| more seniority... architect (roughly equivalent to to Lead),
| principal architect. And technical fellow is "director level"
| - basically a terminal spot for ICs who are really good at
| building software but have no desire to manage people - they
| typically report to a VP or director - they do have lots of
| meetings, but they're also setting the technical direction of
| the company for the long haul.
| guappa wrote:
| To get promoted you must just pander to your boss and
| completely ignore what your job is supposed to be and what the
| company needs.
| surajrmal wrote:
| The higher up you go the more important it becomes to make an
| impact to teams outside the purview of your boss. So I'm not
| really sure this holds.
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| in this context 'your boss' is usually a level or two above
| your direct manager on org chart Take it as the most senior
| person you can get regular face time with, this also needs
| to be gamed.
| darkwater wrote:
| > Yes, you might discover that a Senior FPA Analyst II earns the
| same as a Product Marketing Director I, but why does that matter?
| It's a coincidence. It's like saying with $3.65 I can buy either
| a grande non-fat latte or a head of organic lettuce. What matters
| is the fair price of each of those goods in the market -- not
| they that happen to have the same price.
|
| Well, it infuriates me just the same. If a coffee shot costs the
| same or more that some other food that is healthy and gives you
| more calories and/or nutrients. And I say this as a coffee lover.
|
| But beside specific examples nitpicking, I understand the gist of
| it, and I understand the market reasons - you want to attract or
| retain talent and they/we look at compensations on a market level
| - but this still doesn't mean it is fair. Unless you believe in
| fairy tales and invisible hands.
| irjustin wrote:
| > but this still doesn't mean it is fair
|
| You're trying to change which definition of fair is being used.
|
| It's fair in that it's "fair market value" because that's what
| the market is willing to pay.
|
| That's clearly the version the author is using given the
| example.
| darkwater wrote:
| "Fair" has many facets. It can be fairly compensated for the
| market value of a nominal role but still be unfairly
| compensated within the company according to the work executed
| and the "value"[1] created.
|
| [1] Value in this context can be not just only monetary value
| but creating a good working environment, help other to do
| better their job etc
| irjustin wrote:
| I'm not sure what to tell you. That words can have
| different meanings given the context? And this version of
| fair is using a specific one that you're unwilling to
| accept.
|
| It seems you wish the author used "market rate" and not
| "fair". But you're annoyed at the wrong thing because that
| usage is completely valid. That society has allowed "fair"
| to mean what the market is willing to pay regardless of its
| equality to fellow man.
|
| Because if that's the case - nothing is fair.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| What's the alternative?
|
| Some functional skills are rarer than others, some are simply
| harder to master than others, and some are both.
|
| To me it would be unfair to force equal pay for very unequal
| work.
| apwell23 wrote:
| i don't agree with any of these definitions. From my experience
| VPs and directors are so far removed from any actual work that
| most of their "plans" mean very little. Things get done not
| because of their "plans" but despite of them.
|
| In terms of career development. Ppl aren't promoted for their
| ability to make "plans" or execute them. Ppl are promoted into
| those promotions for being trustworthy by ppl above them .
|
| To get to that position, you should be
|
| 1. be people oriented. Genuinely like ppl around you from your
| heart ( not fake it) . Take the first step and build genuine love
| for ppl around you. Your first instinct towards anyone should be
| trying to make their work lives easier. This is super hard for
| nerdy coder types because we have mental depenendcy on being the
| "smart one", hard to let go of that part of identity.
|
| 2. consistenly deliver results and become the person that can be
| trusted by person that gave you the assignment. Building trust is
| the main job when you go work. Its not writing some badass code
| or being innovating or whatever.
| lstodd wrote:
| this is why in my company the only VP is the company cat and
| the title is hereditary.
| throw12hhfhd wrote:
| Having been in both situations in large organizations, I can
| say the connection between the plans and the work can be
| difficult to see sometimes, but the absence of such a plan is
| much worse in the long run. As the size of groups grow, people
| don't generally self organize.
|
| Great career development advice. This is absolutely the most
| reliable way to advance in an organization.
| windward wrote:
| Out of scope for this article, but:
|
| >Most leveling systems are too granular, with the levels
| separated by arbitrary characterizations. It's makework. It's
| fake science. It's bureaucratic and encourages a non-thinking
| "climb the ladder" approach to career development. ("Hey, let's
| develop you to go from somewhat-independent to rather-independent
| this year.")
|
| This is a funny, common requirement. Every junior developer is
| told they should feel free to ask questions - and now they have a
| financial incentive not to.
| ikerino wrote:
| Asking questions and unblocking yourself is a required
| competency for acting independently.
|
| Developers should aim to be resourceful and respect others
| time, but I expect my reports to seek out help if they get
| genuinely stuck for more than 15 minutes (no clue what to do.)
|
| It's much better than waiting around for your manager to find
| out you were working on the wrong problems (or nothing, waiting
| for instructions.)
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Every junior developer is told they should feel free to ask
| questions - and now they have a financial incentive not to.
|
| This is such a fine line though, encourage developers to ask
| questions, but they also need to try problem-solving before
| they immediately go asking for help. If I _consistently_ get
| asked for help on problems that I can solve it within 5-10
| minutes using no "company knowledge" (just plain debugging),
| then that cements someone as "junior" in my mind.
|
| Contrast that with the people who ask lots of questions but
| they are well thought out questions that require knowledge of
| the inner workings of the system.
|
| "This isn't working" vs "I can't figure out X works, I tried Y
| and Z but that gave me this error that I don't understand but I
| did find...."
| dnadler wrote:
| I have a similar mindset though less focused on the type of
| questions being asked and more about how many times I have to
| answer the same question.
|
| Ideally, the number is one time. As in one conversation where
| the person walks away understanding the answer. If I have to
| have that conversation more than once it's a problem.
|
| Obviously there's nuance - it can take time to get your head
| around a new concept or hard problem. But in any case, I like
| that as one dimension when thinking about a person's
| skill/level/potential.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > I have a similar mindset though less focused on the type
| of questions being asked and more about how many times I
| have to answer the same question.
|
| Yes, I completely agree and do that as well.
|
| The focus on "type of question" has been something I've
| done more recently after helping someone out. Just
| reflecting on "what type of problem did I just help solve
| and how can I make it easier for them to solve on their own
| in the future". Very often the answer is "more
| documentation" or similar, getting things only in my head
| down where everyone can benefit. On the other hand I walk
| away from some problems I've helped with frustrated that
| the answer was 1-2 Google searches away and the issue had
| nothing to do with "our stack".
| maccard wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, but there's another angle that is
| similar. How many times does the person come to you with a
| similar question but on a slightly different topic and you
| need to guide them through _how to find_ the answer. I've
| supervised mid level engineers in the past who will just
| drop a stack trace in a slack DM and expect me to tell them
| what's wrong - I didn't write the code so why do you expect
| me to figure it out for you. But when I have the
| conversation of "we've talked about how to dxooore these
| kinds of problems a few times now, next time you need to
| apply these techniques",it often doesn't land.
| maccard wrote:
| I've managed a few people who have come to the same conclusion
| as you did there, and had a mixed success rate there.
|
| It's not about not asking questions, it's about knowing which
| questions are appropriate to ask, and if you don't know the
| answer to that it's my job to guide you to finding it out.
|
| I've never held back on a promotion because someone asked too
| many questions, but I have recommended we don't promote because
| they're asking questions that they should be answering
| themselves. The gauge of skill is "do you know what you don't
| know", basically.
| windward wrote:
| In big tech these overly-granular, arbitrary systems are
| designed specifically to avoid this kind of variance in
| promotability from how managers infer the rules. If they're
| designed badly, you have to lie to get your example through
| the pipeline.
|
| >It's not about not asking questions
|
| If the spec says 'doesn't ask questions', it is!
| maccard wrote:
| > If they're designed badly, you have to lie to get your
| example through the pipeline.
|
| Agreed
|
| > If the spec says 'doesn't ask questions', it is!
|
| It's not. At anywhere I've ever worked, it's about meeting
| enough of the criteria and your manager coming to bat for
| you. If the spec says don't ask questions and your manager
| backs you, you're getting promoted. If the spec says you
| must make 3 widgets a day and you make 4 widgets a day more
| than anyone else, but your manager won't back you, you're
| not getting the promotion.
|
| If your manager is a rule stickler, follow the rules. If
| they value breaking the process, then break the process.
|
| But dogmatically pointing to the rules, and saying "but the
| rules say this" is unlikely to get you very far. To quote
| Geoffrey Rush - "They're more like guidelines"
| windward wrote:
| I'm glad for you. I'm paraphrasing a previous employer's
| guidelines.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| US/NATO military equivalents to corporate titles:
|
| Team lead: E5-E6, W1
|
| Manager: E7-E8, O2-O3
|
| Associate Principal: W1-W2
|
| Principal: W3-W4
|
| Senior Principal: W5
|
| Senior Advisor: E9
|
| Associate Director: O4
|
| Director: O5
|
| VP: O6
|
| SVP: O7-O8
|
| COO O9
|
| CEO/Diplomat O10 (4star)
|
| Chairman: O11 (5star)
|
| Conglomerate Chairman: 6star, Pershing
|
| The big difference is that in the military everything above team
| lead has an internal support staff and planning occurs
| independently at every level.
| matt_s wrote:
| I would add that typically the O levels there (officer in
| military) in corporate usually have bonus/equity as part of
| compensation, like a major element of comp, not some $1k petty
| cash bonus.
|
| These are also the levels where if there is a massive screw-up,
| you might be the person ousted so there is a fair amount of
| accountability.
| joshstrange wrote:
| "Levels don't matter except for these levels that I care about"
|
| :rolleyes:
|
| All titles are made up. No one fits a role/title perfectly. It's
| all a bunch of bullshit. Normally it's really just using salary
| ranges as the core thing people care about and people move up
| "titles" while not improving their skills one bit (seniority,
| playing politics better, etc).
|
| At my last company they made a big deal about becoming a "senior
| developer", it was a lot more responsibly, work, _pay_, etc.
| Years later I (and another developer) was outperforming the
| "senior" developers by a good margin and the company gave us both
| title bumps, a 3% CoL raise, and... $1K bonus.
|
| That was probably the last time I believed in any sort of sanity
| in ranking/titles/etc.
|
| Ask for what you want, don't wait for a "performance review", yes
| it's uncomfortable, get over it. No ranking system is going to
| accurately reflect skills.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| > All titles are made up
|
| Well yes, literally, but that's not the point. The author is
| saying that Lx titles inherently don't make sense and he sees
| more value in a model based on accountability and
| responsibility. My understanding:
|
| - manager: responsible for putting effort into execution
|
| - director: responsible for executing a plan, not accountable
| for its success
|
| - VP: responsible for the plan and accountable for its success
| joshstrange wrote:
| Those are great ideas in theory I guess but not at all how
| they are treated industry wide and often not how they are
| treated within the same company.
|
| 99% of the time titles have very little to do with what
| someone does day to day. It's just not that simple and clear
| cut.
|
| All that to say, I don't find one persons thoughts on what
| those titles mean very useful since that's just what it means
| to that specific person. There is no, that I'm aware of,
| industry-wide agreement.
|
| Not to mention I find those definitions to be silly, overly
| simple, and not how anyone thinks of their job.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Unfortunately, shit will _always_ roll downhill. I can tell
| your understanding is an ideal scenario, because it 's the
| opposite of how the real world works.
| gneray wrote:
| A classic
| trentnix wrote:
| I'm had all three titles at various points in my career but the
| reality is that my responsibilities and operational altitude
| varied widely from company to company. I just completed a job
| search after being laid off and one of the challenges of finding
| a job in leadership is deciphering what each company actually
| wants from their managers or directors or VPs.
|
| Some roles are "hands on". For others that's a red flag. For some
| it's all about managing people and emotional intelligence. For
| others it's all about technical acumen and technical direction.
| Sometimes what they are really looking for is exactly what the
| last person in the role did. In other cases, they want the
| opposite of the last person to hold the role.
|
| The only thing you can really depend on when it comes to
| leadership titles in software, in my experience, is that one's
| title explains which meetings one is expected to attend.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I've had a similar experience, however I found it tied to the
| size of the company. If you're a director at a large
| corporation, you will be very siloed and you most likely won't
| be doing much coding. If you're a directory at a small company,
| you're going to be coding, managing coders, and being part of
| leadership and strategic discussions.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Can confirm. I currently work for an SMB (~150 employees) as
| a manager. Our VP doesn't write any code but the directors
| and managers are still IC's on projects.
|
| Right now I really like being an IC in addition to being
| manager cause I still have that coding itch to scratch, but I
| just know one day I will eventually graduate to role where I
| don't write any code. Long term it is the direction I want to
| go in but it's going to be bittersweet when I finally get to
| a role with no coding.
| re-thc wrote:
| > The only thing you can really depend on when it comes to
| leadership titles in software
|
| It's not just leadership titles. Even if they list tech stack,
| responsibility or any of it it may not eventually be reality.
| Sometimes it's a wish list, sometimes it's planned and other
| times they "forgot" to update it.
| bradlys wrote:
| Isn't the most effective way to find out what you'll be doing
| is by measuring how many people are going to be under you
| overall?
|
| A "vp" at a startup with 20 people under them will likely have
| very different responsibilities than a faang director with 200.
|
| I believe this is why you get asked how many people are under
| you when interviewing at these roles. The titles - as far as
| I've seen - are mostly meaningless. It's about the scale of
| your decisions. I know the article talks about the type of
| influence/decisions you'll be making. (Executing others
| decisions vs making the decisions) But I find it's rare for
| these bigger companies to really give a shit about that. They
| care more about how many people you've had under you. It's rare
| to see someone be VP at startups with a few people (and that's
| their only experience) and then be VP at faang in their next
| role.
| trentnix wrote:
| The "number of people you've had under you" does provides
| insight into what a role entails, but there's still a lot of
| variance. What does seem to be uniform is that the "number of
| people you've had under you" determines whether a hiring
| company will think you're qualified for a job. Companies
| simply aren't likely to take a "risk" hiring an outsider that
| hasn't been in a role with a similar perceived scope of
| responsibility. And since actual _here 's-what-you're-doing-
| day-to-day_ responsibility can vary so much, the "number of
| people you've had under you" becomes a proxy for that.
|
| I understand the reasoning for why they put so much weight on
| the number of reports you've been previously responsible for,
| but it also explains why big companies stagnate. The people
| change but the thinking and strategy doesn't.
| trentnix wrote:
| s/I'm/I've
| hexator wrote:
| And it's not necessarily a bad thing. I should think adaptive
| roles would be a benefit, not a hazard. At my company we simply
| list "software engineer, all levels" in our postings.
| aarghh wrote:
| Oh, sweet summer child...
|
| > _But it's the same standard to which the CEO is held. If the
| CEO makes a plan, gets it approved by the board, and executes it
| well but it doesn't work, they cannot tell the board "but, but,
| it's the plan we agreed to."_
| sevensor wrote:
| The junior engineer asking "how can I become a VP?" is classic.
| Chances of you becoming a VP at the same place you worked as a
| junior engineer are slim. I know one person who did it, it took
| him 25 years, and he had been on the golf team in college, so he
| had a lot more exposure to company VIPs than most. Change
| employers while in middle management or you will spend a long
| time there.
|
| And that's assuming you even _like_ being a VP. Sure, the money's
| good, but there's a lot of accountability and you either need to
| be good at taking it or good at avoiding it.
| hylaride wrote:
| Hilariously, in the 2010s you didn't need to become a VP to
| make that kind of money. You could go the principle or
| distinguished engineer route and still make bank.
|
| In many (more purely tech) companies it is not unusual for
| senior engineers to be making the same salary as directors or
| VPs, though that may now be starting to change.
| astrange wrote:
| > The junior engineer asking "how can I become a VP?" is
| classic.
|
| How are they going to know what you just said without asking?
| alexpotato wrote:
| One thing that I learned from going to IC to manager:
|
| there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never
| see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC.
|
| Case in point: trying to retain good people.
|
| Good people often times end up wanting to leave for a variety of
| reasons ranging from ludicrous to 100% legitimate. They often
| announce they are leaving to their direct manager and maybe one
| other person (E.g. head of another team they work with etc).
|
| Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers
| escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers,
| senior managers and HR. In the best case, this leads to a
| successful retention.
|
| However, the only people that know any of this happened are the
| employee and the manager tier. The other employees have zero idea
| any of this occurred unless someone shares/mentions it. I point
| this out b/c multiple times as an IC, I thought "no one will care
| if I leave b/c I never see managers actively trying to keep
| people".
|
| The point of this story is twofold: - managers do a lot of
| "unseen" work - it's worth researching this kind of thing if you
| are about to move from IC to manager.
| fader wrote:
| I had the same experience moving from IC to manager. I didn't
| realize the amount of work that managers are doing that I
| didn't see and more importantly that they couldn't tell me
| about.
|
| Retention is definitely one, but there's the flip side of
| dealing with poor performance. You can't announce to everyone
| that one of the team is on a PIP or struggling with personal
| issues. But a poor performer means that I'm doing a _ton_ of
| work to figure out how to fix the issue (whether that's
| spending hours every week coaching them, building all the long-
| term documentation that HR requires before we can fire someone,
| picking up some of their slack myself in the meantime...)
|
| Coordination of people also takes way more time than I realized
| as an IC. If you meet with your manager once per week, that's
| an hour out of your week. But your manager is meeting with
| everyone on the team and a good manager is going to spend at
| _least_ as much time thinking and planning for each of those
| meetings as they spend in the meetings themselves even if
| everything is going well. They have to make sure nobody is
| accidentally working on the same thing or impacting someone
| else, talking to other teams, that sort of thing. That one hour
| out of your week is 1-2 days for your manager. Not to mention
| that they then have to go do the same sort of coordination with
| other teams.
|
| You have something that blows up your week that you need to
| escalate once per quarter? Multiply that by the number of
| reports your manager has and that's how much time they've spent
| fighting fires this quarter. And they need to explain to their
| leadership what happened and why it won't happen again.
|
| Etc. etc. It's not harder work, but it is very different work
| from being an IC. (On the other hand, being a manager has made
| me a better IC too. Everyone I've ever managed that was
| previously a manager themselves has this -- they know exactly
| what I need to know because they know what they needed to know,
| so our 1:1s go much faster :) )
|
| One anecdote I have is that when I first moved to a management
| role, I told a colleague how happy I was that I'd finally have
| real control over my calendar. After he finished laughing
| (literally) he said "your calendar belongs to your team and
| you'll never be in control of that again". He was absolutely
| right: if something goes wrong or someone is unhappy,
| everything else moves aside so I can fix my team's problem.
| johnny_reilly wrote:
| This is super interesting - thanks for sharing!
|
| > Everyone I've ever managed that was previously a manager
| themselves has this -- they know exactly what I need to know
| because they know what they needed to know, so our 1:1s go
| much faster
|
| Could you provide some examples of what managers need to
| know?
| fader wrote:
| It's less about what I need to know and more about how I
| need to organize it. I get the same information from all of
| my reports, but the ones who were managers hand it to me
| ready to go where the others I get it from a conversation.
|
| When I'm talking to my team, I need to know things like:
|
| * Anything that is blocking them (and what they think will
| solve that)
|
| * Any unexpected events, fires that are about to start/have
| started
|
| * Progress on their tasks and any timeline updates
|
| * Things they've heard from meetings with other teams that
| might impact what they're working on or other people on the
| team
|
| The ICs who were managers previously tend to come to 1:1s
| with this already sitting in our shared document outlined
| roughly like I have above when we start our meeting. E.g.
|
| * I'm waiting for Joe Bloggs to finish his API work before
| I can build the user workflow for X. He was supposed to be
| done last week but I'm still waiting. He's being very vague
| about the timeline and I need to know when this will be
| done so I can start work. Can you talk to him for me?
|
| * Mary was out sick last week so didn't finish the design
| for Y. We're working on it now and she'll be done by
| Tuesday. I've put my work on Y on hold until then and am
| focusing on Z instead. It should still be done by the
| deadline.
|
| * Status of Project Foo is...
|
| * I had a sync with the database team yesterday. Did you
| know that they're planning to move everything to paper tape
| next quarter?
|
| All of that would come out in a conversation anyway, but
| having it like this focuses it and puts it in context
| already (which is normally what I would need to do with
| that info).
|
| The real difference is that folks who have been managers
| before tend to have a better understanding of what will
| impact the larger team or project, not just their part of
| it. I care about the individual too, but some of my brain
| is always on the bigger picture.
| johnny_reilly wrote:
| Awesome - thank you
| devonbleak wrote:
| To add on to this I like things organized as: - things
| you need my action on - things you need my input on -
| things you think I need to be aware of that may need my
| input/action later
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| I moved from IC to manager to director. Meetings in general
| are a huge time suck, and by the end of my tenure, I was
| basically triple-booked for the entire day every day. Every
| evening was an exercise in deciding who to piss off. And the
| emails! <Marvin/Android Voice>Don't get me started on the
| emails! :-) Finishing the twilight of my career as an IC
| consulting, and it's much better for me.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| How did you get started consulting? I'm in a similar spot,
| been a director, don't really want to go back to it.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| > Case in point: trying to retain good people.
|
| Word. IMO, one of the most important, yet underrated duties, of
| a good manager.
|
| As a leader, you want people to crawl over broken glass to want
| to be by your side. If not, you end up like North Korea, where
| you have to sell why people should stay, sometimes eve being
| dishonest and intimidating in the process. Seeing the latter
| happen is always a sad sight.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| One thing I discovered: almost everything a manager does has
| a big lag between input and observed impact. Retention is one
| of the slowest, it's like steering a cruise ship!
| game_the0ry wrote:
| I can't say I agree with this bc I have felt the immediate
| impact of a key employee leaving, usually in the form of me
| taking up their responsibilities. Even with a two-week,
| sometimes even four-week, hand off, this turns into real
| pain the moment that employee is gone.
|
| So do not under-estimate the impact of retention.
| nik_0_0 wrote:
| People leaving is definitely a step-function of negatives
| as the responsibilities get shared between the (now
| smaller!) team.
|
| I think GP was more saying that improving retention, at a
| % level, is a slow ship to steer. (At least what is
| available at the manager level.) Decreasing retention
| across the org in the long term doesn't happen overnight,
| and it can take a while to observe whether the effect is
| trending downwards or upwards. (And also depends on what
| signal you use - people actually leaving, or people
| talking about leaving!)
| surajrmal wrote:
| If you are a very senior IC, managers may consult you in these
| situations as well. Fishing for interesting projects or
| possibly even trying to have you talk to the person leaving as
| well. You generally would have context and an ability to
| connect with the other IC in a way a manager may not. I've
| never been in management but have on many occasions been roped
| into these scenarios.
| bognition wrote:
| In my experience the inverse is also true. Dealing with
| performance and behavioral issues can take a huge amount of
| time, and it something that is never discussed with parties who
| are not involved.
|
| Well run engineering organizations are like a well running
| engine. They need to have solid parts but they also need
| constant attention and fine tuning. The best managers do this
| well.
| _puk wrote:
| I agree about the hidden work, but you describe it in a
| reactionary manner.
|
| A huge amount of management effort goes into being proactive so
| you don't even need to get to the point in the conversation
| where they voice wanting to leave. Or when they do, you've seen
| it coming, have plans in place and they move on with your
| blessing.
|
| * Creating a culture where employees (and managers) feel valued
| and have autonomy.
|
| * Ensuring employees are clear about where they are headed,
| giving them something to work towards.
|
| * Proactively identifying and unblocking issues before they
| become crises, often across functions.
|
| * Identifying areas of frustrations for teams and individuals.
|
| That's just a small number of the things you'll be doing, and
| whilst scope varies massively by company size (though until you
| get to the large corp environment most of this is still covered
| up to the VP / CTO level), you'll be juggling it all alongside
| technical input, cross functional leadership responsibilities
| (VP may well be in the SLT if the company isn't huge), horizon
| scanning, constant process refinement.. The pillars of people,
| process and technology all need to be constantly considered..
|
| Having done this repeatedly from IC all the way through Head,
| Director and VP level (and up to CTO), I can say that being a
| proactive problem solver is always required of a good manager /
| Director / VP.
|
| Edit: Having read the actual article ;)
|
| IC paths map this quite well too..
|
| Tech Lead maps to manager, Staff maps to Director, Principal to
| VP
| AdamN wrote:
| You can only be so proactive. At a ginormous company, the
| pace of change is glacial. You can push really hard and get
| buy-in from leaders with hundreds of people under them and
| still get blocked trying to improve things about the
| office/culture that are simply beyond one's control - even
| with VP buy-in. Big companies need to federate out more if
| they want this type of proactive management - or just accept
| it and maybe that makes sense too.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| "Reactive" - reactionary is a popular political alignment
| astrange wrote:
| Well I hope it's not a popular one. A populist one?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Have you looked around?
| astrange wrote:
| Yes, I'm a big fan of it. Mostly what you learn is things
| you see online aren't real. Also that people love free
| parking.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| This is very true and I learned this quickly when moving to a
| management role. As an IC, when someone is out for some life
| event, it might mean more work for you to pick up the slack. As
| a manager, everyone on your team's problems become your
| problems.
|
| Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages,
| etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one
| of my direct reports.
|
| Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional
| toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't
| think most ICs appreciate fully.
| h4ny wrote:
| I'm not trying to make light of your experience, and I do
| appreciate that you care about people you have to look after
| deeply.
|
| However, I also don't think what you described is
| professional with respect to being a manager. A manager's job
| is to balance the interest between stakeholders and their
| reports, make sure things happen as promised (and adjust
| scope when promise can't be met), and make sure everyone in
| their team grows (skill, remuneration, etc.).
|
| > Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family,
| miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something
| happens to one of my direct reports.
|
| These are not things that would affect you from being a good
| manager. That's just part of the job of being a manager. It's
| a different kind of problem, it's not necessarily heavier
| problems. It's unhelpful, or even narcissistic, to think that
| you're actually quietly taking on more burden for everyone
| without being appreciated.
|
| You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if your
| empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to be a
| better manager, then you're probably not doing a very good
| job as a manager.
|
| > Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy
| emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy
| that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully.
|
| I disagree. That's just an excuse of not doing what you
| should be doing as a manager: manage things. See above.
|
| If you are an empathetic person, if you work in a team where
| people have/had "cancer/long-term illness, death in the
| family, miscarriages, etc.", then it's emotionally just as
| taxing whether you're an IC or a manager. In fact, if you
| can't manage your emotions and get what needs to be done done
| (damage control, repriortization, etc. to get things
| shipped), then you're not doing your job as a manager.
|
| Edit: feel free to downvote if you don't agree but much
| appreciated if you also leave a response to say why you
| disagree. Otherwise, I hope you feel good "punishing" people
| just because you _feel_ differently but don 't actually have
| a concrete argument against.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal
| human being with natural empathy for the people they work
| with. Managing people does require emotional stability and
| self control, though. ICs tend to automatically defer to
| their managers. Sometimes, this leads the ICs to
| misinterpret tiny reactions from their managers in
| completely unintended ways. I find that negative,
| emotionally charged reactions from managers are especially
| likely to lead to unintended reactions from their ICs. As
| an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups and does
| to the job. This is even more important as a manager.
| h4ny wrote:
| > I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal
| human being with natural empathy for the people they work
| with.
|
| I agree but that's not what I said. What I said was it's
| "unhelpful, or even narcissistic", for a manager to think
| that being empathetic _as a manager_ is more emotionally
| taxing than an IC.
|
| > Managing people does require emotional stability and
| self control, though.
|
| It does. That's just being professional though. Being a
| good coworker in general requires emotional stability and
| self control. I'm not sure if you're trying to argue that
| a manager has to have much greater ability to do those
| than an IC since you seem to avoid saying that directly.
|
| > ICs tend to automatically defer to their managers.
| Sometimes, this leads the ICs to misinterpret tiny
| reactions from their managers in completely unintended
| ways. I find that negative, emotionally charged reactions
| from managers are especially likely to lead to unintended
| reactions from their ICs.
|
| Uh, the reverse sounds just about as true? I'm honestly
| not sure what the argument there is.
|
| > As an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups
| and does to the job. This is even more important as a
| manager.
|
| It's unclear from what you said why it's more important
| as a manager -- that's just what _every_ professional
| should do at a workplace. Can you please elaborate?
| gmueckl wrote:
| As a manager, you are always implicitly communicating
| from a position of power. That changes what you can and
| cannot say. It's not very hard to understand once you
| experience it from a manager's perspective, but I don't
| think that I would have truly understood this exclusively
| from an IC's perspective, though.
| yobbo wrote:
| The part that is narcissistic is believing your empathy
| is uniquely taking a toll on you.
| Juliate wrote:
| > You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if
| your empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to
| be a better manager, then you're probably not doing a very
| good job as a manager.
|
| That sounds... very peculiar, un-empathetic a point of
| view, like you are blaming someone for facing a difficult
| moment.
|
| Case in point, if you were to manage managers, and you had
| to tell that to one of your report facing such a
| situation... that would be, in that case, a fail in
| management on your part.
|
| You don't tell people in a tough spot to "toughen up", "not
| good for that role", not even in corporate environments.
|
| That's plain toxic. And inefficient (whereas you should be
| looking for a way to improve the situation/morale in some
| way, short term, and long term).
|
| So you give them the space to explore the situation, their
| feelings, and you support them to find their solutions.
| That's how you lead by example. Not by jumping to
| conclusion "oh... looks like someone's not fit for the
| role".
| darkerside wrote:
| You make some good points, but it's important to keep in
| mind that as a manager, when you are task allocating and
| reprioritizing employee work, you need to keep your team's
| individual challenges in mind. The same way that a
| developer might need to manage server resources, or
| consider the impact of a new feature on future maintenance,
| a manager needs to solve the problem, except the resources
| available to solve the problem happen to be human.
|
| If a teammate has a sick parent, everyone on the team may
| choose to empathize. For the manager, every challenge that
| comes up, the parent sickness is one of your constraints to
| be dealt with. You need to compartmentalize sufficiently
| that you can think about this without stopping your work to
| solve the problem, but not so much that you treat the
| worker as a non-human resource. It can get a little tough.
| jghn wrote:
| > then it's emotionally just as taxing whether you're an IC
| or a manager
|
| Speaking from experience, at least for me that's not true.
| For me the largest emotional toll is knowing that I'm
| responsible for dealing with whatever is happening. Sure, I
| might wind up taking the exact same actions as an IC. But
| as an IC I don't *have* to. And that helps, even if just
| enough.
| walterbell wrote:
| s/has a heavy emotional toll/is emotional labor/
|
| Sustainable labor requires care, including of the manager.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| > Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy
| emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy
| that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully.
|
| I've been a manager, and I've also been a volunteer
| firefighter for many years. I've seen a lot of things no
| person should see.
|
| My relatively brief stint in management kept me awake at
| night more than the shotgun vs face suicide, or fatal motor
| vehicle accidents that I attended in the same period. I think
| it was because the fate of those people was well out of my
| hands, but the livelihood of my direct reports was not.
| hnisoss wrote:
| you sound like a very empathetic person. But hear me out -
| at end of the day, it's all just business. I was let go on
| Thursday, 1 hour before end of shift, in a 60 seconds zoom
| call. Got told that core team is working hands on in the
| office, has high velocity, and me being remote is slowing
| them down. I strongly suspect it was also about the fact
| that this week they had me work on a project I haven't
| touched yet, and I got no support to set the dev env
| properly even. So I was developing blind, while also
| working overtime to push changes to backend I joined to
| work on. My wife just lost a kid, this was first job I had
| in 8 months, just started on new year. We are in small
| debt. I worked from 6 in the afternoon to 5 in the morning
| (timezone difference) to output a lot, so they keep me and
| raise my rate. Company raised 16mm but they're still
| startup, yknow. So when push comes to shove you get let go
| without them asking about any of that, or concern themself
| with it. CEO almost bitterly thanked me for working with
| them and notified me my contact is over and that's it, hung
| up and left to work on their launch. Team didn't even
| notice I m gone. I still went to coworking space today to
| send CVs because I didn't have heart to tell wife we are
| cooked again. But look, it happened before, I chose to do
| this job. I'll deal with the fallout, find new one. It is
| O.K., I'm not entitled to anyone's pitty. Like I said, that
| is the risk of business. As manager you cannot set rules of
| the company. And even if you could, sometimes you still
| need to make hard decisions. You're not a rock in the
| stream they can latch on, you are another man floating
| downstream. Don't lose sleep.
| odiroot wrote:
| There's also a huge part of "managing moods" to prevent people
| from thinking about leaving in the first place. And all of that
| within the constraints of the department budget and company
| policies.
| apwell23 wrote:
| yes!! 90% of manager's job is setting the mood.
| intelVISA wrote:
| from vibe coding to vibe management
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| The real Vibe Coding
| the_arun wrote:
| I think smaller companies do think this way of retaining good
| people. Large corporations believe anyone is replaceable. Again
| I am an IC & don't see/hear any extra work done for retention.
| This proves your point though.
| gajjanag wrote:
| > Large corporations believe anyone is replaceable.
|
| This is definitely true. By design, large corporations are
| structured so that there is no single point of failure.
|
| > Again I am an IC & don't see/hear any extra work done for
| retention.
|
| Even in large corporations, extra work definitely happens for
| retention (I have experienced it myself as an IC). Even
| though everyone is by design replaceable, the organization
| has some incentive to work on retention:
|
| a) Bad retention hurts the organization's reputation and
| future hiring (horror stories spread very fast)
|
| b) Within the team, losing a great teammate hurts morale and
| output and managers know it will result in a hit on their
| metrics at least for the next half.
|
| c) Managers may not always be able to backfill, and losing an
| employee can reduce the size of their "empire" that they are
| often trying so hard to establish at whatever cost.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| There's also a constant tension between using fear as a
| motivator to squeeze more work out of employees, but not
| squeeze so hard that they quit. Different companies find
| their own spot on this continuum. For example, Amazon is
| famously in the sweatshop part of the scale and they could
| care less about their reputation. They seem to be doing OK
| though.
| h4ny wrote:
| > there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you
| never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an
| IC.
|
| That's what most bad managers I have worked tend to
| _overestimate_ -- they think they are doing real work tanking
| the team from "bad" things when they are actually the one not
| communicating with the team and just cave to upper management
| every time when protecting your team really counts.
|
| Most people I have worked with are aware that their average-to-
| good managers have to deal with things that they don't see, and
| when that understanding is mutual and respectful, then great
| work happens. When the manager always thinks that they are
| shielding bad things (when they are not) and the team isn't
| getting the communication they need, that's when bad things
| happen (and the manger ends up getting promoted and the rest of
| the team gets laid-off anyway).
|
| > Case in point: trying to retain good people.
|
| It's actually not that difficult: just be honest to people,
| treat them fairly, and be considerate.
|
| If you spend more time arguing/reasoning why they don't deserve
| to be promoted/get a raise than thinking about/making planning
| for ways to get them promoted or fight for their salary, you're
| just a bad manager. Sorry (assuming they even have the
| awareness) is not good enough when you have screwed up
| someone's career progression by half a year, let alone more. It
| happens too often.
|
| It baffles me that people think there is some sort of art or
| science in retaining good people. If good people want to try
| something completely and they can only do so by leaving, then
| let them. Otherwise, if good people want to leave it's always
| the company's fault (bad managers, insane colleagues who hurts
| culture, and many other bad things).
|
| > Good people often times end up wanting to leave for a variety
| of reasons ranging from ludicrous to 100% legitimate. They
| often announce they are leaving to their direct manager and
| maybe one other person (E.g. head of another team they work
| with etc).
|
| Good people usually want to leave because the company is not
| treating them well enough, it's as simple as that. If they
| leave for reasons that you can't comprehend that doesn't make
| them "ludicrous", you're just not good enough to understand
| what's really pushing them to leave.
|
| Bad people, on the other hand, would leave for a variety of
| reasons, including ludicrous ones.
|
| Assuming we are on the same page, good people are also often
| professional. So of course they will announce they are leaving
| to their direct manager, that's just the right, professional
| thing to do. Not sure what you point is there.
|
| > Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers
| escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers,
| senior managers and HR. In the best case, this leads to a
| successful retention.
|
| Successful retention in this case is very rare (unless they're
| they are not as good as you think they are). By the time good
| people want to leave, they have already made up their mind and
| it would take some pretty drastic changes or life-changing kind
| of money to keep them. It's rare that companies can make
| drastic changes like that when they have already screwed up for
| so long so that good people are pushed out. It's also rare
| that, by the time someone has made up their mind on leaving,
| that they genuinely want to stay even if the (new) price is
| right -- most management doesn't realize that the implication
| is that they have treated people unfairly for too long, and
| people are not just going to forget about it when you offer
| them more money now (what about all the time they have been
| underpaid?).
|
| > However, the only people that know any of this happened are
| the employee and the manager tier. The other employees have
| zero idea any of this occurred unless someone shares/mentions
| it. I point this out b/c multiple times as an IC, I thought "no
| one will care if I leave b/c I never see managers actively
| trying to keep people".
|
| That's just bad company policy and most likely management is
| silencing people for some downright stupid reasons. If good
| people are leaving, their leaving usually already says it all,
| and silence actually makes other good people even more
| suspicious of the management.
|
| In most cases, other employees who have good working
| relationship with good people actually have a better idea than
| management. If you're talking about people who don't
| know/haven't worked with those good people then... they
| wouldn't have cared either way.
|
| So yes, the only reason people don't know is because it's now
| common practice to get people leaving to agree to NDAs --
| especially when they aren't just leaving on normal
| terms/compensation -- even when there is absolutely no reason
| for them to sign any NDAs. It's not because nobody wants to
| tell, it's because people have been scared into not
| talking/literally gagged.
|
| In the end, if you're not a narcissist, why do you want anyone
| you're not close to care about you leaving anyway? As long as
| you get well-compensated where necessary, chances are the
| people who really care about you already know what's happening
| anyway.
|
| > The point of this story is twofold: - managers do a lot of
| "unseen" work - it's worth researching this kind of thing if
| you are about to move from IC to manager.
|
| "Unseen" is overrated in my opinion. In the context of moving
| from IC to manger, the word "unexpected" is more apt then
| "unseen".
|
| Alternatively, if there is a lot of "unseen" work, then the
| manager is basically work that they aren't communicating to the
| reports AND their reports can't hold them accountable to those
| "unseen" work, which is clearly a sign of broken communication
| and cultural problem. You can argue about most managers don't
| actually see the work that good reports do equally well.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > It's actually not that difficult: just be honest to people,
| treat them fairly, and be considerate.
|
| Then why do we see so many people complaining about bad
| managers?
| beardedwizard wrote:
| You make it sound like employees are perfect and communicate
| transparently at all times. Many people lack the ability to
| be self critical and want to avoid confrontation. That often
| leads to surprises, a managers worst friend.
| betaby wrote:
| Not op. But to refute 'You make it sound like employees are
| perfect and communicate transparently at all times' and
| 'surprises, a managers worst friend'.
|
| Modern workplaces forced quarterly reviews, thus there
| should be no surprises. In practise reviews actively
| prohibit employees from communicating transparently.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The issues with any of these things is bad
| companies/managers burn lots more people than good
| companies, hence creating large numbers of people with
| zero trust in things like reviews.
|
| This is, if you've been burned by a company getting rid
| of you after being transparent, you are never going to be
| transparent again even if it would be in your favor. Then
| when you look at most companies thinking the most
| important thing is how much profit they are going to make
| next quarter that quarterly meeting stops looking like an
| event to see how you are doing, into one where the
| company determines how much blood they can extract from
| your withered corpse.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| Your last sentence makes me think we agree. In my
| experience employees perceive they have much more to lose
| from transparency. If they are low agency, not actively
| bad and defer when asked what they want, you may be
| surprised when they finally quit.
| apwell23 wrote:
| you should never try to retain someone thats trying to leave.
| Even if you are successful at the moment they will leave
| eventually.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Is this always true?
|
| If their only concerns are things a manager can change, then
| why would they leave if they get what they were seeking
| elsewhere?
| kyleee wrote:
| Definitely not always true; but commonly stated as truth.
| super_trooper wrote:
| Not always true. I've coached people to stay before and
| they are still at the company. Sometimes they have concerns
| that actually could be fixed from management. People are
| complex and have many different reasons for wanting to
| leave, some fixable some not.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > Sometimes they have concerns that actually could be
| fixed from management.
|
| curious. what are some examples of this and why do they
| take threat of leaving before management fixes it.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| My uncle wanted more money, and when his current employer
| counter offered he stayed for years afterward.
| aprdm wrote:
| Not true in my experience being on both sides of the
| equation
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Conversely, if an employer tries to retain you, the safest
| assumption is _'... until your replacement appears '_
|
| No honor among thieves, etc. I've given every place a chance
| just to see what happens, it's always been a joke. The
| dynamics don't work.
|
| I was promised $50k last time! Not enough to look over my
| shoulders _even more_.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| The idiom is "honor amongst thieves", i.e. MF DOOM:
|
| > It don't make no sense, what happened to the loyalty?
|
| > Honor amongst crooks, trust amongst royalty.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Credit where it's due, but language exists to be used. I
| wasn't quoting their work but countless bad movies
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Ah yes. I see now that your negation works out to be the
| same expression.
|
| Sorry about your rug pull experience though.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The idiom is "honor amongst thieves"
|
| This is obviously false.
|
| But if you really need documentation,
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44388/is-
| there-h... has collected quite a lot of it.
| driverdan wrote:
| If someone puts in a resignation then sure, let them go. But
| if they come to you, their manager, and say "I'm thinking
| about leaving" it's a different situation. They may have a
| legitimate reason that you can solve to their satisfaction.
| apwell23 wrote:
| never respond to threats or negotiate with terrorists
| pixl97 wrote:
| I find far too often that people that state things like
| the are the terrorists.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you
| never see and therefore don 't often think about when you are
| an IC._
|
| _This_ is what needs to be discussed in standups, yet
| strangely never is.
| Rickasaurus wrote:
| Crisis management is a big part of the job, and the more people
| you have the higher the chance there is a crisis at any given
| point in time. Around 100 devs there's usually at least 1-2
| things going on at any given time.
| moregrist wrote:
| Personally I think spending huge amounts of time on retention
| _after_ someone resigns indicates huge, possibly org-wide,
| problems with communication and career development.
|
| There are lots of reasons people resign, but a lot of the time
| it comes back to feeling bored, under appreciated, or that
| their career has stalled. If you're actively managing a team,
| you should be balancing these things, _and it should be
| obvious_ at least to people who are paying attention. Both
| developing someone's career and signaling that you want to help
| are fundamental in a manager building good relationships with
| their reports.
|
| Or as Rands in Repose points out in his post on "Diving Save"
| [1]:
|
| > Diving Saves are usually a sign of poor leadership. People
| rarely just up and leave. There are a slew of obvious warning
| signs I've documented elsewhere, but the real first question
| you have to ask yourself once you get over the shock of an
| unexpected resignation is: "Did you really not see it coming?
| Really?"
|
| If you routinely don't see it coming, maybe your reports have a
| legit gripe about what you're spending your time on.
|
| [1] https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-diving-save/
| dskhatri wrote:
| Part of being a manager is to be proactive in trying to retain
| the good people. Increasing their visibility within the
| leadership and across the organization, paying keen attention
| to their career goals, selling these goals in advance to your
| manager and others within the organization, clearing hurdles
| that may be affecting their work etc.
|
| And most importantly, plan for their departure. Do you have any
| internal candidates to take their position? What would it take
| to hire somebody and bring them to the IC's level?
|
| When they finally decide they want to move on, you have
| hopefully laid the groundwork to keep them at the company (they
| move to a different group with an opportunity that matches
| their ambitions), or you don't have the arduous task of
| replacing them all of a sudden.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Its a good example to call out but it should be obvious to
| anyone genuinely considering the transition. Managers are there
| to manage people, the job is easy when the teams awesome and
| the jobs hard when the team isn't awesome. This includes poor
| performance, attrition, and people drama. All things that come
| with the territory of managing humans.
| whoevercares wrote:
| Does anyone tell their manager they are leaving and still
| expecting anything nowadays? I thought dive-and-save is very
| rare since the flattening trend happened (esp. in big tech)
| jcadam wrote:
| Never experienced the dive-and-save myself. Usually a wince
| and a sigh, followed by "oh... when's your last day?" Your
| first line supervisor is upset, but resigned that he's
| powerless to do anything substantive that might retain you.
| The MBAs at corporate HQ couldn't care less, and it'll take
| them weeks/months to get around to approving a new job req.
| class3shock wrote:
| Are you saying you, as a manager, are running a group so poorly
| that you have enough churn to where retention makes up a large
| percentage what you work on day to day?
|
| Or are you saying your company treats/pays employees so poorly
| that there is significant turnover throughout the organization?
| And instead of generally treating/paying employees better they
| rather have middle management spend a significant amount of
| their time discussing retention?
|
| And you are choosing to highlight this as something IC's should
| appreciate that management has to deal with?
| snoman wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, it seems, but you raise a very real
| point: you need to have a high turnover, or rough span of
| control ratios, in order for this to be a common interrupt.
|
| Especially given it's well known that people don't leave
| companies, they leave bad managers... it's a bit telling.
|
| Anecdotally: I spent 6-7 years managing at various levels
| (manger/sr mgr/director) before going back to an IC role, and
| I had a single regrettable attrition (+2 non-regrettable) in
| that time.
| moregrist wrote:
| > Especially given it's well known that people don't leave
| companies, they leave bad managers...
|
| I know this is an old saw because it's usually true, but
| I've left companies where I had a good relationship with my
| manager because I lost confidence in leadership at some
| level above them.
|
| Sometimes you can see the train wreck coming and it's time
| to go.
| jamwil wrote:
| Would someone be so kind as to tell me what IC stands for?
| caleblloyd wrote:
| Individual Contributor- a position that doesn't have reports
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| > Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers
| escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers,
| senior managers and HR.
|
| Locking, barn, horses etc.
| oytis wrote:
| Sounds like pretty bad point to intervene though? If I decided
| to leave, and even announced it I'm probably pretty pissed off
| already. I probably raised my concerns before - or if I
| haven't, it is an indication of dysfunction of its own, I just
| had no space for that. In the best case you give me something
| that convinces me not to leave - and my takeaway will be that
| things are only going to change if I threaten with leaving.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Steve Jobs on a related topic, what it means to be a leader:
|
| https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo
|
| Guess VPs (according to both) are it
| Nemi wrote:
| I am not a big fan of Steve overall, but the one thing he
| inherently understood was "identity". How I am using "identity"
| in this context is, how someone sees themselves. It is the
| story they tell themselves about themselves. I am a good
| leader. I and good at solving problems. I am a dog person. I am
| tidy or I am sloppy. And on and on.
|
| If you hire for identity rather than skillset, you don't have
| to manage people. They self-manage. My best managers were ones
| where the product that they managed was a part of their
| identity. How it worked. How reliable it was. They weren't
| always the smartest people. It often took them longer to solve
| problems. BUT, they solved them on their own, without me having
| to supervise. Because they would not give up on the problem
| until it was solved. To give up would be to admit that their
| identity was flawed, and that just was not an option.
|
| When you hire people like this effectively as a leader you must
| really allow them to own it. They must have the responsibility
| and the authority to make decisions, even when those decisions
| differ from what decision you would make. Results are what
| matters.
|
| Steve understood this.
| chrz wrote:
| thanks for putting into words what i realised but couldnt
| formulate. best workers were ones where the product that they
| managed was a part of their identity.
| astrange wrote:
| This is important, but you still have to manage those people
| because nothing lasts forever and they can burn out!
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Some of this seems a little simplistic; as a relatively new
| director who reports to the CTO I think everyone is "building the
| plan" but at different levels of granularity. Where we run into
| trouble is when the CTO gets too far away from defining the broad
| outcomes and veers deep into the "how". They get very
| prescriptive, but without the context of the implementation
| details or any real knowledge of the countless small problems
| that directors, then managers, then ICs deal with. It looks a lot
| like (and really is a falvour of) micro-managing.
|
| >> It conflates career development and salary negotiation
|
| I just went through this with an IC 2 levels below me. To the
| credit of the person's manager they communicated to the IC "don't
| ask me for a promotion when you want more money". The (easily
| said; harder to implement) solution is to build a management
| relationship with people that has an "agent-client" dynamic. The
| direct manager can't be viewed as the decision maker and needs to
| be the advocate for this to happen IME.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I think this post is excellent. It clearly describes the problem
| in many companies - granular levels/ladder climbing.
|
| It also describes another great problem that shows up in tech -
| non-technical/non-owner managers, directors, and VP.
|
| As described in this article, the VP is supposed to be the expert
| who created the plan of execution, the director is supposed to be
| the expert who executes it.
|
| But in big tech at least, this is not what happens. VPs and
| directors are clueless to the point of incompetence. They
| understand politics but not how to drive with leadership, deep
| technical understanding, planning, communication, and direction.
| They spend an enormous amount of time in BS like stack ranking
| and perf reviews instead of creating solid plans that move the
| company needle - externally.
|
| As a result, in large companies, you see the corporate hellhole
| decline. VPs and Directors are not respected at all. They can't
| answer much. They aren't clued in on the tech. They don't
| understand competition. They don't understand innovation. They do
| understand ladder climbing politics - so they create an empire of
| ladder climbers.
|
| It is almost hilarious how poor some tech management is. Would
| you join a ship where the captain does not how ship-steering
| works?
| setgree wrote:
| > The biggest single development issue I've seen over the years
| is that many VPs still think like directors.
|
| > The VP's job is to get the right answer. They are the
| functional expert. No one on the team knows their function better
| than they do. And even if someone did, they are still playing the
| VP of function role and it's their job - and no one else's -- to
| get the right answer.
|
| > If the CEO makes a plan, gets it approved by the board, and
| executes it well but it doesn't work, they cannot tell the board
| "but, but, it's the plan we agreed to." Most CEOs wouldn't even
| dream of saying that. It's because CEOs understand they are held
| accountable not for effort or activity, but results. Part of
| truly operating at the VP level is to internalize this fact.
|
| Alas that I read this 6 years too late, because it perfectly
| explains what went wrong at my then-company. A member of the
| C-suite came up with (what sounded like) a good strategy, but it
| didn't work because the engineering team wasn't able to execute
| well enough; and rather than either modify the plan to account
| for this or shift his attention to fixing the engineering culture
| -- which might have been politically impossible, but was still
| his responsibility to try -- he doubled down and became more
| obsessed with implementing the details of a losing plan. In other
| words, he was thinking like a director.
|
| Meanwhile, another front-page item today is a reminder of why
| this stuff matters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43431675
| codemac wrote:
| A great book is "Strategy and the Fat Smoker". It's written by
| a consultant but points out an obvious point: the quality of
| the strategy itself is not nearly as impactful as the ability
| to execute. The author compares this to being a fat smoker who
| won't change their habits - knowing the right strategy is
| insufficient.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Only a consultant would manage to fill a book with such a
| trivial observation.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| This is an interesting way of thinking about it compared to the
| common definition that uses "scope" (which outside IC roles is a
| synonym for to headcount)
| sage76 wrote:
| The main job of these "managers" is repeatedly asking "when will
| this get done?" and "Why isn't it done yet?".
|
| You could hire a parrot to do these jobs.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I found it interesting that the author mentioned tactical
| planning for manager and director, but not strategic planning for
| the VP. That seems like a useful differentiator to me (with
| extremely contrived examples)...
|
| C-level - sets highest level strategy (We're going to the moon!)
|
| VP - adds level of detail to strategy (draws a map from earth to
| the moon, decides we need a rocket ship to get there)
|
| Director - bridges strategy and tactics (creates high level
| requirements the rocket ship, makes sure there are enough gas
| stations on the way to the moon)
|
| Manager - ensures tactical success (ensures the team builds a
| rocket that meets the spec, makes sure the rocket stops for gas
| on the way)
|
| And of course, for a sufficiently large org, some of this gets
| offloaded to dedicated Product Managers, Program Managers, etc.
| But, that's orthogonal to the point of the article, I think.
| nyclounge wrote:
| VP seems like just a title that corporation gives out when they
| run out of brownie points or something.
| astrange wrote:
| I think the impression comes from banks, because you need to
| be a VP to sign contracts for the company or something like
| that, so they just make everyone a VP.
| 110jawefopiwa wrote:
| C-level - sets highest level strategy (We're going to the
| moon!)
|
| VP - Tells directors to work faster
|
| Director - Tells managers to work faster
|
| Manager - unblocks team
|
| ICs - do real work
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Or another way to put it is
|
| VP- protects their empire from the C level
|
| Director- protects their department from the VP
|
| Manager- protects their team from the director
|
| IC- can get real work done because they are protected from
| this political crap
| stackedinserter wrote:
| If you want to be a VP, just come to a company where I work. It's
| not been growing in size for like 15 years, and these top ranks
| have been saturating with people who asked for promotions.
|
| Everyone is VP, director or head of something to the point that
| it just looks ridiculous when His Highness Head of QA and His
| Majesty CTO stay late in the office to fix that useEffect hook in
| the cancel subscription pop-up.
| b800h wrote:
| Obligatory UK translation here: If you're reading this in the UK,
| when he writes "Director", the nuance is different. In the UK,
| this means _Company Director_ most of the time, although the US
| influence is changing this.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Really appreciate this post as I try making the leap from Senior
| IC Engineer into a "next rung up" role (currently aiming for
| Enterprise Architect, Principal IC Engineer, or Management of
| ICs); it really helps explain what mindset I should be having for
| each phase, should I seek to continue upward growth.
|
| In the here and now, it seems like my "sweet spot" is to aim for
| Director in the next five years or so, regardless of the next
| role I eventually take (currently on the hunt due to RIF). I'm
| already at the point where I'm mentoring junior colleagues,
| delegating tasks among the team, and spending more time on
| tactics and strategy than daily engineering work - and that seems
| to fit with a Director role, albeit cross-function and cross-
| domain (which is what I _already do_ , being an infra engie that
| can also do networking _and_ storage _and_ public cloud _and_
| collaboration - _Senior_ jack of all trades). Above that (VP,
| etc)...I dunno, guess it depends on what kind of person I am in
| five years ' time, after I've hit Director and had some
| experience in that role.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I think to be a manager, also 'read the room', or 'context'.
| Your response is just a bunch of "I this" , "I That". Nobody
| knows you. What does your current step in life have to do with
| anything, with anybody else.
|
| The "I" isn't important. At best someone that does this, could
| just bore everyone, or at worst could alienate, or give
| impression as arrogant, self centered, if you are only talking
| about yourself. (you didn't, but could lead to that).
|
| It is possible to phrase information in a non-self referential
| way. Talk about what others want to hear about.
| apwell23 wrote:
| hah yea i have very low confidence that this person is going
| be sucessful at their goal the way they described it
|
| seemed like the opposite of what i suggested here
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43434340
| stego-tech wrote:
| Ya'll be reading way too much into a potential management
| or leadership style based on one comment about what _I
| specifically_ took away from the OP and how it affected _me
| specifically_. If anything, the vibe I 'm getting back is
| that you're the types to make strong judgements based on
| single sources absent broader context, which is _not_
| something I 'd want in either an engineer _or_ a leader
| above me, as it demonstrates a degree of inflexibility or
| unwillingness to be wrong. The one above you at least
| challenged me in a way I could respond to, rather than
| resorting to an insult masquerading as critique based upon
| _one comment_.
|
| Take your own advice:
|
| > Genuinely like ppl around you from your heart ( not fake
| it)
|
| Folks who genuinely empathize with others aren't quick to
| resort to anonymized slights based on limited information,
| in my experience. Rather, it's the fakers who all too
| quickly devolve into brash and flippant comments when they
| feel they're safe behind some sort of shield. I'm aware
| this is a bit hypocritical on my part saying it this way,
| but sometimes you gotta wade into the mud to make your
| case.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| That is how I meant it. Just observation.
|
| When I was younger engineer. I did 'I' self reference
| speech a lot. It was years later I realized it was
| alienating people. Now really focus more time on
| listening, and only speaking about what the other person
| is interested in. Now when others are always using "I",
| it just stands out at me.
|
| People really are simple, and want to talk about
| themselves, so if you realize this, and talk about what
| others want to talk about, you get along better.
|
| I picked it up from Dale Carnegie, 'How to Win Friends
| and Influence People'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Infl
| uen...
| apwell23 wrote:
| Yep its very for almost everyone because so much of our
| identity is tied around I and its very hard to let that
| go. I personally struggle with that a lot.
| stego-tech wrote:
| ...yeah, I get that, and have been articulating that better
| through career coaching, leadership skills development, and
| actual work. My comment on this piece _was_ self-referential,
| though, in an attempt to explain what _I_ got from the piece,
| and how it affected _me_. Hence the extensive use of I
| /Me/first-person-perspective.
|
| In an actual leadership role, _my_ role is to build and
| maintain the bridge between _our_ team, _their_ expertise,
| and the agendas of those above _us_. I champion _their_
| successes, and shelter _them_ from unwarranted blame. _I_ set
| the tone, and in order for _them_ to be successful, it needs
| to be a tone _they_ resonate positively with. It 's a role
| that's part translator, part leader, part firewatcher, and
| part strategist, all on top of the usual IC stuff - at least
| initially, or as needed (e.g., headcount reductions, RIFs).
|
| At least for initial management roles, it's about maintaining
| balance - ensuring the team is productive and can succeed,
| without letting them burn themselves out or get dragged into
| "makework"/"busywork".
| throwaway-0101 wrote:
| Wow, this post could not have come at a more welcome time.
|
| I'm a Solutions Architect, and after 4 years in-role am agitating
| for advancement; a 2-year merger put everything for everyone on
| hold until its resolution. It's become clear that there has been
| no plan for advancement.
|
| After unsolicited and vague promises of a director or even VP(!?)
| role before the merger resolution, they have since been talking
| of *maybe* a manager, or maybe *maybe* senior manager role.
| *Maybe* managing just two of my current developers, whom they are
| preparing to off-shore. This all while they have promoted another
| SA to a director position; a well-deserved promotion at that.
|
| Oh, they're also getting rid of the Solutions Architect job
| itself: soon I will be "Lead Analyst".
|
| This is all to say that the post and all your comments are very
| helpful! Love this site.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| In my experience:
|
| 1.) As a manager I was working tactically to facilitate the day-
| to-day plans of my leaders. I also functioned as a buffer between
| those leaders and my direct reports. I typically made a decent
| bit LESS than my direct reports as I was management, not
| development.
|
| 2.) As a director (I was responsible for an entire main product)
| I developed, negotiated, and implemented a long term (1 - 5
| years) strategic plan for a product. I primarily interacted with
| team/focus managers and the directors of the company (Prez, VPs,
| etc.) to further those goals. I made considerably more than my
| direct reports and had options as part of total comp.
|
| 3.) As a (junior) VP I primarily did coordination between product
| line directors and the operational heads (EVP, Prez). Focused on
| long term corporate strategy which tended to be much more about
| finance than about product. Dealt a lot with VC/investor
| relations, corporate partnerships and market positioning.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| Dave Kellogg is definitely someone worth listening to.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| A lot of manager talk on HN lately. Time to start Manager News?
| Rooster61 wrote:
| Many times, the best managers are the ones that are good
| hackers in the first place.
|
| I get tired of the "eww, management is where engineers who
| can't hack it go to die" trope.
| Havoc wrote:
| Also very dependent on sector.
|
| Noticed hn in general seems to consider VP pretty senior. In my
| day to day finance world it's basically middle management. i.e.
| People still pretty deep in the detail
| nilkn wrote:
| In finance, this would be more like a managing director (e.g.,
| in Two Sigma, one of the engineering leaders reporting directly
| to the CTO). You're totally right that "VP" just refers to more
| like a mid-level or senior engineer in that world.
| keeptrying wrote:
| This is also why starting your own thing will give you better
| experience at being a VP than working at a 9-5.
|
| (But it's also harder than being a VP.)
|
| And if you're going back to 9-5 after an unsuccessful startup
| stint, look for VP or GM like roles. Anything else won't have
| enough degrees of freedom to keep you happy
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Some advice to the managers and aspiring managers from the
| perspective an employee.
|
| Good qualities in managers:
|
| * I have a lot to learn from you
|
| * you reward me with promotions and bonuses when I do well
|
| * you can sell a vision, even a small one, and motivate me
|
| * you take my problems and concerns seriously and do not ignore
| them, rather than gas-lighting me and trying to paint my concerns
| as the problem
|
| * you have the awareness to figure out what my core motivations
| are, and have and skill to align your goals with mine, thus
| putting both of us on a path towards shared success
|
| * you are forthcoming and honest with your feedback, bc you see
| my blindspots and tell me about them so I can fix them
|
| * you understand that too much attrition is a bad signal for
| management success
|
| * you understand that as a leader you understand accountability
| -- you deserve a greater proportion of the success but also the
| downside when things go bad
|
| * I want to crawl over broken glass for you bc of all of the
| above bc you have earned my loyalty
|
| Bad qualities in managers:
|
| * there isn't much to learn from you, and the best thing I can
| learn is not how to be bad manager, bc you're a bad manager and I
| know it
|
| * if you leave and my performance does not suffer, it means your
| presence never had a positive effect (or any effect) in my role
|
| * you gas light me when I bring up problems and concerns,
| shifting any responsibly form you to me
|
| * you are neurotic and I need to work around your emotions to
| make you "feel good", and I get more reward for this than
| actually delivering work
|
| * you do not have the courage to give me difficult feedback that
| I need to hear bc you are afraid of having uncomfortable and
| awkward conversations
|
| * you are so preoccupied with making _your_ manager happy that
| you sacrifice your employees to accomplish this
|
| * you do not care enough about attrition and underestimate the
| consequences of losing good employees, mostly bc your employees
| feel the consequences, not you
|
| * bc of your lack of skill as manager, the relationships you have
| with your employees end up being adversarial rather then a shared
| success..no one wants to crawl over broken glass to work for you
| and the employees who stick around do not want to be there
|
| * you do not understand accountability -- you repeatedly make
| poor decisions bc you never face the consequences, until its too
| late and then you get fired bc at that point, its obvious the
| problems was you all along
|
| * you were promoted bc you kissed the right ass at the right
| time, which does great damage to your world view bc now you
| assume this is just the way the world works
|
| I could keep going, but that should suffice for now.
| yujzgzc wrote:
| This puts words over why I don't want to be promoted. I've
| watched enough VPs looking enviously at the seemingly stress free
| life (comparatively speaking) of lower level staff engineers,
| busy as they are shuffling from one escalation to another instead
| of actually building stuff.
| seneca wrote:
| You're not wrong. Upper management is a very stressful grind
| with little glory. It used to be that it was paid very well to
| compensate for that, but staff engineer jobs are close enough
| in comp now that the difference in stress becomes really
| questionable.
| astrange wrote:
| ...What do they actually do all day?
|
| I understand what line managers do just fine, but our company
| works on a process where important projects are supervised by
| a VP, which really leaves you with the feeling that you never
| see what the directors are doing. Presumably they're doing
| something. Although my last one got fired because everyone
| under him thought he was useless, so maybe not.
|
| Reading the article, it also makes them sound useless because
| it just says it's okay if they have an excuse for failing.
| runamuck wrote:
| When I had an IC role, I would recommend tech projects and
| execute them w/ my team (we can solve "problem X" with "tech
| stack Y"). I also had a lot of agency in creating solutions for
| tech proposals. When I had the director role, I made sure nobody
| wasted time. I would qualify deals to chase, recommend strategies
| and core competencies to pursue (AI and Cloud yes, Blockchain and
| Quantum no). Now, in my VP role I try to get people good at
| making these strategy decisions (we should follow shipley for
| capture, etc.). Also, a LOT more relationship capital building
| and external COMMs at the VP level.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Interstingly in a traditional British company directors are the
| most senior and VPs don't exist. A director would be a board
| level job, as in a statutory director.
|
| Obviously there are a lot of US companies in the UK and their
| influence spreads...
| anthomtb wrote:
| Is it me or do attempts to generalize career development across
| companies seem futile?
|
| The concrete example here I can give is working at one company
| where "Manager" meant you had 10+ direct reports and were
| expected to do almost no technical work. Versus a second company
| where "Manager" meant you had 4-5 directs and were doing
| significant amount of technical work. The path from IC to Manager
| at company 1 had almost no commonalities with company 2 despite
| similar-sounding titles.
|
| I guess what I am saying is that promotion ladders are so tightly
| integrated with company norms that attempting to seek outside
| advice on "how do I get to the next level" seems useless.
|
| Edit: To rephrase more succinctly - Are articles like TFA useless
| or do I not know how to interperet them?
| class3shock wrote:
| To be a good manager means to run a team well and get stuff done.
| To be a good VP means to increase shareholder value. To be a
| director means you are at some percentage of completion of the
| soul/morality extraction process that happens when transitioning
| from the first to the second.
| balls187 wrote:
| "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the
| difference."
|
| I vaguely remember a quote that goes "No kid ever dreamed about
| growing up to be a middle manager."
|
| I get that work is just a means to an end, but find something you
| love to do. If you love management, that's great. I love being an
| engineer, and prefer to be a player/coach over just a leader, and
| hate that as I get older my age is looked down on.
| pc86 wrote:
| IME the only time (higher) age is looked down on is when it's
| used a crutch by that person - whether its derision of others
| because they're _not_ as old, or "I've been around longer than
| you so you should listen to me simply because of that" or
| whatever the case may be.
|
| I've worked with great people who were decades older than
| everyone else on the team, and nobody cared how old they were.
| I've also worked with people who sounded like a caricature of
| the worst parts of early 90's Usenet. That eyes almost
| universally rolled every time they opened their mouth had
| absolutely nothing to do with their age, although I'd bet my
| next paycheck they would insist that was why.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I always say being a manager is one of the toughest jobs around,
| tougher than most IC jobs. But at the same time, bad managers
| have many more avenues to escape accountability than ICs do.
|
| I greatly respect the good managers I know. But as a current
| example, one of their direct peers has spent several years
| driving off top talent, failing to deliver on goals, and is now
| encouraging others to quit in order to destroy their own team on
| the way out...and is currently on a multi month leave of absence!
| And their boss says "oh but you see I must follow process x" and
| "the problem has only recently gotten this bad." All of which are
| bullshit lies to cover the fact that this toxic manager has been
| very effective at deflecting and avoiding.
|
| I have to wonder about a job function that cannot police its own
| ranks.
| protonbob wrote:
| > I can't tell you the number of times people have asked me for
| "development" or "leveling" conversations where I get excited and
| start talking about learning, skills gaps, and such and it's
| clear all they wanted to talk about was salary.
|
| This seems to be a rather naive response. In a paying job, the
| main impetus to increase your knowledge and performance is to
| gain more salary. Clearly the people that they are talking to
| want to know "what kind of value do I need to provide to the
| company in terms of knowledge or skills that will enable me to
| make more money". I don't see why this should be a
| disappointment.
| woodrow wrote:
| The author is excited to talk about helping the employee grow
| and have more impact, which (if successful) should make them
| more valuable to the company, resulting in promotion and
| increased compensation.
|
| He perceives employees who want to talk with him about
| "leveling" as seeking the formula or checklist to get paid
| more, and not necessarily about growing or putting in the work.
|
| The latter is fine if your performance objectives are objective
| and directly aligned with company success (i.e. achievement of
| sales quotas). It's more fraught if your performance objectives
| are more subjective or defined in ways that are proxies for
| company success--it's easy to fall prey to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law where employees
| do the things that get them promoted, which may actually make
| them or the company more valuable.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| This article is good, but I want to complain about this argument
| (which the author is not responsible for):
|
| > CEOs understand they are held accountable not for effort or
| activity, but results
|
| IMO that's one of the biggest problems in the American business
| world. If you ruin the company long term to get "results," your
| plan is successful. If you harm the company short term for long
| term benefit, your plan has failed.
|
| No long term thinking, just watching number go up and down. It's
| practically a form of superstition.
| rexpop wrote:
| > Nobody gives a hoot about profit.
|
| -- W. Edwards Deming
| tflinton wrote:
| I might disagree a bit with this, I've had all three titles and
| from my experience:
|
| A manager is executing on plans, managing the work, aligning
| people on teams and enforcing policy & process.
|
| A director is creating the plans to solve problems, intaking
| work, aligning teams and creating good processes from policy.
|
| A VP is about defining the problem teams need to solve, managing
| capacity/budget for work, aligning on a strategy across a company
| and creating good policy.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Most of the work of "good" managers is about affecting culture,
| providing a sustainable work load, emotional intelligence,
| encouraging team work and sense of shared ownership
|
| Yet in outsider society and political discourse this is thrown
| into the trash under the weight of individual rewards and
| exploitation
|
| Perhaps we need a rethink
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-21 23:00 UTC)