Comment by mouzogu
2 years ago
Interested in moving from Engineer to Manager because I hope to do less work. Happy to do a few meetings, send a few emails, rather than actually having to build stuff that i don't care about.
It's even better if as you say the success is determined by the team, because then also the failure can be pushed on the team.
Edit: FWIW not that I want to be a bad manager. The environment is what shapes your incentives and behaviours.
I've done both and I can assure you that management is not less work.
In fact, you are more likely to work longer hours, and attend meetings at stupid times because that's the only slot you can get the more senior managers to meet at.
However, you sound disillusioned with your work, and maybe you do need to transition into something else. A new challenge can revitalise you, and it doesn't have to be forever.
I've met plenty of engineers who seem to believe that everyone else's non technical role is easy. Keep an open mind, and don't approach new opportunities with a negative attitude, or you will probably remain discontented.
> I've met plenty of engineers who seem to believe that everyone else's non technical role is easy.
Not easy. But it's the difference between being the one who is approving and the one who is doing the work.
The one who has some autonomy and the one who doesn't. The one who is valued and the one who isn't.
Having to attend OOH meeting is less stress for me, then having to build something OOH and make it work. One requires communication, politics, the other one actual tangible deliverables.
> you sound disillusioned with your work
yes, you're right.
Many years ago I did some great courses on team building and management. Also some negotiation skills and assertiveness training. They were really useful to me. Maybe that is something which might help you move into a role with more autonomy.
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> I've met plenty of engineers who seem to believe that everyone else's non technical role is easy.
In my experience it’s like that (I’m talking about engineers vs eng. managers). Another significant difference is the amount of work, I believe: as an engineer I work 4h/day but those 4h are “hard” hours (fully focused) and my brain ends up a bit exhausted after. But that’s all I do in the day for work. On the other hand, eng. managers do more lightweight work, but work longer hours.
I have to say that in my experience, what my eng. managers were doing all day was: 1:1s, meetings with other managers to decide how to shift around people, interviews, being present at some sprint plannings without saying much, being present at some daily meetings without saying much.
To offer a counter datapoint: I moved from engineer to manager while tracking my hours fairly accurately. I can pull off 50 hours of development, including late night emergencies, some client pressure, etc., and still feel energized the weekend, while after 40 hours of management, meetings and firefighting, I become mostly useless and have to take some serious breaks. I enjoy both.
However, there are so many parameters affecting this result that I wouldn't dare to make a call on which role is more tiring in general at a regular company.
- I'm less experienced as a manager, I have to continuously learn a lot and grow fast.
- This is in a young start-up context.
- This is with a very broad scope of responsibilities.
- I'm me.
- etc.
YMMV
The largest fatigue factor to me seems the amount of context switch I have to do as a manager.
People always say that managers work more hours, but I feel like it’d be quite possible to do the job in the time I spend doing my work now. We don’t think it’s normal if programmers work extra hours to get their work done. Why should we for managers?
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Meetings over video conference are as mentally exhausting as coding, honestly. Especially if you actually pay attention
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> In fact, you are more likely to work longer hours, and attend meetings at stupid times because that's the only slot you can get the more senior managers to meet at.
Unless you work with someone internationally and the only time both teams are awake is at ungodly hours for both, so you never get any meetings at normal times.
Yep, like my current place split between US and UK. US people have to get up early and we end up working late.
In my experience engineers have more “free time” than eng. managers. As a senior engineer I have not many meetings per week, and the tasks I need to accomplish I can arrange time for them the best way that fits me. So, on Monday I could work fully focused, let’s say, 4h, and call it a day. On Tuesday spend 2h in meetings and another 2h to do PR reviewing… I have almost absolute control over my day, and that feeling is great.
On the other hand, even though eng. managers mostly do meetings, their calendars are usually packed with them. Even worse, they may have one meeting at 8am, another at 12, and another at 4pm… that kills your day completely since you have to stay available during the whole day. Definitely something I would hate.
Meetings filled with endless bike shedding about trivialities, bickering about specs, push and shove over changes in scope and delivery dates… and then every waking moment outside of those meetings, you’re either following up the above from previous meetings or scheduling new ones. Not a fun time.
The flip side is if it’s “crunch time” it’s not the manager that needs to work 12 hours or weekends to get something shipped.
Maybe it’s just that I’m no longer in my 20s (or that I have only worked for european companies) but I do not work extra hours. If the project is going to “fail” because we are not willing to do crunch time (spoiler: the project is not going to fail because of that) then let it be. Mismanagement of time is on managers not on engineers. I can help sure in a punctual situation, but I’ve never done it so far.
That should never happen at any 'good' company imo, and I haven't personally experienced it.
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That's an extremely myopic and immature view of what management is. You have probably only worked with incompetent managers and your experiences reduce a role that can be both stressful and complex to nothingness.
Ironically, competent managers also make it look easy. Because they must understand that their mood, behavior and what they say can really impact the morale of their reports and their relationships in the organization, many display a calm and professional demeanor. To the untrained, this outward apperance obscures the fact that they work very hard to position their team for success; and navigate, mitigate or repel shitstorms.
Exactly, what merit is there to putting a manager that pushes failure onto the team? Might as well have the team itself report to senior management if one is too eager to get out of the way.
That’s what’s difficult about leadership: success and observable, effusive credit flows down the org chart through the manager to the team. Failure is intercepted and sticks more with the leader.
Neither is 100%, but if you try to push failure 100% onto the team, you’re going to have a really bad time personally and be rightly reviled as a weak leader by your team, your peers, and your senior leaders.
> effusive credit flows down the org chart through the manager to the team
not in my experience tbh.
i worked 16 years as an Engineer across 6 orgs including Fang. What I saw is that the closer you are to management the more valued and rewarded you are.
Simply because you are doing the management's dirty work (your influence is direct) and you have more insight into finances, so it's more difficult for them to underpay you.
Credit very rarely flows down and when it does, in very generalistic way "thanks to X and Y and also the team for their efforts".
Success and failure are determined by the team. You as a manager would be responsible for the outcome.
The thing being managed is the performance of the team. Bad performance == Bad management.
I transitioned to EM and I assure you it’s a lot more work. If you don’t want to fight with your company’s trash IDE, then maybe. But if you think you’ll have less on your plate as an EM then either
1. You’re wrong and you’ll find yourself working more 2. You’re right and you are screwing over your team.
Same here, I just need to work on my sophistry skills, and learn to make loyal friends in the right places.
In a similar boat and have tried this recently, but I can't say it worked. The only real solution seems to be to go elsewhere.
There is something supremely disgusting in being forced to work on projects ("hey client X needs this Y thing done asap") that you don't care about, know they have a close to zero chance of working to an acceptable degree and also know you'll be blamed for their failure. Over and over and over.
Not how it works. You now are responsible for making other people complete work you don’t care about. If they fail, you also fail. Way more risk, way less control over the outcome. Plus your tech skills atrophy the whole time, making you less valuable outside your org leading to a kind of employer lock in.
Ha! Love the honesty.
You must have some very good managers who make their work seem effortless. Perhaps get them to be a mentor when you make the shift so when reality strikes you won't have to deal with it by yourself.