Comment by stavros
2 years ago
As others here have said, you don't grow from engineer to manager, you grow from engineer to lead engineer, or architect, or another similarly technical role.
I was recently promoted from Principal Engineer to Director of Technology in $JOB, and the difference has been striking, mostly in the ability to influence things so we can build the right technology before we start. That feels like a much more natural step for an engineer than throwing away their entire skillset and moving them to a position that requires an entirely different one.
If you want to grow your engineers, give them more (and higher-level, higher-impact technical stuff to do. If they want to become managers, great, but there's not as much overlap between engineering and engineering management as most people seem to think.
A coworker and friend is both an engineer and a manager, and he happens to be great at both of those. Instead of losing one of the skillsets, he has a role where he both manages his team and sets the technical direction for them. This means he manages a much smaller team than he would otherwise, but he loves doing both, so this a natural fit for him.
All this is to say, build your roles according to your people, don't shoehorn them into labels that other companies have told you is "how to do things".
Are you trying to say the Director of Technology is not a management role? Because that doesn’t align with what I’ve seen.
I'm trying to say my Director of Technology role isn't a management role (our Director of Engineering is). I'm responsible for the technologies that we use, develop, maintain, etc, but not the people or teams that do it, and it works very well for us.
I’ve just never seen any director titles without a massive nr of reports. TIL, thanks!
Director of technology is usually not. There is no direct reports. What I've seen is this role existing alongside a director of engineering role which does deal with management.