Comment by skeeter2020
1 day ago
Three buckets of "management":
1. Mentoring: "this is what I did in a similar situation..." - overused and often not as similar or detailed as needed.
2. Coaching: "what do you think?" valuable for longer term development that depends on deeper thought and introspection; Your immediate problems a generally neither of these.
3. Sponsoring: "You mentioned you're looking for X and I heard about a new project where you could learn... want me to connect you?" under-used by managers, super valuable but harder to scale & can be hit/miss.
What your ICs actually need a lot of the time: "solve this problem for me." Most managers can't do this, which is why they became managers. The good ones combine their own skills with 1-3 above to unblock and DON'T push it back on the requestor.
"Can't" is not why people become managers.
At least be thoughtful and say "Won't" (because they prefer management)
In my experience people mostly become managers because that's the next step to more money and there is no other next step to more money. Nothing more nothing less. They certainly don't have a sophisticated philosophy on management and being the best manager they can be.
I’ve worked in places where it’s much easier to promote someone into the management track than it is to create a new IC role.
In plenty of places in London you’ll get to senior engineer and then that’s basically it.
I intentionally used the word can't, because I don't think it's an option that they're choosing, rather a lack of ability.
You may not mean it but I do think sometimes framing it this way implies leading and managing is something that requires less ability (it's a skill in its own right).
What I think is true is people cap out their technical competency, and look to shift their skillset and, globally, we are bad at a) training them to be good managers (because there is a wrong assumption it's an innate skill) and b) weeding out the many who also lack the ability to be a manager.
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I've never worked for someone I felt was less able than I was. Maybe I had a specialty beyond theirs or more recent experience but you don't become a successful technical manager without knowing your shit. Maybe I've been lucky
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Why would a manager solve an IC's problems for them? Solving problems is generally the job of the IC. If an IC doesn't have the ability to solve a given problem, the manager should let them talk to a different IC with that skill.