Comment by jillesvangurp

I have a few different reasons why you might think twice about this role.

- if you transition from a technical role into this, beware your technical skills need regular usage to stay relevant. Not a show stopper for this role and I've had good non technical managers.

- Be ready for a lot of relatively short lived jobs as a CTO or VP Engineering. Many startups create engineering manager type roles around the time they start scaling struggling a bit. Maybe the founder CTO wasn't so good at management or whatever. You'll inherit a mess. And they might not like you after all. I've had a few friends facing a lot of churn in this role. Just one company after another, do ungrateful work, and then move on to the next. It can pay well but it's not stable work. And quite stressful. Some people get lucky of course.

- Make sure that this is really what you want to do the rest of your career and see the above two points.

If you find the right employer, then this can be a great role of course. I've had a few excellent engineering managers (some of them retired now) in my career. But I have heard of people burning out or getting a rough deal, repeatedly trying to do VP Engineering roles in messy startups/scaleups as well. I know a few more of those.