Comment by ragall
3 days ago
Rather, you're the one stuck thinking this is about yourself. If you read more attentively, you'd see I carefully phrased my reply to avoid mentioning you.
You say you aren't good at it, but have you ever tried ? I suppose not, so you'll never know if you'd have been good at it. This is not a quality that comes innate, it's something that one must learn and cultivate.
The important thing here is the observation that engineering companies used to be filled with engineers that were both *technically competent* and *willing to become a manager*. That's much rarer nowadays. Why ?
Has it not occurred to you that the job of manager has changed in this time? The people managers I am friends with bemoan spending half of their lives doing paperwork for performance reviews. It wasn’t always that way. To be a project manager is spend half your life in JIRA workflows.
I don’t want to become a manager not just because I’m not good at it, but also because it doesn’t look even slightly enjoyable. Why would I do it?
> Has it not occurred to you that the job of manager has changed in this time?
Maybe, but that still doesn't answer the question. In my many years working for a FAANG in Europe, almost all good managers were non-US, even in the sister teams on the US side. On the US side, the best managers I've worked with were, with a few exceptions, first generation immigrants from India, Iran, Lebanon or various European countries.