[rco8786]

> I'd also posit that most of the defense of the position comes from managers. Do you not recognize the irony in this?

That’s not irony. That’s someone with no domain expertise saying something and then someone with domain expertise refuting it.

If I, a casual baseball fan, made a claim about umpires being useless in baseball and then an umpire came in to explain otherwise, that would not be irony.

I’m also not an EM, though I have been one in the past.

I don’t understand your point about PMs. You’re saying that the responsibilities of an EM should be that of a PM. So you’re just arguing for a name change? Or something else?

[olddustytrail]

Don't know if that is what they're suggesting, but I would suggest:

owner/board -> worker teams (up to 5 individuals) -> team helper (this is the previous manager role)

Edit: I will also add that it's strange, the more experience I have of incompetent managers, the more I'm told I don't understand them!

[015a]

> I don’t understand your point about PMs. You’re saying that the responsibilities of an EM should be that of a PM. So you’re just arguing for a name change? Or something else?

Well, its not just a name change, but generally Yes.

The biggest thing is from the Org Hierarchy perspective. I want to preface what I'm about to say to be perfectly clear: This is not true in every company.

EMs have the final say on resourcing for code-related tasks; but poor understanding of the code, systems, etc because the Lead/Senior devs live there. EMs have the final say on product decisions from PO/PMs under them; but a poor understanding of the product because the PO/PMs/etc breathe that. EMs have the final say on designs; but a poor understanding of UX because the designers have that.

The best EMs always have some background in one of the roles I outlined above. They come from an IC background, they were due a promotion, burned out in the IC role, ran out of promotions in the IC track, whatever.

But in many situations the role of an EM becomes a mediocre mashup where the one thing they're actually good at is navigating the politics of org hierarchies; or if you want to be Business Proper, call it Communication. Ask any high school guidance councilor where "Communications" lands on the list of Valuable College Degrees and you'll get a pretty consistent answer. But: EMs somehow escaped this destiny, because tech has a weird distortion field on incomes right now.

Here's the sinister part: Because EMs hold power over everyone who reports to them, its common to see turf wars over responsibilities. Example: "We don't need to hire for a PM, I'm doing that". That's why it isn't just a simple name change; its their fundamental place in an org hierarchy that can make the role a net drag on an organization. Orgs hire them without a tactile definition on the responsibilities of the role [1]; just extrapolate "manage the engineers" to three paragraphs and call it good. You'll do roadmap planning (in collaboration with senior leadership and the PMs). You'll help prioritize incoming work from different stakeholders (in collaboration with the PMs, Customers, and Engineers). You'll help build the team (in collaboration with Recruiting). You'll mentor the engineers (but, we don't require any engineering background, so how you'll do this well is anyone's guess).

The role doesn't actually DO anything valuable; again, at best, the person has IC experience and can carve out a niche that's a hybrid of that IC experience and more coordination/communication. But at average, they're a message bus that attends meetings and parrots messages from someone that actually matters to someone else that actually matters [2].

[1] https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/engineering-manager-payment-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I