[coldtea]

>So what happens when you get promoted and are not qualified for the job?

You learn it as you go. Like some of the most succesful managers and CEOs to ever be (including Jobs, Bezos, and PG)

And if you can't learn, you get put somewhere else.

>What happens to their reports that have to deal with an unqualified manager?

As if most managers aren't already incompetent anyway...

[scarface_74]

> You learn it as you go. Like some of the most succesful managers and CEOs to ever be.

And how many successful CEOs of large companies were successful without demonstrating they could manage a large org before getting promoted.

And who are they going to “learn” from and what happens to the company as they are learning? What do you think happens to a department consisting of in demand developers when they get an incompetent manager?

Even though I mostly worked at small companies before working at BigTech, I did work at one at the time F10 non tech company from 2012-2014. An incompetent manager who was good technically got promoted. Within 6 months his entire team of 14 left.

[vsareto]

>And how many successful CEOs of large companies were successful without demonstrating they could manage a large org before getting promoted.

There's something fishy about how developers continue to demonstrate the ability to write/ship software but they don't get regular raises, but it works differently for managers/execs for some reason. This and the poaching agreements are why we have job hopping as the primary lifting force of compensation.

It's also like your above post about L6s doing multiple L5s worth of work: that L6 pay doesn't scale with output/revenue impact.

It should actually be the opposite because managerial badness might happen in big bangs (whole team leaving) or very obvious red flags (abusive shitbags), but developers have access to a lot more objective information that could be used to drive promotion decisions, but that still doesn't happen.

[scarface_74]

> There's something fishy about how developers continue to demonstrate the ability to write/ship software but they don't get regular raises

They do, there is an L4 to at least L7 track as an IC in BigTech and even on the corporate dev side, you can job hop your way from $80K to $170K in most major cities in the US within 8 years of starting your career.

> It's also like your above post about L6s doing multiple L5s worth of work

I didn’t mean to imply that an L6 is doing the same type of work, as a purposeful L5 I likes being able to deep dive on one “work stream” from requirements, to implementation to handover.

An L6 wouldn’t be putting in more hours they would be coordinating the work of multiple L5s. They aren’t doing more work, they are doing different work. Their contribution is valuable. But someone has to be in the trenches doing the work.

[inertiatic]

>And how many successful CEOs of large companies were successful without demonstrating they could manage a large org before getting promoted.

I don't know, most of them? Most companies have their founders as their CEOs until they become very successful, and these are their first gigs as CEOs of a big company, right?

[scarface_74]

Didn’t you just argue my point? They were replaced by “adults” when the company became larger than they could manage.

[inertiatic]

No, I didn't, I'll reiterate what I said - that most of the CEOs start as founders and remain with their companies until they're successful (without being replaced to get there) - and beyond, so most successful companies actually have "inexperienced" CEOs.

[coldtea]

Not "adults", just corporate drones, usually stiffling what made the company great.

In a real capitalist society where success wasn't tied to optics and stock performance but actual products, the "adults" would have burned the company to the ground.

[scarface_74]

You do remember the shit show that Steve Jobs was as CEO the first time? Of course Wozniak knew he would be horrible CEO and never tried.

[coldtea]

>You do remember the shit show that Steve Jobs was as CEO the first time

I remember him making the product that saved the company and had their future 15 years without him based on. And I remember him being ousted without be given a chance by pencil pushers.

[coldtea]

>And how many successful CEOs of large companies were successful without demonstrating they could manage a large org before getting promoted.

Almost all succesful startup founders who haven't had managed anything before?

[scarface_74]

And they were “startup founders” and didn’t manage a large organization.

[ZephyrBlu]

> You learn it as you go

Kind of defeats the purpose of levels, no? Make me a Principal Engineer, I'll learn it as I go.

> And if you can't learn, you get put somewhere else

1) This is already what happens, except without the added risk of asking someone to perform a new higher level role

2) Demoting someone is basically impossible. They're just going to quit rather than taking a lower title and pay cut

[coldtea]

>Kind of defeats the purpose of levels, no? Make me a Principal Engineer, I'll learn it as I go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

[scarface_74]

Weren’t you talking about promoting people without them proving themselves? At what level should they need to prove themselves before getting a promotion.

[coldtea]

Doesn't mean they have to "prove ourselves" at the next level they'll be promoted into, before they're promoted, which was the whole focus of the discussion...

[scarface_74]

Then how exactly do you decide who to promote?