[pixelatedindex]

I don’t know about the part where Charity mentions it’s really really easy to get an Eng job than a manager one. As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way.

And the skills not being transferrable? How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not.

Finally the credit/blame - managers and people above them get paid much more than a lowly engineer. Sometimes you get blamed and then paid handsomely, lol.

The hard conversations and emotional drain is true though. But generally, if you love writing code and interfacing with people equally, it’s hard not to be drawn to the appeal of the management position.

[somethoughts]

My observation has been that unless you are amazingly charismatic or a force of nature, as an engineering manager much of your value is in your ability to understand your specific companies unspoken intricacies such as:

* who the different personalities are within the specific organization in order to get things done and who's opinion you need to take into account and who you can safely ignore

* who you can escalate to in order to get more resources (perhaps get a email pushed up to the CEO if needed) and who to apologize to if things go bad

* when to let your team self-manage and when you're going to need to assert your opinion

These are all highly specific to an organization.

The two ways to achieve this are through being in the trenches and observing for many years or have the social skills to hack your way in.

As such I think the interview for an engineering manager would be less than straightforward than a standard fizz buzz test.

More importantly if you do somehow pass the gatekeepers to such a job, your ability to actually hack into the new organization in order to keep your job for more than a year becomes a challenge.

[evandale]

I hate this comment because it describes my workplace to a T. It's scary how accurate it is.

So many fragile egos in high authority positions who can't admit they made a terrible decision 3 years ago and are still in denial and doubling down on it.

shudders

[agos]

very accurate. I would humbly add:

* handling the sheer amount of times that somebody says something is going to happen and then the complete opposite happens, because they lied/they didn't have information/they were projecting their desire/they are out of touch with reality

[higeorge13]

I hate this because it’s true and i have seen this multiple times.

[gochi]

>How is being good in a particular field of tech _more_ transferable than management skills, which is arguably needed everywhere be it tech or not.

Managers are viewed the same way engineers are when it comes to skill transfer, in that their "expertise" is limited to the field. Which is why it's rare to find managers who made leaps that way across fields, as they always get overlooked in favor of someone who's either already in the field or is ok with switching from a technical role into a managerial one.

[pixelatedindex]

I did not know that, but should have expected it.

[marcinzm]

>As someone who got laid off recently, it sure as heck doesn’t feel that way.

Managers are not having any easier of a time finding jobs right now.

[jddj]

Anecdata, but I've found it much easier to replace managers compared with engineers.

Measured qualitatively in terms of 6 months performance

[marcinzm]

The single fastest hire my department did recently was for an EM position. Took something like under two weeks from opening the position to signed offer. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

[JackMorgan]

I have found that hiring engineers often is done with strict objective criteria: do they know the language and tools well and can demonstrate that live in front of a bunch of peers. Also they are measured on subjective "does everyone on the team like then enough to go out for a beer with them?" I've seen Sr. engineer positions stay open for years with 50+ candidates interviewed.

Hiring managers tends to be done with subjective criteria like "did the CTO get a good vibe from them in a 15min call?" I've seen engineering managers hired by just being the first friendly person through the door.

That said, I've met so many former engineering managers who just can't find work and now haven't written code in years. There's a lot of competition for a few jobs, and no real way to distinguish yourself. They are a very sad lot, and the biggest reason I left the management track to become an IC again. After talking with the 30th sad former manager who can't write an if statement I saw the writing on the wall and got back into engineering.

[mateo411]

Are they any good? Perhaps they knew somebody in the company already, which made it easier to get them into the role.

It also might be an easier time to hire right now.

[youngtaff]

> he mentions

Charity is not a man!

[pixelatedindex]

My apologies, an implicit bias is showing. Updated!