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by blu3jack
5092 days ago
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I think there's something else interesting here in the relationship between engineering managers and project managers. The author writes: "It's been undone by a continuing erosion of responsibility accorded to managers." We have introduced specialists of various sorts, with varying titles: project manager, program manager, product manager, technical project manager. The introduction of non-managerial technical-track engineering leadership roles for those smart engineers who either can't or won't be good managers has further splintered off the value-add of the engineering manager. In between team leads and C-staff there are N levels of people who's job has been highly eroded and who struggle hard to add value to their teams. I am really interested to see where this is going. |
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Many, many engineering managers are the people who got into technology with the goal of being a manager. As such, they did the minimum amount of actual engineering they could get away with, say 1-2 years. They are motivated only by the fact that engineering management is one of the highest paid professions out there. Linkedin shows some extraordinary insight into this phenomenon as anyone with a few connections can review thousands of resumes. There are managers, directors, VPs, and CTOs who have almost zero actual experience in the technical field they are supposed to be managing. For whatever extremely messed up reason, the tech industry actually supports this.
So you get a whole industry of engineering managers who are not and never were engineers. It's no surprise that their role is the same as a project manager. That's all they can do. They can't steer the technical focus of the group, lead the team towards innovative ideas, or anything that even requires basic technical knowledge. If there's anything eroding the responsibilities of engineering management its the constant dumbing down of the job by the non-technical money chasers trying to get into the job.