
If management isn't a promotion, then engineering isn't a demotion - joeyespo
https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotion-then-engineering-isnt-a-demotion/
======
zepto
This is great in principle, but it’s only a starting point - there are huge
issues that are left unaddressed.

The biggest issue is that it presents status as if it can be conferred
independently of power, or as if we can change the dynamics purely by changing
the way we think about this.

Managers have power for many reasons - they generally do have a significant
influence over subordinate’s career prospects, and they have access to all
kinds of organizational information that ICs simply can’t obtain, at the very
least because they can usually spend time in conversation with other managers
or in meetings with people at higher levels in the organization.

Engineers obtain power through indispensable or highly valued domain expertise
or institutional knowledge.

Both forms of power are real and confer status.

If you move from management to engineering and your power as a manager is not
replaced with corresponding power as an engineer then _you have been demoted
in status_ , irrespective of how the organization claims to value people.

Organizations that want to deny this, even with the most positive intentions
end up gaslighting their employees. I.e. saying things like “Our organization
doesn’t see these moves as a demotion”, when manifestly the individual’s power
and status has changed in a way they and everyone else can directly perceive.

~~~
jgeada
ICs largely wield informal power within organizations, managers have real
formal power, codified in organizations charts, rules and regulations.
Whenever there is conflict between the two, almost always formal power wins
over informal. Not the least because managers control salaries and hire/fire
decisions.

~~~
mathgladiator
The key for those with informal power is how to leverage it to leverage the
formal. Get managers to trust you, and you can have both.

~~~
user5994461
That's still nowhere near the power of official management.

At a bare minimum a manager can summon their underlings, they will come and
listen because they depend on him for promotions and have to make a good
impression.

Try to get your teams or coworkers to do some tasks as an engineer. You will
quickly realize you have no power.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I mean, this varies team by team and company by company. To spit an anecdote
into the bucket, I asked some teammates to help me take care of a problem, and
they did - and I don't _think_ I hold a particularly large cache of informal
power.

~~~
user5994461
Send a meeting invitation and see how many people show up. Preferably a
videocall or a presentation, something not too attractive to come to.

Then do the same thing as a random employee. See the difference in how much of
your team doesn't show up and absolutely nobody from the other team across the
corridor comes.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Then do the same thing as a random employee. See the difference in how much
> of your team doesn't show up and absolutely nobody from the other team
> across the corridor comes.

And then do it not as a random employee, but as the senior employee who isn't
technically anyone's manager but who is known for having saved the last 3
major projects by pointing out pivotal details and coordinating with other
teams, and observe that everyone who's worked with that person shows up
regardless of the org chart. YMMV, but let's compare apples to apples.

~~~
user5994461
> and observe that everyone who's worked with that person shows up regardless
> of the org chart

Too bad it's only a handful of people.

Well, maybe less than a handful because most of the people you saved in the
past 3 years have moved on to another company or another role. They're not
here for you anymore.

However the manager got that power instantly since the minute he joined, by
virtue of the position. It's not an apple to apple comparison indeed.

------
luscious_t
I think the focus on "managers have power" is overstated. Places I've worked
(as both an IC and a manager) there's also greater responsibility and higher
ups hold the managers much more accountable than the ICs. I know many people
who simply do not want the responsibility or accountability. Maybe the work is
not better or worse, easier or harder, but often there is more
pressure/stress.

~~~
commandlinefan
> managers have power

Respect, too. I've lost count of how many times I've been stuck waiting for
somebody in the network group to grant me access to some resource I need to do
my job until somebody that they actually respect (that is, a manager) tells
them that they have to.

~~~
Kinrany
Isn't this normal? If they're not your manager, it's not their job to make
sure you can do your job.

Though arguably the manager should have arranged for an easier process if this
happens more than a few times.

~~~
nip180
Too much bureaucracy for access to internal resources (api access, repository
access, requisition of servers, google doc permissions, w/e) slows down ICs
and is a sign of bad corporate culture.

There’s a difference between needing to ask for access to shared resources and
asking for someone else to do work. So many corporations silo there teams so
deeply that PRs from outside members aren’t even considered. Collaboration
isn’t given anything more than lib service.

~~~
google234123
If a company gets too big, they have to start worrying more about internal
adversaries. That's why you see those kind of things.

~~~
aahortwwy
Nope. Those kinds of things are almost entirely related to control and power,
not real security.

If you're legitimately concerned about internal adversaries you start by
finding and catching them. Once you've set up effective mechanisms for doing
that you can start to introduce stricter controls around sensitive
data/operations based on what you've learned about how your internal
adversaries operate. You use a light touch when doing this, because you
understand that every extra control you put in place introduces inefficiency
into the organization.

------
zargon
IC = individual contributor. I was trying to figure that out till they defined
it halfway through the article.

~~~
paganel
Thanks for that, I had seen the same acronym on that article from today of a
(I think former) Salesforce staff engineer describing her experience there,
and of course that I didn’t know what it meant.

------
mikenew
In my opinion the best way to deal with the issue of hierarchy would be to
make management an assignment, not a job. Someone takes on the role of
"manager" for an upcoming project, at at the conclusion of that project they
go back to engineering.

Apparently this is how Valve does things. I've heard Gabe Newell say in an
interview (that I can't find right now) that often times the management role
is given to the newer employees. They see it as a big honor at first, but by
the end of it they're pretty happy to go back to engineering and let someone
else deal with the responsibilities of management.

~~~
xxpor
Maybe this is why Valve can't seem to actually finish a project to save their
lives at this point!

~~~
mikenew
They actually _have_ admitted that that's an issue, although I'm not sure what
they did about it. Recently they shipped the Valve Index and released Half
Life: Alyx, both of which are excellent. They also released Artifact (it did
terribly, but they did release it), and a UI overhaul for Steam along with a
lot of new features. So in recent years they've been doing fairly well I
think.

------
kaspm
I think one thing that's missing from this article is what engineers at higher
levels of IC status (up to VP) do. When a Sr. Engineer is choosing between a
Manager and a "Principal Engineer" type role, I have to remind them that PEs
also don't do much depth coding. They write proposals, discuss architecture,
sit in meetings. Ultimately, the same mechanisms that Managers use.

There's certainly SOME PEs that go deep in some areas but the majority I've
worked with are broad owners of technology in large organizations. The
difference between the two roles often has to do with what balance of time you
want to spend influencing others for broad goals vs. building up jr. folks to
accomplish your team's goal.

In either case your authority is derived from whether people "under" you want
to work with you. People who can't get a set of people to go a certain
direction won't last long in either role.

~~~
ses1984
This article was on HN yesterday and I like the way that four different types
of staff engineers are described:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24437715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24437715)

~~~
sciurus
On the same topic, [https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-
archetypes](https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes)

------
robocat
One fix could be to give managers a title that is of lower rank than an
engineer e.g. a manager’s official title should be “support” and ensure that
every part of their role is about supporting the engineers they are
responsible to.

~~~
theonemind
That kind of reminds me of how military dogs usually outrank their handler:
[https://science.howstuffworks.com/military-dogs-outrank-
hand...](https://science.howstuffworks.com/military-dogs-outrank-handlers.htm)

I've heard that if you abuse the dog, you can get charged with assaulting a
superior officer.

------
thelean12
They're promotions if you get paid more. They're demotions if you get paid
less.

People refuse promotions all the time because they don't want the
role/responsibility and prefer other stuff besides money. Doesn't mean it
wouldn't have been a promotion.

~~~
sg47
You get more power as a manager because you have influence over engineers and
their careers, even the ones that get paid more than you unless they have been
with the company for a long time and have built relationships with the higher
ups.

~~~
thelean12
If your compensation isn't higher when switching ladders, then it doesn't
matter how much influence you have. It's a demotion.

To be clear, that's not necessarily bad.

Imagine your boss coming to you to congratulate you on your promotion, and
then mentioning that your pay will be reduced by 10% because now you're
management. How'd you feel about them calling it a promotion?

------
adrianmonk
It doesn't matter how you define what is or isn't a promotion.

The real issue is that _there isn 't one, single right answer_ about what role
is right for everybody.

It is not the case that being a manager is strictly better in every way for
every person. That's the assumption that people need to let go of.

~~~
dominotw
> That's the assumption that people need to let go of.

Its not an assumption, its a fact that managers everywhere on average get paid
more than IC.

Unless you are working for a non profit or some cutting edge change the world
stuff. Why would you work for less.

~~~
dahfizz
> Why would you work for less.

Because I am more than comfortable on my engineer salary and being a manager
would make me miserable.

~~~
dominotw
Sure but by that logic no two jobs can ever be compared to each other. Someone
can always say because I am comfortable doing X than Y, thats not something
anyone can respond to.

------
b0rsuk
Seems like people instinctively associate status with having control over
other people. Maybe engineers could fight back by calling their programs cute
names or putting hats on servers? Cloud computing is not helping though.

------
microtherion
One further complication is when a move back to engineering is coupled to a
change in employer.

As an interviewer, seeing somebody whose last job was in a management role
apply for an IC position is a warning signal for me. Do they just apply for
that position to get a foot in the door (especially for a move to a FAANG),
and will they immediately angle for a move back to management?

So this is generally an area where I would ask follow up questions (and probe
a bit harder in the technical interview, to assess whether any rust has crept
into the technical skills). It's not an automatic red flag; we've hired former
managers for IC roles and it worked out, and leadership ambition can be a
positive in any role, but it's worth some exploring.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> The work done by a database engineer is different from the work done by a VP
> marketing, or a director of database engineering. It is not inherently
> better or worse, easier or harder, more or less deserving of praise and
> admiration. It is simply different.

The big problem is that it is the VPs and directors who are getting together
and deciding what everyone should be paid. And, lo and behold, somehow, they
almost always decide that VPs and directors should get paid more than database
engineers.

~~~
jeffbee
Eh, market forces are more influential than this. You can't simply decide how
much to pay engineers, any more than you can decide what your rent is going to
cost.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The rule of thumb is “the closer you are to the money, the more you make”.

People rarely demand what they are worth since they usually value security
over maximizing income, but if you are familiar with the numbers, then you are
in a much better negotiating position.

People should always keep applying to jobs, even if they don’t intend on
accepting them just to keep a pulse on the value of the labor they are
selling.

------
ilaksh
I am sure this is going to sound silly, but I honestly still have trouble
figuring out what value is contributed by managers and executives at all.

I can't get past the gut feeling that essentially the model hasn't changed for
thousands of years: wealthy owner, boss with whip, wage slaves being watched
over.

I mean I imagine a group of people who are actually competent and intelligent
working together. Some people would have more seniority and power, but
everyone is actually a useful worker there involved in the day-to-day work.

I feel like most managers I have had have spent the majority of their efforts
trying to pretend that problems don't exist and reduce the amount of actual
useful engineering work in order to push _anything_ out faster and cheaper. Or
just basically telling people to hurry up.

That's why I think we had the Boeing crapshow. The guy at the top was actually
good at doing what management actually is for most companies, like I described
above. He avoided doing real engineering and got a product out. And then
hundreds of people died. And still they tried to blame the engineers.

It actually comes down to a class struggle for me. Parasites without integrity
have managed to work their way to the top while feeding off of the honest
workers below.

Sorry I know it's kind of extreme but I am just being honest.

~~~
AdrianB1
You need management because:

\- you need project management. It is an administrative work.

\- you need people management. You can leave that to HR, they will do a very
poor job, so it's better to have a person from the team fill that role, the
more senior and experienced the better. This is admin work

\- you need to simplify large organizations into smaller, manageable teams
that can focus on items they can swallow. You need team leaders (for the 2
reasons above) and good communicators to keep the team in sync with the rest
of the company

\- when you have many teams you need "teams of teams", that is one or more
management levels.

In any army you don't have management, you have a chain of command. You have
generals with a strategy and a vision, you have officers that lead portions of
the army, you have NCOs that lead small teams and you have specialists or
riflemen that do the grunt work. They all have a role and in most cases you
find the higher the rank, the higher the competence, otherwise nobody would
follow in battle an incompetent officer (or even shoot him in the back, it's
easier in a battle than getting rid of a bad manager in the office).

This hierarchical organization came from real needs and stays there because
the need is still there. You can argue some hierarchies gets corrupted, in
theory all do, but a hierarchy is generally better than no hierarchy whenever
the group is large enough.

~~~
pdfernhout
Tangential on hierarchies and meshworks by Manuel De Landa:
[http://netbase.org/delanda/meshwork.htm](http://netbase.org/delanda/meshwork.htm)
"To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding
meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make
hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I
said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life
we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be
established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain
standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of data-structures
traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out to promote
heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances that may be
designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a common data-
structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence of increased
heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has been
achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more
heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one
level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring
ethnic communities. But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity,
but diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect
solution. After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places
where we do not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind
of property that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions.
Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the
solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude
towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity
of reality itself seems to call for."

------
somewhereoutth
Interesting to compare this with practices in other professions, eg Doctors,
Architects, Scientists and so forth.

Certainly management happens in those areas, but I believe that as your career
progresses you would naturally be expected to take on more management
activities - there isn't a dual track in quite the same way.

In more recent times the waters appear to have become muddied somewhat, with
the appearance (and glorification) of administrators, project managers, 'CEOs'
of various kinds.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Most of those people are independent entrepreneurs or senior ICs, not
managers.

------
mlthoughts2018
This reads more like an attempt to extract “powers” that managers have and
give them to staff / principal engineers, but I think this is a bad mistake.

The people in those roles should influence those things, sure, but not “own”
them, under some faulty idea that management doesn’t lead or own strategic and
technical roadmaps or execution.

An engineering manager is someone who takes inputs from their immediate team
or staff, as well as cross-functional stakeholders like product managers,
directors, staff/principal engineers, and more. Then you synthesize that into
team or org investments: projects, roadmaps, staffing, resources, tools.

An engineering manager is not someone who “just executes 1-1s and fills out HR
feedback cycles.”

They are more like a staff engineer or architect who takes an expanded point
of view to include team dynamics, career growth, budgets, strategy and
resources into the solution design process.

This often just _is_ a promotion above staff or principal IC roles because it
usurps and supersedes a lot of that work while also involving additional new
work managing career growth, hiring, training, resource investment, etc.

I’d put product manager and engineering manager at the top of the promotion
pyramid (excluding director / VP / executive roles). Staff and Principal ICs
are next, then the rest of ICs.

------
alexbanks
If one group has firing power, and the other does not, they are not equal,
regardless of what's written down.

~~~
barrkel
It's not that simple.

First line managers rarely have the power to simply fire on a whim. There has
to be cause, and it needs to be evidenced, and there will be multiple people
involved in the decision.

If you're a more senior engineer, you may report to a manager of managers, and
line managers may be your peers organisationally, and probably not paid as
well as you are.

Engineers also get to make a different kind of decision to managers; and it's
often the longer term, higher leverage, more strategic kind of decision. Line
managers are much more operationally focused and rarely have the bandwidth or
tasking for strategic decisions.

------
doonesbury
Managers do have some formal powers engineers don't. They are three: they have
access to budget; they perform the management function which assigns resources
to problems. Since demand on resources almost always exceed available
resources, they must assign priorities well. They also have high input on
hiring choice.

Doing this well requires,

\- requiring internal service suppliers to be (internal) customer driven. Too
often however things we'd never put up with an external supplier we'd pay
money for are tolerated and even protected by management. Internal suppliers
are required for use. It's hard to fire them.

\- cross functional management: reduce silos. Again my area and your area
might be "clean" but users of both of our services are often left to die in
the crummy alley way between our groups. That's a major source of frustration
for engineers.

\- promote openness and honesty: there's too much happy talk and PC
correctness at the office.

\- supply chain management: engineers are often confronted by too many point
solutions that don't integrate. See above points. Managers need to cull and
combine supply chains time to time.

\- be customer in not supplier out. Older companies often have organizational
norms where what can be produced is more a function of what internal politics
allow or company culture tolerates than what customers want. Managers need to
be on top of this.

\- top management needs to give TLC to middle management perhaps the toughest
job. Here they (middle mgmnt) cannot micromanage while they are held
accountable for broad corporate goals like lean organizations, top line
growth, reduce expenses, and better expense control. They neither are hands on
nor are too far from the real work to be too abstract.

\- teamwork (see schutz's human element the best single read on this) namely
that ridgid individuals are the single fastest way to break teams. Today's
work depends more than ever on good teams.

When managers do above well it's a pleasure to work with them. It's a
difficult task.

------
throwaway4715
If you think there are a lot of bad managers now wait until they're explicitly
paid less and aren't accountable for their team's impact (what happens when
you shift all accountability of technical strategy to TL).

------
lifeisstillgood
Solution: take away some of the formal powers of management - for example the
ability to assign resources on personal decisions. A manger wants X to happen
so spends Y of her budget to hire a team to do it.

That is power.

Simply make all such decisions open, transparent and democratically elected -
in other words have employees vote.

We live in a world where we value democracy but spend our working lives in
autocratic dictatorships.

Yes Coase and efficient allocation, but really I think information revolution
is changing that equation.

Democracy in companies now! Struggle brothers !

~~~
zepto
I upvoted you because the point about spending our working lives in
dictatorships is very valid, but I don’t think for a second that voting would
work.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But ... let's look at GE.

It's basically worth nothing at net now. And it was the great poster child for
brilliant management decisions - that take any industry and run it using GE
managers and allocate capital the GE way and it will win.

Turns out not so.

This is the lesson of history - great Kings and Emperors really do make great
world beating decisions. But anything less than great leads to disaster
whereas parliaments don't do great but they do keep growing and managing well
for centuries.

We need to stop relying on great CEOs and kings and look for ways to run a
company well.

PIRC has lots of research on the central founder risk to long term value.

but just ask this - imagine Elon Musk retires tomorrow. Do we want to hope we
hire his clone or do we want a strong driven community of engineers to keep
knocking out battery improvements for 2 decades.

I know which one i want my money in, and which one will make better headlines.

~~~
zepto
Everything you just said is fine, however, nothing in your comment in any way
suggests or supports the idea that voting would work.

Agreeing on a problem is not the same as agreeing on a solution.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Ok - so we agree on a problem.

Just to ask, what solution have humans found to replace dictators and kings
apart from (weakly or strongly) elected parliaments ?

Rome had two consuls (or three), but I am not sure that's a big step beyond
one.

I just think we need to find the right ways for democracy to evolve not just
chuck it in the bin :-)

~~~
zepto
Again, no argument from me, but also no argument from you that direct
democracy would work as a form of corporate governance.

Can you find even one example of where it has? The closest I am aware of is
Mondragon, but Mondragon has almost no direct democracy - voting is for people
rather than decisions.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
As a brit I have recently learnt to be wary of direct democracy (ala
referendums) but frankly I will take any form of democracy as a bastion
against the mono-culture.

Perhaps we can take heart from the media -
[https://www.ft.com/content/afe3386e-d3bb-11e4-a9d3-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/afe3386e-d3bb-11e4-a9d3-00144feab7de)
\- The Guardian's editor was appointed following an indicative vote from
staff.

But I would suspect that appointed leaders and elected policies will be a much
easier sell than the other way round. Any leader can happily say they always
agreed with a policy forced on them. It's much harder to say you agree with
them firing you.

And I shall have to do some more research. Thank you for pushing

~~~
zepto
One argument would be that working for a business and not finding another job
is inherently vote for the leadership.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
That sounds rather weak - the fact I have not left the country does not imply
I have voted for Boris Johnson as PM.

Although Trump could then claim that 11M card-less Mexicans who have not left
the USA in November were actually voting for him, which would give him
California in the Electoral College.

In the end I do not see a way to imply someone's vote - one needs to actually
count their vote in the normal way.

I respect your position but I remain convinced that _some form of_ democracy
is needed in corporate life.

~~~
zepto
You must realize that leaving the country is not even remotely comparable to
changing job. My argument may be weak for some other reason but this is not a
valid one.

It’s also worth mentioning that there _are_ democratic workplaces.

They are called cooperatives.

Another example:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership)

Relevant questions seem to be - why are they not more successful or
widespread?

Also, have you considered working for one?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Yes good point on the co-op.

Relevant questions seem to be - why are they not more successful or
widespread?

The co-op store (similar food john lewis) sprang from the mid victorian co-
operative movement where different models where tried out by wealthy
philanthropists who essentially gave back huge amounts of their wealth to
their workers

I think that last sentence shows why it is not more widespread - perhaps we
simply need to force companies to become co-op/ partnerships at a certain
state of growth?

~~~
zepto
By last sentence - you mean where I ask whether you have considered working
for one?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Ok second to last :-)

But this seems interesting for the actual last sentence

[https://electricembers.coop//pubs/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf](https://electricembers.coop//pubs/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf)

------
ronyfadel
This hit close to home.

A manager at a previous company kept saying that his role was to support
engineers and that management was a separate track, that he wasn’t my superior
(probably from some internal training BS). He acted completely the opposite
way. He obviously wielded more power by having more information, and, to add
insult to injury, played tech lead as well.

Suffice it to say, over the years almost all the original ICs have left his
team, and he’s still wondering why he can’t get the team to run.

Good riddance.

------
lallysingh
Does anyone do the pendulum? How well does it work?

~~~
analog31
I've done it. Like many people, I moved to the management track when my first
kid was born. I realized that moving up as a manager required actually
competing with the other managers and being better than them. It wasn't going
to happen. As the low level project manager, I got the low level projects.

I moved back to IC when they finally posted an opening to backfill my job. I
went to my boss and said: "I can be a mediocre manager or a great engineer,
you choose."

Later on there was a big reshuffling of the department, and I was asked if I
wanted to be a manager. I said yes. More reshuffling thinned my team down to 2
reports, and I kind of oozed my way back into IC by just doing IC work for
people when I wasn't managing.

All of these moves were promotions in both pay and title.

One thing you learn by being through a few annual cycles at your business is
how it _really_ works. For instance, things like performance reviews, pay
increases, promotions, etc. This knowledge will serve you in any career.

~~~
commandlinefan
> project manager

In every organization I've ever worked in, project management was very
different than management management: project managers never ended up actually
"managing" people as in hiring, firing, budgeting, setting direction for, etc.

~~~
analog31
Quite true. I was a people-manager the second time around. And as an entry
level manager I had very little actual discretion over those things. I'm just
giving myself as an example of someone who went back.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
There is another aspect of it: when you want to change from management to
"lower" status jobs, the person hiring you will have a hard time understanding
your decision. "You understand you're overqualified for this post, right"?
They get suspicious even if you're a perfect candidate.

------
nickff
This is an interesting instance of two HN tropes in conflict: Managers are
able to ‘create’ more (by improving IC productivity) than any individual
contributor (and thus more value), unless you believe in 10x engineers.

~~~
joshuamorton
A senior IC who is a technical lead or area lead can do the same without
formally leading anyone.

I know of quite a few teams where there is a high level manager and an equal
level IC who report to the same director. They're both responsible for the
same scope of work, (and this is oversimplifying) just one is responsible for
the tech and one for the people.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
Yeah, I'm the technical lead and report to a director.

My contributions are 50% personal, 50% "team acceleration" (ie: ensure your
teammates are able to get things done quicker including pairing, code
walkthroughs, documentation, last minute team changes to ensure a project
succeeds)

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giantg2
If your company is like mine, then they'll combine the jobs and pay you the
lower of the two salaries while selling it as a great opportunity.

Simultaneous promotion and demotion.

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gamesbrainiac
I really hate these kinds of articles, primarily because they are trying to
sugar-coat reality here.

The fact of the matter is this, management _is_ a promotion, because you get
paid more and you gain access to more powers. If it were _not_ a promotion
within the company, no one would take it up.

Management is a simple deal, you give up power _outside_ of the company for
power _within_ the company. It is far easier to join another company as an
Engineer than it is as an Engineering Manager.

However, I agree that it should not be. It should not be there to create a
sense of hierarchy. This is why, I believe that you should rotate your
managers _within_ the team. Back at my old company, we had people who would go
into a Team Lead position for a certain project, and then someone else would
take over.

Pay was already high, so no one really wanted to take up lead because it meant
more responsibility.

This is how power needs to be treated, you should not have it for too long.
This is why we have term limits.

~~~
coding123
I've never seen "team lead" as a management role. Team lead is more of
technical tie-breaker role on technical decisions. It's not a management role
if you can't fire someone.

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gambiting
I am a team lead and I'm definitely a manager - 80% of my time is managing
people, not making technical decisions, that's more for technical
directors(who in turn do not manage anyone). And why would managers be able to
fire people though? I can recommend that someone be let go to HR, but
ultimately that's not up to managers. The process takes at least 6 months
unless for gross misconduct anyway, it's far too complex to be up to a single
person.

~~~
danaris
This sounds a lot like differences in individual companies' organizational
structures—I bet there are some where a "team lead" is more of a "first among
equals," while others, as you describe, are primarily managing their group of
technical specialists of whatever stripe. Similarly, in some organizations,
managers tell HR, "We should fire this person," while in others, they tell HR,
"Hey, I just fired this person."

~~~
gamesbrainiac
I've never ever felt anything other than a first-among-equals as a lead. I've
learned so much from my team, and I'm proud of where my former team members
are now. I dont intend to be anything else should I become a manager again,

