
Ask HN: Aspiring Manager – is management overhead or is it valuable? - kpithrowaway
I have been an aspiring servant-leader for quite some time now and am actually in the interview process for my first Development Manager role (I&#x27;ve previously been a dev and team lead).<p>Then I read &quot;Developer Hegemony: The Future of Labor&quot; and I am now questioning everything.<p>From an intuitive level, it seems like Devs, Designers, and even Product Managers do things of value. Devs build things. Designers make it look pretty and usable. Product Managers prioritize an infinite backlog and produce a vision for what the most valuable features we could be building are.<p>Managers...are admins. They do the hiring, firing, performance reviews, and meetings. How valuable is this actually work? It seems like overhead.
My vision for what a manager should be: servant leader. Help mentor others. Help people advance in their careers. Coach. Facilitate decision making. Be a shit umbrella - take on the less technically challenging work so the development team can focus on the most interesting and challenging.<p>But...I worry that eventually, companies will realize how much overhead management is and will remove it...leaving room for roles that actually build value.<p>What do you guys think? Is management a good career path? Is it valuable and do you think it&#x27;ll stick around for decades to come?
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angersock
That "overhead" is essential to keeping a team running.

Hiring means the right people get brought in and the talent pool grows and a
positive culture (say, blameless post-mortems, learning and sharing, etc.)
forms.

Firing means that people aren't getting booted on a whim and that when they
_are_ getting booted it's done quickly and efficiently.

Performance reviews help guarantee good pay or good feedback for the people on
the team, and are what helps keep them from leaving.

Meetings are the way that you advocate for your team and where you can
meatshield to keep the howling vortex of crazy that is business for making
their life harder.

It's all "overhead", but that "overhead" is very important to the quality of
life.

~~~
kpithrowaway
I really liked this answer. Thank you.

This is exactly how I've seen it - but I suppose the book was just very
pessimistic.

People always like to point out the management-free organization that is
Valve...but I think a lot of my anxiety around my servant leadership
aspirations is that most of my friends are developers that are trying to
convince me that I'd be more valuable as a coder...

...but as I've acted as an advocate for my team as a team lead, I've gotten a
lot of good feedback. Everyone else seems to think I'm a good manager (at the
team lead level) so I'm probably just stressing about a potential career
change :)

Thanks!

