
The Evolution of Management: Transitioning Up the Ladder - amortize
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3350548
======
stakhanov
Is being promoted from individual contributor to manager still a thing?

Certainly the mobility from engineer to manager is something that I haven't
witnessed "in the wild" ever, after 10 years in the business and having seen
half a dozen organizations; neither with myself, nor with my peers.

What I predominantly see is a caste system where engineers are the lower caste
and MBA-types are the higher caste, and members of the lower caste aren't
taken seriously when voicing suggestions and opinions regarding business
direction and management and also certainly don't stand a chance of being
moved into any positions where they would meaningfully influence business
direction on an ongoing basis.

There is an exception, though, which is that female engineers may still get
promoted into management (...not going to speculate on reasons right now).

Also, what I've sometimes seen work is a lateral move followed by a vertical
move, say from engineering to sales, and then from sales into management.

~~~
Ozzie_osman
Where have you worked? There's been a direct path from engineer to manager at
every company I've worked at. I've mostly worked at Silicon Valley companies,
some were venture-backed and some were simply aspiring to be such.

In some companies, that was a promotion (with a pay increase), in others, it
was a lateral transition (and of course, at some it was a promotion but the
company pretended it was a lateral transition).

Ironically, I did get an MBA but after graduating I was coding before
transitioning into management, and I'm not sure the MBA degree had much to do
with that transition.

Dual-ladder type systems for technical people are pretty common in the
software industry, and, when applied correctly, one of the things I love most
about it. I wrote about that: [https://hackernoon.com/why-all-engineers-must-
understand-man...](https://hackernoon.com/why-all-engineers-must-understand-
management-the-view-from-both-ladders-cc749ae14905)

~~~
stakhanov
...I know that this concept exists, but I've only ever encountered it as a
theoretical concept that certain HR departments will pay lip service to, but
the reality, in my experience, is different.

For example I have worked in a top-tier investment bank. One year, they had a
particularly bad year (because markets were just bad), so while traders in
some cases still got bonuses, nobody in the entire Technology Division (since
they were seen as being more replaceable) got a bonus. They made up for it by
giving everybody a bump in their title (with no bump in pay). That kind of BS
is my primary association of what it looks like in practice when people climb
the "technical" ladder (rather than the "management" ladder).

In my mind, a carreer progression would have to imply that, as time goes by,
your options of things you might do in the organization expand and, since you
get to pick and choose from a wider pool, you make choices that are in your
best interest meaning more money and more opportunity to influence the
direction of the business and all that.

It works that way for management, as the relationships you build with people
become an asset that starts paying dividends over time.

For engineering, it works in reverse: Your options become less with time, not
more. The determinant of any move you might make within the organization is
not so much the opporunity around you doing something new, but the risk around
you no longer continuing with what you leave behind. (Or at least that's the
way that organizations will mistakenly see it). Say you've built a database
that underlies reporting infrastructure that underlies all decision-making in
the entire company. Bringing in somebody else to look after the database is a
risk that a company usually won't want to take. Ramping up somebody else to
learn about the system is a cost they won't want to incur. Congratulations:
You're stuck looking after that database for the rest of your time at that
organization. That's the reward you get for having done a good job at building
that database.

In addition, I would say that over the 10 years that I've been in industry I
have seen a cultural change around non-engineering professions moving in on
decision-making-territory that would have previously been an engineer's. I'm
talking about business managers, designers, product managers, product
designers, it infrastructure architects, what have you. 10 years ago, you
would have been presented with a problem which, at the face of it, was
technical in nature like "build a database and some reporting infrastructure
around it". You would have picked a database management system, built the data
ingestion infrastructure, created e-mail reports which you designed yourself,
etc. etc. Nowadays, you go to person X enterprise IT architect to have them
decide which database you can use. You go to a designer to tell you which font
to use on the report. You go to a product manager to tell you how often to
send the e-mail reports and what the signup-flow should look like, etc. etc.
-- Congratulations you have just been reduced to a mere machine executing a
business process, not making a single meaningful decision for yourself, and as
a result your social standing is barely above that of a machine.

~~~
Qworg
Much of this sounds like being in an organization where engineering is seen
(or is) a cost center, not a profit engine.

There's definitely a tendency to stasis in organizations - if the benefit of
new software doesn't outweigh the loss of older, working software, there's no
way anyone would want to encourage new software to be made.

~~~
stakhanov
This has been my experience both in the case of a bank (where technology is an
operating overhead) but, surprisingly, also in a tech startup at the stage
where it was maturing beyond 50 employees. Even more surprisingly, we are
speaking of a tech startup where the CEO, CTO and most senior product manager
are all engineers. But they got into those positions when the company was just
a handful of people and seem to have forgotten about their roots. What is
going on now is that there is little to no real carreer mobility for newly
hired engineers, and the company now has more non-technical than technical
people, who have built up a caste system where they keep engineers out of the
decisions that matter.

~~~
waprin
I'm curious where you're located. This was exactly my experience in "tech"
startups in NYC, but not my experience at all working in SF. This is a big
part of the reason why I have zero interest in leaving SF for some upcoming
tech city, as in my experience you are correct there is a tendency to push
engineers away from any business decisions, but much less so in SF which has a
culture that ties engineering to entrepreneurship more closely. One
explanation I've noticed is that the VCs in the Bay Area are far more likely
to have technical backgrounds, whereas in NYC the VC firms almost always have
finance backgrounds, and that culture bubbles down.

~~~
stakhanov
You're quite right: I have had no direct contact with the SF / Bay Area, nor
any companies based there. I've mostly been based in major European cities,
and in some cases working within the European operations of U.S.-corporates
(that weren't Bay Area startups). In a few cases I've worked remotely directly
for U.S.-East Coast startups.

------
stuff4ben
Having made the switch from IC to IT manager and now back to IC (at a
different company), I want to add in a few insights of my own: 1\. It's
probably not a good idea to get into management if your team is a remote team.
2\. If you're managing a remote team for the first time and your boss is also
colocated with your remote team, make sure he/she is not a micromanager. 3\.
Make sure you're talking to your team and checking in on them. The introvert
part of me had a hard time with this. 4\. Yes, it's ok to interrupt your
smart, gets-shit-done employees, especially if you've haven't talked to them
in days. 5\. Make sure you set a vision to your ICs and hold them accountable
to that vision. It helps if they contributed to making this vision with you.
6\. Yadda yadda yadda, I'm happy being an IC again :)

------
malvosenior
For a slightly more humorous (but very real) take on the management ladder, I
highly recommend The Gervais Principle:

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-
principle/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

In my experience it's been dead on accurate.

~~~
kitsune_
Haha, what a cynical, bleak and fascinating read.

------
ensiferum
How does one transition into management without prior management experience?
This is a genuine question I've been wanting to move out of engineering for a
while but it's been very hard so far to get into non-eng positions. (No luck
so far).

Do you just talk to your direct supervisior and lay out your career path wants
or do you need to look for another position at some other shop or what's a
working strategy here?

~~~
alexandercrohde
1\. Most people who want to manage won't, period. That's just the math, ICs
outnumber managers severalfold.

2\. Many people will never become managers because they don't seem "managery."
They don't dress right, they don't use the right buzzwords, they have a speech
impediment, they speak too truthfully. There are all sorts of cultural factors
too that people don't admit. For example, no manager would ever say this point
2 to you, because it's too honest and potentially upsetting.

3\. A lot of people will only promote you to manager if they think you'll be
able to make them look good, and that's the end of it.

~~~
pm90
The reason for 2. is mostly a fear that such a person might not be very
effective at communicating, convincing and listening to others. There is
certainly also an element of social charisma to it. I don’t think it is
something that can’t be learned though; in fact I imagine most people that
become managers perhaps take the time to do just that.... almost like a self
fulfilling prophecy.

Nobody is born a manager.

------
alexandercrohde
I don't believe a word of this. It's the usual buzzword-soup that's self-
contradictory with even the simplest glance (e.g. claiming a manager's value
is both unmeasurable but also the key to promotion? If it's unmeasurable,
you're probably getting promoted for something else, like company growth,
being well-liked, looking the part)

It reeks of the self-importance of a director who reassures himself, "Well I
got this far, so I must be doing things right." Is this author the kind of
person who'd fail to buy google for 1bn, while "ensuring alignmnet with
managers" and other PHB concerns? We'll never know.

But what we do know is that less that 5% of this article is actually about
making the right decisions happen. That to me is a red flag.

~~~
thendrill
Whoever wrote the article were on a heavy dose of corporate cool aid sprinkled
with some denial of the "Peter principal"

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

~~~
Ragnarork
> You have to shift your mindset, and focus on building new skills that are
> often very different from the skills that made you successful in your
> previous role.

How is that "denial of the Peter Principle"?

Not even mentioning that the Peter Principle can be criticized in itself, as
it's based on suppositions that are dubious and do not necessarily hold. For
example the fact that you might not end up actually keeping the position at
which you become "incompetent".

