
Ask HN: Is Engineering Management a good career choice? - managementthrow
I&#x27;ve been in an engineering management role for 6 months at a large non-tech company in the financial sector. They&#x27;ve existed for decades and have realized that tech is key to their business. I, along with other EM&#x27;s from the tech industry, where hired for some organizational transformation.<p>This is actually my first management role (although I have had direct reports before).<p>I&#x27;ve actually really enjoyed the role so far, because I&#x27;ve been getting to live The Phoenix Project (DevOps Handbook, Accelerate, and Manager Tools as well):<p>- We&#x27;re moving from large risky deploys to small frequent deploys (we&#x27;re currently in transition)<p>- Tests are now important, whereas before they were considered tech-debt and would get written after a release<p>- We&#x27;re moving from a command-and-control styled leadership where all decisions have to go &quot;up the chain&quot;, to a team-empowered structure<p>- One-on-ones are now important. Whereas before folks would have 20+ direct reports and one-on-ones with their boss was a thing that happened once a month if you were lucky (they were scheduled bi-weekly, but would often get cancelled due to meeting conflicts)<p>- Moving from waterfall driven projects to &quot;product&quot; based thinking...using SCRUM&#x2F;Agile in some places, and Kanban in others<p>- Etc.<p>That being said, I&#x27;m having trouble justifying my position&#x2F;role&#x2F;. My salary is higher than most of the developers &amp; I have a lot more authority. A lot of my job is listening to devs and approving their ideas...and justifying things to leadership. Expectation management is a huge part of my job. And a lot of admin stuff. But I like it! I enjoy the role a LOT.<p>Is this kind of thing good for my career? I really enjoy it, but it&#x27;s tough because my focus is on the people-system and not on the products we&#x27;re actually delivering, so it&#x27;s hard to see where my value comes in. I wonder if I could be automated...and maybe I should go back to a senior dev role :)
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qetuo13579
Results and retention. Focus on those and you’ll be fine. I recommend
listening to the Manager-Tools.com podcasts. Apparently imposter syndrome is
pretty common for managers, so just take all the uncertainty in your stride
and keep learning.

