I'm sorry to be cynical here but all this is good only in theory or in a blog article. Real life is much different. Let me articulate.
1. There are many more sr mgr/director+ positions than sr. staff+
2. Corporate politics is brutal and a seasoned mgr is adept at it. Unfortunately, the sooner you get better at it the better for your career. This is one of the reasons why a seasoned director will always be able to command a much bigger scope than sr. staff+.
3. The bar for rising in the IC ladder is astronomically higher than that for mgmt ladder.
4. And let's not forget interviews. Management interviews are much easier than ICs. (think leetcode).
5. Last but not the least, even in big tech companies (FAANGM or whatever acronym) you should really measure how many of sr. staff+ folks became sr. staff+ after a stint in mgmt. They used mgmt to catapult their career after seeing stagnation/difficulty of moving up as an IC. You would be surprised how many of these very senior ICs have had mgmt careers for several years before. It's easy to extol the virtues of being an IC once you've reached there but no one sees how they got there :-).
Now, don't get me wrong. There are some companies/orgs/teams where higher ICs are valued much more and do better than mgrs but it's really the minority. It's in your best interest to switch to mgmt after 8-10 yrs of IC career (8-10 yrs is sufficient enough to gain a solid footing in tech) and learn the ropes fast. I waited for 18 yrs and can see the difference.
You didn't once mention creating better products/services for customers, fostering an enjoyable work environment or even creating value for shareholders. Your whole argument is about (a very narrow Machiavellian view of) individual career progression. If it makes the company less attractive to types who think like that, that sounds overall good to me. Seems like that's also what they were aiming for, and with some success, judging from the interview (which is of course a marketing piece, so to be taken with the right amounts of salt).
A very narrow view which is adopted by the vast majority of managers and successful salespeople. Otherwise, why did they get to become manager?
> If it makes the company less attractive to types who think like that
Not at all... this article is supposed to attract eager, naive kids who will work their butts off for little reward.
Machiavellians will find an easier time of becoming manager at this company. Staff positions are super limited, but the "possibility" reduces competition for management positions.
> Not at all... this article is supposed to attract eager, naive kids who will work their butts off for little reward.
I suppose for a company that's better than attracting managers who work their butts off to do nothing but enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else?
It just depends on who really holds the power at the company - the people who want a return on investment (the company to succeed), or the people who want to extract as much value from the company for themselves (the execs).
When companies start making decisions left and right that don't make any sense - it's not because execs are morons. It's because things are working as intended, and the execs are extracting value for themselves at the expense of everything else.
Why are they evil if they're just following the incentive structure? They want to make enough money for themselves and their families and to send their kids to college. Is that so different from non-execs?
Besides, most of us here on Hacker News can easily avoid big companies and go work at small start-ups or even our own businesses. If you hate the Machiavellian corporate world then vote with your feet.
There’s not going to be anything I can do to derive this from first principles, but merely extracting value from a system without directly producing anything is evil. I don’t care if you’re (supposedly) making other people more productive. Actually producing product is what’s good in this world. There are also basically no ways to measure how well a manager is doing (remember that stock reflects the whole company which is mostly non-managers), so lack of accountability is probably a good indicator that someone isn’t doing the greatest work. Also, evil is relative so I’m not comparing anyone to Stalin here.
> merely extracting value from a system without directly producing anything is evil
I think using the word evil to describe anything in economics is a bit of a stretch. But then again, I don't think what you're describing is even possible, so whether it's "evil" or not is a moot point. Even fatcat investors thousands of miles away from factories are contributing to the production with their capital and the organization and financing of the systems of production, so the concept of a "pure extractor" that you believe to be evil never exists in the first place.
If you want to find wiggle room with the word "directly" in "directly producing", then you're inviting a purely subjective argument that will eventually leave you on the evil end of the morality spectrum from someone else's point of view.
I don’t think you have to be a pure extractor for it to be evil, just extracting at all is evil (so even the producers are generally somewhat evil at least in America). If you view everything from a scientific/mathematical lens you will never find morality, because that is orthogonal. But when you see people doing bad in the world — forcing negative emotions on others for the sake of getting rich — you can draw straightforward conclusions.
> forcing negative emotions on others for the sake of getting rich
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I'm fine with agreeing that is not morally defensible. The Tucker Carlsons of the world are behaving as close to indisputably evil as possible, but I wouldn't lump them in with every business owner that is extracting more value than they're directly producing with their own hands on a daily basis.
> this article is supposed to attract eager, naive kids who will work their butts off for little reward.
And how much of the real work in any given tech company is actually done by those eager naïve kids who are unreasonably loyal to the company and have not yet burned out? Perhaps the majority?
My preference personally was anything but management. Know I do management as CEO as this was needed to provide better service for the customers. I just tell sales guys they have to monetize our market position/brand.
Why would improving products and creating shareholder value not be strongly correlated with career progression?
You can filter people who want career progression out of engineering, you will still have them in all of other functions. You will still be working for these people.
Not only this, but management levels is pretty well recognized across the industry. The titles themselves might not be the same, but where you fit in is.
High level engineering positions is not that way. It often can depend a lot on your experience with the company and not necessarily tech in general.
You could be a staff engineer one place, and {bigCo} just decides based on one person during the interview that you should only be an SDE 2 during the interview. So often, the non management track leads you stuck without options other than being "downleveled" and taking a demotion to leave.
> Bar for rising in the IC ladder is astronomically higher than climbing in a mgmt ladder
This is the root of all evil. Just getting from Sr -> Staff Engineer is not only a product of skill and experience, but also what problem you are working on, how many ICs exist on the team/org at your level, what opportunities exist in your org and much more. When a staff engineer leaves a company, the probability of a senior engineer getting promoted is the same as an external hire getting the spot. When a senior manager leaves, one of the other managers gets a promotion almost every time. In management you can just hire enough people under you to automatically climb the corporate ladder. Management often rewards inefficiency whereas as an IC you get punished for it.
More people managers at a sufficiently high level. It's not that there are more managers than junior/mid/senior engineers, it's that there are more senior managers/directors than there are senior staff/principal engineers. At least at big tech companies, I understand that this is just true and by several multiples at that. So there would be several times more directors than principal engineers at Google, which are the two relevant roles at the same level (L8).
That's not what they're saying. At the lower and mid levels, there are far more ICs than managers. At the top levels, there are more managers than ICs (at each level.) This is the case in most major tech companies I've seen.
There is a lot of reality in this post. Sadly, ICs have far too much scrutiny, starting from aggressive interviews, to onboarding, to performance reviews etc.
A manager path is just a chiller life. No leetcode interviews, performance review is focused on hiring/firing/delivery rather than actual product building, maintenance etc. Managers create arbitrary processes for their team just to show to their bosses that they are doing something important. Managers also scapegoat ICs when their policies fail.
It's a wild paradox. Companies want ICs, to develop and maintain but the corporate ladder is designed to favor/give power to managers. Wild!
As someone who has done both multiple times each, this statement comes off as someone who hasn't spent time in management. My stress levels are always much lower when I'm an IC. Even when I'm a high level IC. My blood pressure levels drop when I'm an IC. etc etc etc.
This is not to say that everything about being a manager is harder than being an IC. Not at all. But they're just not directly comparable the way you're doing here. They require completely different skillsets, and come with different challenges. For me, it turns out that the hard parts of manager life stress me out, big time. Thus I prefer IC work.
I'm in the process of transitioning back to an IC role from a management position and that was one of the biggest factors. As a manager, the level of stress I felt just became unbearable. I'm wrapping up my management responsibilities right now but just knowing that I'll be back to IC work soon and won't have that management stress has had a huge positive impact on my daily life.
I am 2 weeks back as an IC after 3 years of management, so I went through the same thing. Take it slowly, youll have some management instincts that are hard to kick.
I am really enjoying logging off and being uncontactable at the end of the day.
Exactly this. OP probably has not seen the grind of middle management and the stress that comes with it. They don’t call it manager-IC pendulum for nothing.
At my job, I was always on as a senior engineer. Management pushed all the delivery responsibility down to engineers. As a result, I was responsible for all engineers feeling good, divvying the work, ensuring project moved ahead, removing x-team roadblocks, stand-ups, jira tickets etc.
All manager did was collect status reports, weekly meetings, promo and optics documents and managing upwards. He even fired people that made him look bad.
At some point, I started asking, why am I doing all the scoping, project management, product management, people management and sprint running? What exactly is my manager doing to move the product/service ahead?
It looks like you're doing his work. You may try to undercut him by connecting with his managers, get his job, or get fired if he sees your plan. You may try to make it clear to him you understand this arrangement and you're fine with it, but you need more money to make your responsibility tolerable, and he will comply as you let him collect his paycheck for free. Or you might be missing something important and bringing this up will get you fired.
I was about to write something similar. The TLDR that I tell people is computers do exactly what I tell them, people not so much.
In IC work there's often a 'right' answer. At least an answer that can be tested and pass some sort of test. Management is murky, "will this deal work out?", "why are employee A and B constantly fighting?", "partner is asking when X will be done, that I'm only tangentially in control of" ugh, the list goes on.
I think this is just differences in what people are naturally good at. Those naturally better at coding think IC is easier. Those naturally better at politics think being a manager is easier. IMHO manager has a lower minimum level of effort required. If things are running smoothly it's not a lot of hassle or time. The catch is that, at least at the EM & Director level, you have little control over whether or not things run smoothly. And if things aren't running smoothly you catch a lot of crap.
> ICs have far too much scrutiny, starting from aggressive interviews, to onboarding, to performance reviews etc.
> A manager path is just a chiller life.
Not quite correct. Once you get to a point in management seniority, everything that goes wrong is your fault. When your immediate manager is at that point, they will absolutely twist your thumbs off, rather than have your failures be reflected on him. They aren't interested in your excuses, because their boss isn't interested in theirs.
And if you aren't high up in management seniority, you still be standing in line to get a bucket of shit dumped on you (courtesy of the management fight I've described above), but it's also your responsibility to shield your team from it. How you do it is up to you, have fun. :)
... And once you've cleaned yourself and your team off, and think 'Gosh, that was bad, but hey, at least I survived getting through that messy place in the line', you'll discover that the line is actually circular.
Let's switch industries for a more objective perspective: Does a general contractor have a chiller life than a framer? In some ways, sure, they don't have to climb ladders hauling 2x6s in the rain, however I don't think the framer would be more relaxed if they were dealing with permitting offices, sourcing reliable subcontractors, estimating and collecting payments from clients, etc. rather than framing. They're both necessary roles for large-scale projects.
This and the parent thread sound kind of simplistic. In any non-trivial-size company, there are many managers, and the space on top is always limited. So lower and mid-levels have to compete with each other for that limited space, they can always be undercut, left behind over an outside hire, end up on a crappy project by bad luck, end up with a bad boss or the opposite, a team of incompetent ICs who fail to deliver while there is only so much a manager can do. Always have to beg for adequate resources and overall be at the mercy of a large number of random people. Saying that it's disneyland designed for easy promotions doesn't... really sound correct?
I just write code for the highest bidder. I'm not interested in management, I studied software development because that's what I want to do. If my company doesn't pay me competitive rates to do what I'm good at I'll go do it elsewhere. I don't see any reason to stop doing what I'm good at. I certainly don't see any reason why anyone should pay me more to do something I'm probably not good at.
You'd think so, but it's not. During mgmt interviews, you have to show how did you rally your team and had impact. It's much easier to rally yourself (think leetcode) than rally 6 other people.
But there’s no test suite that fails for a story about rallying 6 others, or having impact all of which cannot be verified and thus easily embellished - leetcode, and subsequently your candidacy, either passes the bar or it doesn’t.
The higher the position, the easier the interview. My interview for a CxO-level position at an early stage company was one of the easiest in my life (and I got the job offer.) I was stupid to take the position. After several years, I realized I dislike managing people and dealing with corporate politics, so I went back to a "staff+" job.
In general, most companies do not value higher level ICs, including the one I'm at now. But I don't like going to meetings all day, so what am I to do?
This 'theory or blog article' is about one of your 'some companies' though, the interviewee is the.. I can't remember, CTO or something, it's not a vacuous 'this is how I think you should behave wherever you work', it's saying 'this is how we work [and slightly a hiring pitch on that basis]'.
1. There are many more sr mgr/director+ positions than sr. staff+
2. Corporate politics is brutal and a seasoned mgr is adept at it. Unfortunately, the sooner you get better at it the better for your career. This is one of the reasons why a seasoned director will always be able to command a much bigger scope than sr. staff+.
3. The bar for rising in the IC ladder is astronomically higher than that for mgmt ladder.
4. And let's not forget interviews. Management interviews are much easier than ICs. (think leetcode).
5. Last but not the least, even in big tech companies (FAANGM or whatever acronym) you should really measure how many of sr. staff+ folks became sr. staff+ after a stint in mgmt. They used mgmt to catapult their career after seeing stagnation/difficulty of moving up as an IC. You would be surprised how many of these very senior ICs have had mgmt careers for several years before. It's easy to extol the virtues of being an IC once you've reached there but no one sees how they got there :-).
Now, don't get me wrong. There are some companies/orgs/teams where higher ICs are valued much more and do better than mgrs but it's really the minority. It's in your best interest to switch to mgmt after 8-10 yrs of IC career (8-10 yrs is sufficient enough to gain a solid footing in tech) and learn the ropes fast. I waited for 18 yrs and can see the difference.