alt Hacker NewsPromoting your best engineers to management sometimes gets you a great manager, but often gets you a mediocre or just-about-competent manager at the cost of a great engineer.
I'm a big fan of the "staff engineer" track as a way to avoid this problem. Your 10-15 year engineers who don't vibe with management should be able to continue earning managerial salaries and having the biggest impact possible.
I'm also a fan of leadership without management. Those experienced engineers should absolutely be taking on leadership responsibilities - helping guide the organization, helping coach others, helping build better processes. But they shouldn't be stuck in management tasks like running 1-1s and looking after direct reports and spending a month every year on the annual review process.
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This is exactly where I find myself. I've been asked several times to take on management, but I have no interest in it. I got to be a principal after 18 years of experience by being good at engineering, not management. Like you said, I can and do help with leadership through mentorship, offering guidance and advice, giving presentations on technical topics, and leading technical projects.
Absolutely agree. Regardless, my org keeps trying to get me to take a management role after 15 years dev experience. I love my job and don't like managing people. You couldn't pay me enough to become a manager.
I still spend a week on annual reviews but you make great points all around.
This is a general problem that corporations have trouble with with: The struggle to separate leadership and people management. Why does the person who tells you what to do also need to be the same person who does your annual review, who also has to be the same person who leads the technical design of the project, approves your vacation, assists with your career development, and gives feedback or disciplinary correction when you mess up? Why do we always seem to bundle all these distinct roles together under "Manager"?