From engineering to management

6 points by kyled 9 years ago | 7 comments

Is it common for a mid level software engineer to be hired into management at a new company? I moved to consulting and there's not much room for management within the firm, and we don't offer management positions to clients.

I enjoy helping people learn, and I'm a very strong engineer (shown through the actions of employers, not just words). I've been told I'm great at interviewing too.

To be honest, I though management was a joke before. Not anymore. After maturing I've come to the realization one person can't do it all, and nor should they.

I would do my best to care the team I'm apart of too. Making sure everyone's work life balance is maintained would be a high priority for me.

selmat 9 years ago |

To be manager you have to be specific personality. You have to be able to treat with different personalities, solve non technical issues, be prepared for work in multitasking mode - lot of issues at same time, with different severities, from different sources and requirements.

Management problems are hard defined, so you can hardly Identify correct procedure, verify correctnes of your choice and the most of time it's running for the long haul.

Probably in most cases you will not see any results (like working code or system). Happy people just will not complain but they will not thank you for that, but on the other hand unhappy people will complain and swear. And you will see and hear it.

You are also inbetween two stones...upper management or customer and your team.

This is not for everyone. few years ago I had same intentions but after few discussions, observations and experiences i regreted my decision.

Own business is little bit different story. I am doing what i want...i wanna design something ...go for it, but still have business decision making rights.

dudul 9 years ago |

Managing and engineering are two different paths. I'm not saying one person can't do both (I do, 50/50), but they require different skills. I don't think one is "better" than the other, they are just different.

An engineer focuses on the product, on the code, on the technical solution to a business problem. A manager has to take care of the people, help them grow, make sure they are happy, challenged.

IMO a real manager is rarely involved in the product development. And if he is, it should be solely to help remove roadblocks that are slowing down the team. Forget about counting how many story points the team can do, or how many bugs they closed last week. Just make sure people are happy and learning new things.

shams93 9 years ago |

You want to shoot for a large company. In the startup world they just place all these hats on the same people, as an engineer you're also a product manager, a project manager, an interaction designer, basically every hat but sales.

cauterized 9 years ago |

Plan to make a transitional stop as a team lead. It's a position that lets you develop "leadership" skills and practice interfacing with managers and other departments on behalf of a team. But it's still an engineering position and doesn't require previous management experience.

At a smaller company (most early stage startups) with a team of 10-20 engineers is where you're most likely to get the most management exposure as a team lead. Because the engineering team is big enough to need a leadership and planning layer below the CTO but too small to have developed a true management army yet.

In a small company (run well), you'll also have more exposure to how your decisions impact the business and what business information you need to make those decisions - crucial aspects of being a good manager.

However, a larger company is more likely to have good mentors for you to learn from. Like everything else, it's a trade off and a balancing act. You may want to try both routes.

If you find you like it and you're pretty good at it, it should be much easier to get hired into a management position from a team lead position than from a plain engineering position because you've positioned yourself as a leader of people and have some practice doing it.

Then you just need to be confident that you'll be content spending 95% of your time talking and planning and 5% or less working directly with the tech.

liquidcool 9 years ago |

No, it is not at all common. The expectation is you'll at least have a few years as a lead. You're going to have to move to a company with room for growth and get promoted.

If you want to stay technical, go with a non-enterprise software company. Anywhere from Google to a tech startup. If you want to get more managerial, pick anywhere else.

I wrote about this in much more depth here:

http://www.madeupname.com/management-the-final-frontier/

euroclydon 9 years ago |

I doubt you'll get hired as a manager; you need to get promoted instead. So go get a job at a large company as an engineer and spend at least six months kicking ass. The ideal company is one with some disfunction and churn -- new hires and such. Then you need to go either out or up with a bang.

Find some major problems with the software development and complain about them strongly to upper management and offer a solution.

Learn to communicate with busy people. Use short emails. Lead with the most important point in verbal and written communication. Learn to tailor your communication to your audiance. Gain the trust and respect of everyone you can. People need to look at you and think, "this guy's/gal's got it." Some will like you and others will not. If you haven't been promoted after doing all this, then straight out ask to be a manager. If you don't get it, leave and do it over.

Also, read The Power Broker [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/039...

cauterized 9 years ago | |

Not sure I agree about joining a dysfunctional company to that end - you're liable to either learn or be forced into terrible management habits.

That said, I couldn't agree more about communication. It's a crucial management skill and one that too few engineers develop properly (and I'm not even talking about socially awkward stereotypes). Communicating effectively with management is a very specific skill that's very different from general social communication; and communicating effectively with one's reports is yet another skillset.