TLTD #14 - Reasons to become an engineering manager

Wrong answers only

I was recently in the Decoding Careers Podcast with Sam Yates where I had the chance to revisit my early career and answer a few questions to help upcoming engineering leaders make the transition into leadership.

It got me thinking about a couple of the most common questions I get when coaching and mentoring people:

I’m thinking of applying for an engineering manager role. You’ve been doing this for a while… don’t you miss coding?

Or from the perspective of an early career engineering manager:

I like being hands on. I end up working overtime which is the only uninterrupted block of time I get. Even though it’s long hours, I feel really good when I get the chance to do that.

These highlight some of the reasons why it’s so hard to make the switch — not only that, but perhaps they hint at why some people should avoid the switch altogether. That is what I wanted to touch on in this article: why you should not move into engineering management.

The wrong reasons to become an engineering manager

1. You want to call all the shots

While decision making is a fundamental skill in a leader’s toolbox — and one you’ll be constantly using in your professional life — it’s not always that you get to actually make decisions.

Think about it this way: the reason you hired a team — or teams — of incredibly competent and motivated individuals is so you can give them the autonomy to accomplish their goals in a way they deem appropriate, taking into consideration things like time, budget, quality and scope.

Sure, as a team’s manager you might decide on a direction, or a vision. But that’s usually where you should stop - let the team come up with the plan to achieve that vision by sharing enough context so they know the constraints you’re operating with. (frameworks like OKRs can be incredibly helpful here. )

On occasion, you may be called upon as a tie breaker — but even then it’s far better to lead with questions and context to steer the team towards unblocking itself.

2. You want to make more money

For the longest time - and across most industries - moving into management was the only way to increase one’s compensation within an organisation.

Thankfully this has changed considerably in the past 7-9 years in the technology industry. Most software companies nowadays implement a dual career track: an individual contributor (IC) track and a manager track.

Prior to this model, we would have engineers with no interest in managing teams being promoted into manager roles because they had nowhere else to grow. That created a generation of unhappy and unsuited engineering managers, which negatively impact the company culture and their own mental health.

Thankfully that’s no longer the case: if you want to remain deeply technical, be able to write code and not have the responsibility of managing others, you just need to stick to the IC track. There’s a whole other world beyond being a Senior Engineer that doesn’t involve performance reviews and excel spreadsheets, but pays equally well — and sometimes better!

It’s worth noting that as a more senior IC — Staff, Senior Staff, Principal… — your time to write code will still be limited and you’ll be expected to influence the organisation in different ways. You won’t be a manager, but you’ll definitely be a leader and a role model.

3. You want less workload

I get it. Some engineering roles are incredibly demanding - especially when you consider on-call expectations. As such, some engineers may see a management role as a way out, into a world where the grass is green and the work is less demanding. (I could not make the Paradise City pun work)

The reality is quite different however. While engineers do have demanding jobs, there is a lot more certainty to it. A manager on the other hand lives in the depths of uncertainty.

I like putting it this way: As an engineer, your code either works as expected or it doesn’t. You change a line of code and within the same day — or hour! — you know whether it worked.

A manager on the other hand makes decisions she won’t know for days — or months! — whether it had an impact on the team, culture, product or any combination of these. You unlock a whole other level of stress!

Lastly, there is the question of time as well. In my experience, engineers tend to have a more regular work schedule. Even when they need to respond to incidents, that happens in a predictable way: there is an on-call roster and therefore no surprises.

As soon as you switch to an engineering management role, that sort of ends and you are connected all the time — yes, this is a whole other discussion about burnout, beyond the scope of this post. So, no, it’s not less work. It’s just different.

As I hope you can tell, I wrote this article partly as a joke. I don’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing a career in leadership. It’s rewarding in a myriad of ways! With that said, what are some of the wrong reasons you’ve seen? I might need to write part 2.

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