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Ask HN: How to move into engineering management?

8 points by aerovistae ↗ HN
I'm a decent (but not senior) developer but I don't really like writing code all day every day, and I would much prefer to be handling operational and people issues.

Anyone have any advice on how to move over? I'm only 27 and I have something sort of like impostor syndrome where I feel like I don't really deserve to be an engineering manager at this point, like I need to be good enough developer to be a team lead first. What do you think?

9 comments

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sidlls
Engineering management is more than just operational and people issues. If you don't think you could contribute to design discussions, code reviews, and broader architecture discussions at the same level as a team lead you probably aren't ready to manage engineers. That isn't impostor syndrome; it's a recognition of the fact that as an EM you'll have to do that.
daffodil-11
I look at it as follows:

Developers have the following core competencies: project management, ui/ux, distributed architecture, programming (including programming tests and devops), security, and data management (sql, back-ups, etc). Obviously people are going to specialize at some point, and some systems need entirely different skills, and I'm leaving out SAs, DBAs, UX designers, Product owners, but for most work you need a team that can cover all that, and imo, senior developers should have a pretty good handle on all of that even if they specialize in one area. (By project management, i don't expect them to be project managers, but they should know how projects go down from start to finish)

As an engineering manager your core competencies are vision (do you know what needs to be done), leadership (can you sell a vision and get buy-in), administration (follow sdlc, do all the HR stuff), and mentor both junior and senior people in all of their core competencies. Your main job is to deliver in the short term but also build a more capable team. If your senior staff know more than you, that's awesome, as long as you can tell when they are getting off-track.

It's a big space to operate in. Few do it well and most dev managers get by ok for decades basically sucking by this criteria, so don't be scared to just jump in.

Most days, I'm not sure I do it well, but that is the framework I use to guide myself and evaluate other managers. The vision/mentoring comes pretty easily to me (i have a very strong dev and architecture background), the leadership, especially up and across the org chart? Well, let's just say I'm working on it.

muzani
I think statistically managers start at about 28 for smaller companies.

I have a huge breadth of experience with projects both big and small. Also where I live, fluent English isn't so common. Also have some professional training experience.

I do blog a lot of stuff on management on Facebbook. Crazy theories and books to read, to the point of obsession, because I'm frustrated at how many projects are managed. A lot of people recruit me from there.

StriverGuy
Curious where you get that statistic from? I would hesitate to trust a 28 year old engineering manager in most circumstances short of being an extreme outlier in terms of abilities and career. At 28 that would mean they have around 6 (at best) years experience assuming they have just a bachelors level education.
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bsvalley
Becoming an engineering manager is not an escape from coding. It’s the opposite. To get there you need to be a top performer, which involves being really good at coding and all the other tasks you’d like to move away from. And then, you get promoted and they take it away from you. The best individual contributors become great managers. You should look into project manager roles instead. This will he a better option for you.
drakonka
I sort of experienced this. I was getting consistently good feedback as an IC, and my TD and line manager asked me to try out a lead role of a very small team. The idea was that I'd still have time to code as well, but in reality it involved way too much dealing with people and JIRA for my liking. I gave it a shot for 3 months, but really all I wanted to do was focus more on programming and growing as an individual contributor. In a 1-on-1 with my TD where I opted out of the role I told him there was no shortage of people who would love to be in a lead role, so they should just pick someone else. He commented that it's kind of a Catch-22, and that unfortunately most people who want a lead role aren't the same people that would be suitable for that role, and that people who tend to be good at those positions are ICs who naturally may not be that interested in them.

Luckily my company has a TD progression track for the more manager-y types and an SSE track for ICs, so that conversation was a great checkpoint of sorts where it became very clear which track was right for me.

_ah
A manager requires the tech chops of a lead PLUS people skills. If you're not ready to be a lead, then you're likely to be a terrible manager.
UK-Al05
I've worked at a lot of larger companies. Our managers we're almost never technical, or they were only developers for 1-2 years.