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.
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.
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.
I think using the word evil to describe anything in economics is a bit overly emotional. 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'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.
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?
I'll donate to someone who needs it, not wealthy capitalists.
If capitalists want my time, they need to pay what it's worth.
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.
And the ICs themselves are to be blamed for encouraging and fostering such ridiculous processes.
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.
Being able to be done at the end of the day is something I'm really looking forward to but it's going to take some time to get back into that mindset.
As a manager, I felt like I was always on.
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?
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.
Obviously it's going to be designed in the way that works best for them.
> 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.
Guess whose fault it becomes once the line manager is being blamed from above.
Management games are detrimental to innovation.
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.
For me at least this hasn't been true.
Your points seems be based on the assumption there's more people managers than IC's.
I'm not certain that is accurate (or at least accurate at a well operated company).
Absolutely hate corporate politics when I have not enough equity to put that much effort in.
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.
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.
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?
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.