alt Hacker NewsDon't you get bored with spending many years learning and becoming advanced or an expert in a system paradigm (like different hosting systems), a programming language (i.e. Perl), or a framework (pick your JS framework), only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later? And then in a job interview, when you try to sell yourself on your wisdom as expert on thing X, new to Y, they dismiss you because the 25 year old has been using Y since its release three years ago?
And when you're in an existing company, stuck in thing X, knowing that it's obsolete, and the people doing the latest Y that's hot in the job market are in another department and jealously guard access to Y projects?
How about when you go to interview, and you not ONLY have to know Y, but the Leetcode from 15 years ago?
So maybe I've given you another alternative to 'it has to be power, there's no other rational reason to go into management'.
Here's a gentler one: if you want to build big things, involving many people, you need to be in management.
Do you enjoy brick laying and calculating angles around doorways? You're the engineer. Do you want to be the architect hiring engineers, working with project managers, and assessing the budget while worrying about approvals? They're different types of work, and it's not about 'power' like you are suggesting. Autonomy and decision-making power are more the 'power' engineers often don't get (unless they are lucky, very very smart or in a small startup-like environment).
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> only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later
Web servers have existed for more than 30 years and haven’t changed that much since then. Or e.g., React + Redux is pretty much the same thing as WinProc from WinAPI - invented some time in ~1990. Before Docker, there were Solaris Zones and FreeBSD jails. TCP/IP is 50 years old. And many, many other things we perceive as new.
Moreover, I think it’s worth looking back and learning some of the “old tech” for inspiration; there’s a wealth of deep and prescient ideas there. We still don’t have a full modern equivalent of Macromedia Flash, for example.
>only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later
Almost nothing goes obsolete in software; it just becomes unpopular. You can still write every website you see on the Internet with just jQuery. There are perfectly functional HTTP frameworks for Cobol.
> Do you enjoy brick laying and calculating angles around doorways? You're the engineer. Do you want to be the architect hiring engineers, working with project managers, and assessing the budget while worrying about approvals?
These are inherently different levels of power. I'm not sure how your example is supposed to be the opposite when you compare someone laying bricks to someone making hiring and firing decisions about groups of people. Your scenario is fundamentally a power imbalance
You might be right about a Leetcode effect and the difficulty to find new interesting positions. But OP wasn't stressing that at all but the desire to architect and manage. I might have put to much emphasis of the managing and too less on the urge to architect and see things from above. I agree.
I am scientist and worked from time to time as a research engineer merely to pay the bills, so I may see things differently. I always like doing lab / field work and first-hand data analysis. Many engineers I know would likely never stop tinkering and building stuff. It may be easier for a scientist than for an engineer to still get trilled, I don't know.
Some of us actually enjoy programming.
In my opinion, time spent learning Perl or an outmoded framework still helped me learn new things and stretch myself. A lot of that knowledge is transferable to other languages or frameworks. After learning QuickBasic and REXX it was pretty easy to pickup Ruby and Python. ;-)
And I would argue that what you are describing is why we end up in a system where the people who are talented and have in depth knowledge end up in "dumber ~ managerial" roles and we end up losing real talent and knowledge because of the incentives you explicitly describe.
If only the world incentivized ICs with depth of knowledge to stay in those roles for the long haul instead of chopping off our knowledge of specificity at the apex of their depth of knowledge. So many managers have no talent, no depth of knowledge and a passable ability to manage people.
> only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later?
That sure beats having it completely obsoleted a few weeks later, which sometimes feels like the situation with AI
Thank you for adding color. This is the exact reason why I want to get in to management. Sadly, I am just not cut out to manage people. Nowadays, my role is more of a hybrid between Principal and EM, which may be awkward at times. If it weren't for excellent PM & PgM, I'd be stretching myself too thin.
> if you want to build big things, involving many people, you need to be in management.
No, you don’t. You need some kind of decision making and communication process but a separate management is not necessary.
N=1 but I do love constantly learning new things, and building small, purposeful, tailored products with small groups of people.
I've gone back and forth across the lead and management lines many times now, and it is career limiting in many many ways. But it's too fulfilling to give up. And I swear there is magic in what small, expert groups are able to produce that laps large org on the regular.