Engineering managers are useless?
I see that a lot of the companies operate on the model of having a team lead who will be driving the project with junior developers. I think engineering managers in such companies are useless and they do nothing but create unnecessary noise for the teams who are working on projects. They just have to be part of several meetings and talk BS. It's the tech lead who goes through the pressure of delivery of the project. EMs are just there to know the status of projects at regular intervals and create pressure situation. What difference it would make if there are no EMs? The projects coming from tech leadership are anyways getting delivered by the tech team. There is a lot of time wasted in explaining the progress to the EM. Involvement is design discussions is also optional. Thoughts? Edit: In my area, teams were productive and delivered in the absence of EM. People who are voting that they are critical please also add your reasons in the comment section. #tech
Such a myopic view of how things work. How old are you again?
EMs are for sure useless. Anybody saying otherwise is an EM who calls spending all days in useless meetings and 1:1s hard work and 100hr work week. The reality is in all those 100 hrs they are only doing 1 hr worth of real work. But obviously they wonāt say it. Why would anyone ever say that they contribute nothing.
You are making me cry now š
I am a tech lead myself. Have been in this industry for decades and tired of people falsely claiming that they work 100hrs or many hours in a week. Some of them are right but the reality is they are spending time in unnecessary things and calling it work. My manager has 60 reports (including direct and 2nd 3rd level). He spends 30 minutes 1:1 weekly with all of them. Which is 30 hours a week already. Itās not needed. Only the direct manager should have 1:1 and that too at least biweekly. That will free up so much time. Higher level managers can have office hours biweekly and interested folks can chat with them. And then my manager will attend all the stand ups of all the projects under him. And then there are weekly joint standups. And many other nonsense meetings which he doesnāt need to attend. Some of them for sure. Once in a while. He should be taking care of higher level decisions. He has delegated 100% of his work to others like me(tech lead). He attends all those meetings to listen and talk BS and make sure people know who is the boss. In past 2 years at Microsoft I have not seen him contributing anything substantial. He is also not aware of most of the things when asked. All he will do is point you to a different person who many know the answer to your question. Thatās it. Most managers are like that. Not saying everyone but most. Tech leads can definitely do all those remaining managerial work in their free time. Engineering managers definitely not needed. I am sure I will get blocked for being so blunt but that is the reality you like it or not.
Remove engineering managers from team, Devs and leads will deliver results, may be they'll take little more extra time to do things in best possible way. but remove devs and leads from the team. Guess what ? You need product to deliver. Taking shit won't do the job. They don't have the skill to build that by themselves. It requires real skill. Yes they are just useless Middleman
Google thought the same when it was a relatively young and successful company, why have EMs at all if you can hire all those bright engineers. Then they ended up doing a thorough research on this topic and thought otherwise. Do have a look at that paper. Their results are quite interesting.
I think Engineering Managers should only focus on shielding the team, pushing back requirements, unblocking other engineers. Setting up unnecessary status meetings are waste of time. You hire smart people not to tell them how to do their job
Tech leads can definitely do both. We donāt need a expensive EM just to collect statuses.
All they do is to identify the features that can be delivered in a release. (After discussing with leads)
EM = Human job scheduler
I moved to management from IC role recently, and here is my exp - Management is a lot of things, It's more breadth vs depth. Release planning for multiple releases(work with team mates) , follow up with them to get the things done. Assisting with priorities, hiring, promoting , 1:1s, listening carefully about the issues etc., If manager isn't there then it would fall everything on TL; Imagine the TLs situation, where he has to handle both tech design + all these meetings. Its lot of work for a single person. I used to thing the same way as others think - like why managers? but it seems its really important so that devs can actually do the dev work.
Yes. But for the work they do I believe EMs should definitely be paid way less than TLs and devs(if at same level). EMs job is more of a secretarial job for the team so that the devs can focus on actual work building the product.
Sorry if I hurt you but I have been in this industry long enough to understand what EMs do on the ground( not on paper). I have work in several companies both as engineer(IC, TL etc) and EM. EMs like to say it how kool their work is and how they are saving the world. Itās in my best interest to join the bandwagon since I have been an EM and love the attention and love it when people bootlick the managers. But this is an anonymous forum. So no harm being truthful. Everyone becomes a manager because they canāt / donāt want to code and managerial job comes with power and people respect them because their job is in their hands. Pretty much every manager I meet loves to flaunt that they are a manager. I loved to do it too. I many switch back to management as well. But again there is no harm being truthful on an anonymous forum. Please donāt burry your head in the sand. I donāt mean to say EM job doesnāt have some challenges. But itās nothing compared to what a TL has to go through.
I read the discussion months late. Walmart, a lot of your experience resonates with mine. I guess the issues of the impression that EMs are useless might be that the work EMs are responsible has a much vague criteria to judge and they have the power to delegate their work to others. Good EMs would find good balance of leaning in for unblocking ICs, carving scope of work for team, hiring talents, and coaching underperforming people, but those good EMs are really rare. In my 7 YOE, I have had 8 EMs and only 2 of them are good EMs. A lot of EMs either lack of decent planning / management skills or intentionally to abuse the power to delegate entire his / her responsibilities to others. Useful EMs are rare animals.
Iām commenting from the future to say that I had to read this thread to understand that an EM isnāt what I thought they were. Mostly in the sense that I thought theyād advocate for my promotion. Nope. You are your own ally there. Procure your body of work and make yourself either to be a candidate for the next level or a devastating loss if you were to put in notice.
By this logic CEO, VP of engineering all are useless
Nope. Things such as Strategy and roadmap planning is a different thing. You EM.
What a VP engineering to Directors, an EM is same to tech leads