Hi,
I’d like hear the experiences from people who have gone through what’s happening to me right now.
So I’m currently an engineer in a very specialized field and the company I’m working at is going through some internal restructuring.
There’s a new area, and for some reason, some corporate fucker probably looked at a few numbers at a spreadsheet or something and decided to move me from my very technical job to a (technical) project coordination role.
I guess some people, especially the one wanting to climb the corporate ladder would like this change, since it’s a new area bound to grow significantly, but I like being an engineer, I like dominating a technology and solving complex problems… and I absolutely despise corporate culture.
So I’d like to hear the experiences from people who went to the same thing, did you adapt to the new role? Do you miss being the one who does and not the one who asks?
10 comments
People management is *people* management. Their lives. Their kids. Their medical shit that they have to care of – that will all be your problem now. They don’t have to tell you that stuff, but they will.
Feelings will be a part of your job. Gone are the days of “does this or does this not meet the specs?” When you shoot down Sarah’s idea in a meeting professionally but a hair too fast, she will remember that. She will be hard to work with for a year. She will go to HR for any perceived slight. They will side with you, but it will me more meetings and emails and shit on your plate.
Everyone’s career will be your issue now. Everyone wants to enact fun, wishy-washy dumb ass projects that they can put on their performance reviews and talk about at the end of the year. If any of these people are young and half good at their jobs, they will quit when they get bored. You will have to replace them. It will be a lot of work.
So my advice to you is that unless this new job offers you and your family a tremendous financial step up, *don’t take it.*
The tech field has this annoying tendency to promote people into management because they are good at their job (as individual contributors) rather than because they would be good managers.
The people that do best in that situation are the ones who view management as almost a new, second career that they have to learn from scratch. They read books, take classes, meet with mentors, etc, to learn how to organize a team, motivate people, deal with conflict and politics, etc.
The people who are unhappy are the ones who view the management responsibilities as a hassle or necessary evil that has been thrust upon them.
Personally, I tried the management track and then bumped myself back down to IC. I _loved_ helping people grow their careers and loved acting as a sounding board to lots of different projects. But I wasn’t good at handling low-performers, I hated being the guy everyone whines to, and I hated the corporate politics (a good manager plays the political game so their reports don’t have to). I was much happier as an IC but it definitely capped my career growth.
I was a network engineer who made the hop to program management 7 years ago and then project mgmt last year. I did this intentionally to myself, and I still have doubts and complain about my job all the time.
At its best, project mgmt does give you the opportunity to tackle complex problems, but they will be contractual, budgetary, interpersonal issues, not technical stuff. At its worst, you will just be begging people for schedule updates, getting blamed for overruns, and providing briefings to stakeholders who couldn’t care less.
Project mgmt work is highly dependent on how much the back office supports you. Will you have the authority to get things done, or will you be set up as a scapegoat for problems? Do they have well-defined processes for managing scope creep and change mgmt? Go check out r/projectmanagement and see if those rants/vents sound like things you could live with.
Despite my complaints I do like my project mgmt job, but again I intentionally moved into this field and my company has a strong PMO culture. You definitely can’t “wing it” or force someone who’s not suited for it into a project manager role.
Management is still problem solving. The nature of the problem has clearly changed and all those technical skills you worked so hard to learn may be of zero use. But when push comes to shove, you’re still solving problems….Often problems that are more complicated than any technical problem you’ve ever encountered as it involves rules that can change at the drop of a hat (example: a new law mandating some new HR practice). Technical problems don’t typically have such swings as physics are constant and industry has momentum.
And to add another level of difficulty…. Office politics are absolutely part of the job. If you have no skills on that front, successful management will be akin to someone trying to optimize a bridge design without knowing algebra.
I started technical, went over to management and now am back to being technical.
I enjoyed managing as well, but it is a completely different job. It is not about things, it is about people. How to support them and motivate them so you they can give you their best. How to shield them from the politics and the inevitable organizational bs. How to mediate the inevitable squabbles that come with managing a diverse team. If that interests you then I encourage you to start learning more about it.
But you have to want to embrace it and be willing to let go of being technical. That’s not your job anymore and isn’t an effective use of your time.
Trying to keep your feet in the technical will just hold back your team as you will become a choke point for getting things done.
If you don’t want to let the technical go or if the idea of your job now being about people rather than things doesn’t interest you, then you will probably be happier if you can figure out how to stay in your technical role.
I started technical and went to management. I love it, but I kind of always knew I would. I really like leading, coaching and most importantly helping people.
There’s still a ton of creativity and technical problem solving involved in what I do but now it’s like I have a 16 piece band to write music with instead of just one instrument. I love taking a problem and thinking about how I can combine and leverage all the different strengths and skills of the various people in my department to create a solution while also helping everyone learn and get new and better experiences. It’s just next level satisfaction to me.
I totally get just wanting to come in and do your thing that’s you’re really good at and go home. I love having those sorts of people in my group.
I went to from an individual contributor role to a management role and decided to go back to an individual contributor role.
The stress around human resource management and just dealing with corporate management and fabricated urgencies was not worth the incremental wage. I ended up leaving the company. Found a new job in a similar IC role that paid more than my management role.
I like not having to worry about delegates and making sure they are all producing. Less stress and more flexibility is more valuable for me:
This change in your career was inevitable, at least the request was. I would look at this as an opportunity to grow. Like most men, I was also happy solving technical problems that challenged my troubleshooting and design skills. People, however, and how they worked was a mystery I was ill prepared to manage, and that included my own spouse, and eventually, our children. I went to a therapist when our marriage was “not great” and he took me down an education track that changed my relationships with everyone from my co-workers to family and friends. The most important tool I incorporated into daily life and work was from the book Non violent communication by Marshal Rosenberg. Marshal describes a model of communication best described as “compassionate”. I manage teams now, meet with customers, and get projects done better than ever before. I’m making more money, too. I still get involved with the really challenging problems but get to delegate the work I never really enjoyed anyway. I hope the same can happen for you, and you accept the challenge before you.
I’ve been in the cursed hell hole of “working manager” for like a decade now. I still have to maintain all of my technical skill while still trying to be a good people manager. So now I’m terrible at both but I make twice as much. May you be as dumb and lucky as I have been.
I worked technical and project management and much prefer technical. The large corporation that I worked for finally realized that these were two different skill sets and created a high-end technical track that had the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at the top. If your company thinks in the same way, it would allow you to remain technical, and as you rise higher you could be responsible for making technical decisions that effect your department or corporation as a whole – think deciding on Windows or Linux servers, moving to the cloud, AI, which RDBMS the corporation will use, stuff like that. Alternatively, you could be placed in a “queen bee” position where you control the product and members of your team code subsystems. If you are not a people person, I would stay technical.