Why Managers Are GATEKEEPING Software Engineers From Management Roles

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I'm going to experience devs here for a topic. I think this is a good one. I have no idea how I'm going to try to cover all this. Um especially because there's a lot of points listed in this post and like I just screwed up my camera. Um there's a lot of points listed, but I feel like I can't read them and drive them, so I'm not going to do that. But uh it's does anyone else feel like there is gatekeeping around engine management? thought that'd be interesting. Um, and so they start by saying, "Every time I mention being interested in the EMP path, I feel like my manager and several different managers across different teams and companies tries really hard to discourage me and convince me against it.

They always talk about how much their job sucks, yet I never see any of them switch back to the IC path unless forced to." They go into a bunch of different examples, and I would love to like, it's just not the right format because I'm going to be driving. I love to go through all of the different examples. I want to talk about this in general. I did a quick scan through the the comments. Um it's it's kind of funny. Um someone says that uh you know the very first one that's like pretty highly upvoted is like read between the lines. This is the politically correct way of telling you it's not happening. Uh I can't tell you why, but for some reason they just don't see you as someone who they want as a manager. And the next response that's like to that that's highly upvoted as well is they say, "Funnily enough, the original poster being unable to read between the lines here is a good indicator they're not cut out for management.

No judgment." Uh, another person right after that says, um, like basically the Could you imagine though that the fact that they're unable to have this conversation like a difficult conversation around this? Isn't it kind of interesting? Like, you know, as a manager, you're going to have to have difficult conversations with employees. How do they expect that to work? So, I'm not here to bash this person who wrote this. Um, I kind of skimmed through it. I think there's a couple of interesting points that they bring up um in terms of like their quotes, but they're obviously not direct quotes. We'll chat through it. Um, I'm going to get the car started. We're going to get driving. Um, a friendly reminder that if you want questions answered, then submit them in the comments, happy to try answer stuff on software software development, not speaking apparently, careers. Um, and if you want to be kept anonymous or you want to write more, just look for dev leader on social media.

That's my main YouTube channel as well. Um, you can write as much as you want. You can give me the juicy details. I'll keep you anonymous. But generally, I find when people can provide more detail, if they're willing to, then I can offer more specific um sort of response. So, it's not generic. People like asking generic questions and then I feel bad because I give a very generic response and I'm like, I don't know how you want me to approach it. So, okay. on this topic. Do I feel like there's gatekeeping in general for engineering management? I might say like there's probably some of that. Um I don't know. Like again, some people were calling out, hey, it seems like this is a hint from your managers that are telling you they don't think you're you're cut out for it. I don't know the person. That's it would be wildly unfair for me to just be like, "Yep, from one post I don't think you're cut out." Who knows?

Um, I think that in general, anytime that this has come up in my career where someone's at least interested in exploring it, um, the the focus and they kind of mention it in their post, right? I think like you need to you truly need to understand that like engineering management is a people centric role. Um now when I say that I realize there's discussions like I work at Microsoft there's uh news right now that's like you'll see people posting about it all over about how like Microsoft is uh forcing engineering managers to code and stuff and other places already do this but there's a lot of discussion around this and then like my philosophy is like if you want to be um effective as an engineering manager truly you do not have time to be contributing to the codebase effectively. Um it's not that you can't it's not that you can't write good code or you're incapable.

Um it's just that if you're starting to prioritize writing code, you're not prioritizing your team and that's that's that. Um plain and simple. You can get away with it with smaller teams or for shorter periods of time. Or if you do what I did for 8 years, you basically work two jobs. You're an EM and you're a software developer at the same time. And if you want to be good at both, you need to do the work that goes into both. You you cannot there is no capacity to do both effectively. It's just the reality. Um, so people need to realize and what the reason I'm saying that is like I'm I'm trying to say regardless of what people are trying to enforce as a a norm or a standard, it's extremely difficult to do both roles like an uh you know delivering as an individual contributor, writing code and managing teams.

Good luck doing them both effectively. Um, I will die on that hill. And I say that as someone who has been an engineering manager for just under 13 years. Eight of those years was a technical manager where I was writing code and managing teams. For the last almost 5 years at Microsoft, I don't write code at work. I just manage teams. I physically do not have capacity to write code at work unless I give up doing other parts of my job. Maybe that's expected. I don't think that that's the right thing to do. Um so management is a people centric role. If you are interested in management like again engineering manager not talking about product management I'm talking about project management engineering manager. Um if you're interested in that but the you're like I don't I don't really want to spend more time working with people.

I don't want to be dealing with people problems. Like that's not of interest to me. I will outright say then you will likely not enjoy being an engineering manager or or you'll be focused on what I consider the wrong things. So when I've had people talk to me about this, I've been pretty fortunate. I guess I don't know fortunate is the right word. Um it's worked out pretty well that people that are interested in it at least have some alignment to like um they really enjoy mentoring others. they're really interested in doing more of that kind of work and I have felt like sort of their focus is in the right spot and they might be junior whatever level but the the point is that like they have an interest in that direction and I'm like okay like especially if you're more junior I'm like I can't just like snap my fingers and you're an EM but I I think that at least we can look for opportunities like that.

What does that mean especially if you're more junior? Well, okay, just to give you an example, if we're gonna have interns on the team, like if you are someone that's junior, it can still be a great opportunity for you to try and help onboard the interns. Can you buddy up with them, right? Can you can you give them some mentorship at even at your junior level that's still going to be helpful for the intern? doesn't mean the intern can't talk to the more senior people on the team, but like can I position you to be able to go help someone and make that a responsibility that you can demonstrate, right? Um, so historically for me, anytime that I've had employees talk to me about this, it seems like it's a good fit to try and find some opportunities to expose them where I can to to things like this, right?

If someone's more senior, it could be more of like a, hey, can we set you up for something more like a team lead position. Uh, in fact, I've had it statistically more frequent that I have thought people would be a good fit for EM roles and they said, "No, I don't have an interest." Okay, I've seen that happen. I mean, not a lot of statistics here, but I've seen that happen twice now. And for both those individuals, they're now directors. So, uh, where I used to work, they are now, they've surpassed where I was at and they're now directors. So, um, I think, you know, I would say personally, I knew that they were going to be good people leaders.

Uh but I think that they were acknowledging hey like my interest is really around contributing technically as an individual contributor and I think that with some time they realized like probably like I did too like that you can have different kind of impact and they were both amazing with working with other people coaching them mentoring they have really good people skills and if they have the skills and if they realize that they enjoy doing that um I think that it's probably why they ended up where they did and they've been very successful at it. So I think personally my first thing is trying to get people to see it is a people centric job right it does not mean that you don't have to have any technical ability I think that would be a complete misunderstanding of what I'm saying um but it's kind of like imagine trying to um to lead a group of very technical people and not knowing anything about the technical domain.

It's it's probably going to be difficult to even have like meaningful conversations, right? You'll hear about people expressing frustration or they need help with something, need they need guidance and you're going to be like, I don't even know what you're talking about. So like, right, you need some you need technical depth. But your daytoday stuff is not like you know in my my opinion to to be successful as an engineering manager it's not writing code daily. I still program every day just not at work. Okay. So I I feel like with that out of the way, right, people centric job, I wanted to say that if you have managers that are like it feels like, oh man, that's a that's a bus. I was going to say that's a big car. It's not a car. It's a bus. That's why Can I Ooh. Sorry. Merging lanes.

There's a guy coming around the bus. He probably shouldn't have driven around the bus like that. Maybe I shouldn't have done what I did. I don't know. But he gave me a good look. Um, I think when I was kind of brought up like the gatekeeping part, um, I think you might I don't think it's like specific for EM type roles necessarily. Um, I think sometimes you will see EM that are not like they're probably not doing a good job of like the career building for other people unfortunately. Like I feel like that's part of your role and they're not doing a good job of it. And um the side effect is like when you have someone that's like, "Hey, I'm I'm interested in, you know, moving into a role like this and they're kind of thinking like, I don't even know how we're going to facilitate that, right?

Like I don't just have an EM position on the team. Like, how do I even start having a conversation about this?" They might just like shut down, right? And it might feel like gatekeeping where they're trying to like tell you no or all the reasons why not, but it might just be because literally they don't even know how to to take any step. So, I'm not saying like I'm perfect at this, right? Definitely not. I hope I never come across like that. Um, that's awful. But, uh, Oh, come on. I need to merge lanes. One more to the fast lane and then we're free. Come on. No. Shut down. It's hard to like when you're in a lane that's like basically stopped and you have to merge into the fast lane. Very difficult. But we're going to do it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, what was I even saying?

Um, this this concept of like Yeah. So, not being able to kind of prepare people for um a role that's not really actively available. Even when I have the the junior situation and they're like, "Hey, I'm, you know, I'm interested. This is the the career path I'd like to pursue. I'm interested in it." And setting those expectations like, "Hey, this is a people centric thing. Like, that's what you're interested in, right?" Like, okay, cool. Like, let's make that clear. Um, I don't just have a role in the team for that. Like I don't just like make up engineering manager roles and say great you are a junior you just get to go do this because that's what you want. No. Um but I I have to be transparent with them and like hey like great you know my my role as your engineering manager is to help you with career growth.

We're on the same page as that. Cool. Okay. You also understand that yes you are at this level and you know expectations for becoming an engineering manager probably not happening like right away. Cool. Awesome. Um, also you know that like we don't actively have roles for that right now. Cool. Awesome. You still would like me to help guide you in that direction for things that you could be looking at to gain those experiences because they're aligned with your interests. Awesome. And you also understand that's not going to be like something that just happens every day. I don't just have those opportunities all the time. Right. Cool. What are we doing when we talk like this? Level setting expectations. If you've been on this channel for at least one video, you've heard me say this. It's like just the number one thing. Level set expectations with people.

So, I try to do that and not just dismiss and say, "Oh, no, engineering manager. No, you're you're a junior. Just focus on writing code. You'll love it." Right? Like, I don't want to dismiss it. Uh that's why I'm saying it might come across as gatekeeping when when other managers are kind of just like avoiding it, but I want to make sure the individual's heard. I want to make sure they acknowledge that my goal is to help them grow in their career, but at the same time, I can't just give them an engineering manager role. And because depending on their level, they might be far enough away from that that there isn't even like a clear timeline for it. It's going to be very ambiguous, but at least they know that I'm hearing them and then we can bring that up when we're talking about career stuff, right?

It's moving in the right direction. So, uh I think sometimes people might perceive gatekeeping just because engineering managers don't really um they may not know what to do with it. Um, the other thing could just literally be that like, you know, similar type of thing, but there is no role and they're coming across as gatekeeping. I'm just going to make up an example, right? Um, like I've never had this direct conversation with my manager and it's because I think that for my level at Microsoft, I'm still probably one level off uh numeric level versus title part. But I've said, you know, very, you know, transparently on this channel that my goal in my career, at least in big tech, is like I've been an engineering manager for 13 years. Like almost my entire professional career has been managing engineers. I have a lot of experience doing this.

I'm not saying I'm the best in the world. I'm not saying there's not more to learn, but I have a lot of experience doing this. I would like to be able to move into a position where I'm managing other managers. I would like to have impact at that level. I would like to help coach other engineering managers navigate the same problems that I've been navigating for the last 13 years. The reason that I also say that like from a I don't think I should be coding at work is because it is a direct step backwards as in I am spending more time being hands-on doing very tactical things when I should be spending less time being hands-on doing tactical things and facilitating larger groups of people to be more effective. So that is what I would like to do in my organization. There is no role that is open for that.

So when it comes to my own career advancement, I'm talking with my manager about promotion, moving in that direction, but it would not be a title change, right? That is a goal of mine, but I'm doing one step at a time. If I were to say to my manager, hey, I would like to be what's called a group engineering manager, at least at Microsoft. Um, if I said, hey, that's my expectation. I want to be doing that. Like, because I haven't had the conversation with my manager specifically about that. I don't know what he would say. I I I think he would probably say, "Okay, but like, you know, number one, you're not there yet because we need to see that you get promoted, whatever else before you're at the level that would be considered for that." Number two, he'd probably say something like, "We like we just don't have that." And he's not wrong.

So this this concept especially when we're talking about just becoming an engineering man manager in general is like sometimes individuals like engineering managers may may be gatekeeping from it. They might not realize they're doing it or they might not be intending to, but they might not have the role and they're going, "Well, if I don't have the role, like what should I be doing here?" Because like let's take the example with with my own manager, right? There is no group engineering manager position that's under him. By the way, that's also his role is a group engineering manager. So he would if he's trying to help me grow in that direction, it's either because sorry to make it work, it's either because there is organizational growth that could facilitate that or what like or that he's accepting that I'm going to be going somewhere else. Right. And I I'm saying that like that's the reality.

If if he were like, "Hell yeah, like let's go make this happen, but he's our organization's not growing." Like he would be acknowledging like, "Okay, that's somewhere else. It could be a different team, right?" Which is, you know, reality could be at a different company. But a lot of managers will shy away from this because they're like, I can't give that person the thing. And interestingly enough, not for my own not for my own role. Um, and this is just a general conversation. I actually talked to my manager today about situations like this. Um, and I think it's the first time we talked about this type of thing and we were absolutely aligned. and he was saying he was talking about um basically engineering managers uh feeling threatened or not.

So for example, he was saying that he from the from a group at Microsoft, he's like, you know, I know season engineering managers there and the way that he was helping um like qualify that was that they're not like if they had a good person on their team, right? If they had a good person on their team that was a good fit for another team and that person was interested in doing it. Like to give you an example, someone's like, "Man, I wish I could just I want to write more C++ code and I've been kind of doing this other stuff for a while or I want to work in this domain. I've been doing this other stuff for a while.

That's what I really want." He was saying those seasoned engineering managers, they have no problem being like, "Hey, yes, I do have a a great person that would fit that and they're interested and we should talk about how to transition them over." And he said because he like he says they're good engineering managers for that because they acknowledge that if they if those engineering managers don't do anything about it. Guess what's going to happen? Those people are going to leave eventually, right? It's either that and I I said the sort of this counterpart to him is like they either leave or they stay and they start dropping in performance because they're not engaged. So, as an engineering manager, whether other engineering managers acknowledge us or not, it's literally in our best interest to help people grow in their career because either we're going to stunt their growth and they're going to start underperforming, be disengaged, whatever else, or they're going to leave anyway.

So, you might as well be part of their growth. because that means if there's another opportunity and a team that's in the same company, you're keeping great talent nearby like just help people grow. But I think that there are some engineering managers that will not do this. And again, I feel like that's probably because either they're inexperienced at it, they don't know how to do it, maybe their engineering manager kind of demonstrated the similar thing with like a gatekeeping kind of thing to them and that's all they know. I don't know. Um, but yeah, quick recap. People focused for sure. So, if someone was talking to me about this and they did not want to work with people, I would probably I would caution them against it, right?

If they were just like, "Hey, I just want to be in control of people or I just want to have the final say on things." I don't I don't know if anyone's actually like this or would say it, but you know, if they just weren't interested in solving people problems, I would caution them. Um the other two parts are kind of like distance from being able to have that type of promotion to um the role availability, right? Um one of the things that this person mentioned in the Reddit post was like they're kind of saying some things like well they're these managers are telling me like oh you need to at least be this level to become a manager. So again, a lot of this is kind of like big tech speak. Not all the levels are the same at other places.

They're not the same across big tech, but um they're saying like, "Oh, you need to at least be like an L7 to be a manager." And he's like, "I think that's though, because they did it when they were L5s." So he was saying L5 in this context was like senior. they got to move into management and then the managers are telling him now like you need to be staff or principal level to be able to do it and he's like that's not fair like why did they get to do it? I don't know. I I don't know the answer, but like maybe that's literally the requirement. Like the organization that I'm in at Microsoft, the the engineering manager role is introduced at principal. For context, the numbers and stuff are all ridiculous and all over the place. Principal is at Microsoft is level 65. For context, a like entry- level software engineer is a 59.

So in Substrate, I'm not sure if this is different in other parts of Microsoft because it's a ridiculously big company, but at least in Substrate, uh, which is the Office 365 side of Microsoft, there is there is no engineering manager role that I've ever heard of that is not at principal. That's like that's the baseline for engineering managers. Um, but this person was kind of upset by that, like why did why is it different for them? Um, why do I need to be that level of individual contributor before I go on? Um, I mean, these are all great things that you could be asking your manager and trying to understand better from their perspective. But the the framing that I have for this and I'm not I'm not going to sit here and say like you know a senior good enough is principled the level

the the idea that I understand behind this at least is that when you've reached say principle if we're talking about the Microsoft side of things when you've reached principle you've been able to demonstrate enough I can't speak enough technical depth enough leadership on projects to drive results and technical depth that if you also now layer in the these other requirements for being able to have the ability to lead teams difficult conversations right people management if you have that plus what's expected from a principle which like I was saying was the technical depth and the ability to deliver on at that level then you should be able to manage teams of people which will include principal engineers as well. Now that's not to say that like everyone must be levels below you like my first role at Microsoft I had a principal engineer that was a level above me.

Why are you beeping at me? Um so that's not that's not what I'm saying. Um, I'm just saying that like there there's probably some minimum level of like being able to prove that you can operate in that environment before it makes sense to put you in charge of managing teams. I don't know what that, you know, did Microsoft get it perfect with principal? Would it have been okay at a level 64, which is like the top band for senior? Maybe I don't know but I think the concept is that you know being able to demonstrate enough technical depth and uh historically having like a track record for for driving uh large impact in big projects. Okay. So I think I think boo sorry I know I don't usually edit these videos but apparently these Sony cameras don't have batteries that last more than like 15 seconds.

So, my camera died even though it was plugged in. So, unfortunately, that's the end of the video. I figured I'd tack this on the end so that you're uh not totally baffled. But here we are. Thanks. I'll see you next time.