Career BEYOND Senior Software Engineering Manager?! [360 Video]

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

all right folks I'm headed to work here um I went to Crosser this morning and absolutely could not film a video on the way back because I was absolutely decimated um felt like I was going to pass out on the drive home because I was wrecked um I have the insta 360 going I've seen it's already rotated on top of my car with one turn which is great so we'll see I'll figure it out when I go to put it together um I'm going to go to Reddit for a topic and uh it's going to be about uh well the person's I don't I guess they're asking a question kind of talking about some experience but they're uh it's going to be about Engineering Management and someone sort of burnt out from that career path um they're still quite young so I assume they probably

had a similarish experience to to what I've had cuz I think they said they're 33 they're 33 and they've been an engineering manager for 12 years like that's even they started before me which is nuts um but they're talking about essentially um a lot of the aspects about the job they really enjoy so they're saying and I think they've kind of moved on to Senior Management as well so even for me um for context where I used to work before Microsoft uh they didn't have what we would call like a technical director position you have to recall it was like a startup and we were still really defining these types of things so I had peers that could go from engineering manager to director position but because my title was technical manager they literally didn't have a thing above that so it was it would

have been impossible to promote me um since then things have changed like I've had people that uh reported to me that have director positions and stuff there which is which is great but uh I I technically would have been in in like Senior Management or senior leadership if uh if I would have stuck around there uh at Microsoft I have been sort of stuck in remain stuck in limbo mode with uh middle management so I have literally been a middle manager for almost 13 years now so this person from the Reddit thread even has some additional experiences um in terms of role that's kind of above and beyond what I have lived through um from the perspective of a title but probably some things I feel like I can at least relate to um so they're saying you know the collaboration the strategy all these

things are things they really enjoy but because where they're working the organization itself has like really evolved uh company culture is very different um they're kind of saying like look like it's a huge pain in the ass and like they're burnt out from from trying to like you know things are getting reared they're trying to make sure that uh they can find like I don't know like business value for their the teams under them to go chase so that they can uh it's almost like there's just like a lot of politics and bureaucracy at that point and they're like look like this just doesn't seem like what it was once upon a time and uh you know I think that's something I can relate to for sure um and not even necessarily from the same spot right like for me going from a startup that

was extremely fast growing to Microsoft which is already like an enormous company right um it's me entering a company that already has a lot of the bureaucracy and a lot of um you know the reorg stuff happening like it's it's just there and there are certain things for me and OB viously like I'm not pointing fingers at people or you know specific details but there's certain things for me where I'm like that just feels like you know it would eat away at my soul if that's like what I had to focus on doing right so if I were up in more uh Senior Management and I had teams of Engineers with engineering managers that reported up through me if business priorities were changing like I could imagine being in a situation where it's like look like this B this business group under you like there's

been an executive decision that we don't need that part of the business so like go figure out what you're going to do with it right which is either you know like unfortunately layoffs or are you able to make a case for Staffing up other areas um and like all that kind of stuff is like like you know I'm sure would absolutely eat away at you um so I wanted to talk a little bit about this kind of thing in this video um I'm going to start reminding people that when I'm going to Reddit for uh for topics this one is from experienced devs the subreddit there if um if I remember I'll put a link to it in the comments or the description and if I forget if someone else would love to do that I would love that so thank you so much and

a friendly reminder as well if you watch these videos and you find them helpful like you want to share that back to Reddit uh you know I do all this for free um fortunately this channnel uh doesn't cost me much money except for the equipment um but even between this Channel and my main Channel Dev leader uh the editing costs on dev leader are not even covered from two YouTube channels so I literally lose money to try and put out uh as much educational software engineering content as possible so just spreading the word helps and that way if more people find it helpful then I can continue to grow the channel um and one more quick reminder if you want questions answered leave them in the comments and uh otherwise you can message me again look for Dev leader on social media I'll keep your

uh identity Anonymous and I'm happy to try my best to answer some okay so when I think about Engineering Management yeah like I I can definitely agree with this person like the the things that I enjoy are the strategy Parts um now if you're I've noticed especially in some situations as a middle manager I end up getting removed from that sometimes and that is absolutely like a what's a good word for that like a something that disengages me right like if someone wants me to lead a particular area but they're not going to like sort of include me in the strategy uh that feels very bad and for context like I I recognize that there's probably some people that are engineering managers watching this or even potentially above but probably most people I would I would gather our uh or Junior developers that kind of

thing as a as a middle manager if you're not getting some part of the strategy right if you're not doing some part of that what effectively is happening is that someone else is making those decisions you're excluded and now you have to somehow find yourself very much on board and in agreement with those so that you can try to get an entire team rallied behind that and you might imagine that if there is a sort of expectation around the direction of a strategy and you're not in line with it how much more difficult is that going to make your job to try and get a team rallied behind it right like they're not going to be like if you're not behind it they're going to be able to sense that like you know that it's just going to be a little bit rough going forward

so it in my opinion it's like a setup for bad Team Dynamics and and especially as an engineering manager like I would be very disengaged if I couldn't be part of that um there's some things I don't get me wrong I absolutely understand there's going to be like organizational priorities or the business might have to shift like I'm not saying that like things can't change or that I have to be part of every decision but um if you give my team a charter and then I am not allowed to help come up with the strategy for how to achieve that then like it's almost what do you want me to do right um or how do you expect me to do my job effectively if I can't be part of that it's really just like 101's with people and trying to make sure that they

don't hate what they're doing and me crossing my fingers so it's a bad spot to be in but um I would you know I can imagine for this this person if they're like the reason I'm bringing it up is that if they're in more Senior Management there even saying that they're spending sort of time doing like this other type of work which is how do I go find business initiatives for these groups right after reorgs and things like that so like that's also you're not getting to focus on on driving these initiatives it's almost like this I don't want to say it's arbitrary work but it's just like I don't know extra overhead that no one wants to have to do now I'm sure this person wants to make sure that their teams are supported that's why they're feeling burnt out from having to do

this kind of stuff but no one wants to be in that situation I can't imagine that anyone enjoys it they're like finally a reorg we can go make things great they're probably like damn it a reorg like what are we going to do about this um how do we make this situation not absolute um so I can imagine that's stressful and not something that people look forward to um again as a middle manager if I like I've been part of reorgs and it can be kind of weird right the dynamic changes a lot uh when I started at Microsoft not long after my manager who was you know a great manager uh he moved on to a different team and then I I didn't have a manager right like my my team uh the sort of the bigger umbrella over my team uh didn't have

a manager over it it was just me that was managing one part of it so it all bubbled up to my skip level who I guess temporarily became my direct manager and that's a weird dynamic not because he was bad or anything he's actually an amazing uh I thought he was an amazing Skip and he's amazing leader but the challenge is like I'm not automatically like I am not elevated into the more senior position right so there ends up being this disconnect between like how he's operating at his more senior level and how I'm operating but I still need to somehow keep things going a lot of the time unfortunately a lot of falls on middle managers to like go figure it out right like you're literally in the middle of of trying to help your teams all the individual contributors execute get things done

help them you know do their best work make sure they're growing in their career but in between that and then whatever else is going on as part of reorgs right so I had people that were more you know much more senior Engineers that suddenly lost their their skip level uh meetings and stuff so they're like hey these were opportunities where I had really good visibility and and things like that now they're they're vanished because the other part that came after that is we had a new manager that came in she was great but then we moved to a different organization and uh our skip level was brand new and then the product management organization changed like there was so much change that it's like it makes it very difficult to and I don't know like I'm sorry I'm I'm talking about this from a few

different angles I don't know from the engineers perspective if a lot of them noticed maybe there was enough shielding for some of the junior developers where they're like I don't really care like doesn't really affect me I I know the areas of work I have to work on I feel like supported by my direct manager so like who cares um and I would kind of I actually hope for that because I don't want them to be like distraught from all the change but I would say the more senior Engineers are like hey what's going on here um for more context when you are at a higher level in your role and I've talked about this before this is going to be different at different places but I know for sure at Microsoft for my more senior Engineers I can't just put them up for promotion

and say I think this person should be promoted so we're promoting them I basically have to say I think this person should be promoted here's all the evidence to support it and then sort of like give that over to my manager my skip level manager and then there's a conversation that happens uh with an audience that is I don't even know who they are but I'm assuming my skip levels peers and I'm not part of it which is the really difficult part right so the whole thing being like at some level for engineers at least where I am at in Microsoft the decision making process to go beyond that I literally don't even get to go represent my engineers and like I don't like that at all because even though it would be really hard I would love to sit in the room with those

people making the decision and have them Grill me I would love for that that's a weird thing to say right but let me put it the other way I don't even get to have the conversation with them and the point and I think the reason for that is they're like look it's not that we're doubting what you're saying but like if we don't see we don't have enough visibility into the impact that this person's having then they're we don't deem that they're even at that level because the impact isn't sufficient but I really personally I really struggle with that now to tie that back to what I was saying when you get reorg the people that are in that conversation are going to be different people they're going to be new people you would hope that there's some amount of consistency so that you don't

feel like you're getting a reset but when there's new people or different people that conversation's a lot harder because it's like hey have you seen you know the impact that this person's having and it's like well no I haven't seen I just started right like it makes it really difficult to try and and make that case so I think for more senior people when they're seeing reorgs they're kind of going like you know I've been I've been trying to build up visibility trying to build up uh you know they're working on things that have impact and they're trying to make sure the right stakeholders have visibility to that and that changes but tying it back to what this original author was saying on this Reddit post is like that's the kind of in my opinion I can't stand spending time on that and you know

I will die on this hill but like I think that is the absolute biggest waste of time ever and I'm saying that fully recognizing like this is an expectation at least where I work I I understand the the rules and the game I get it and I'm sure there's lots of other places like this too but I I think that it causes people to put an emphasis on a lot of things that I couldn't give less of a about because that feels like like 100% politics and bureaucracy to me now the people that are in those more senior management positions that are making decisions around that I am not in that position right so like they may have and I'm sure they do have a very different perspective as to why but I see the amount of work time and effort that goes in from

these individuals to try and ensure that they're getting visibility and I've seen it fall flat and to me and when I say fall flat I mean like not because they weren't trying and not because I think they were doing the wrong things I mean somehow it just didn't make a difference anyway I can say that even for me um in terms of when I've been put up for promotion so like there's I just feel like there's a very large disconnect and then the way that mechanism works I don't feel like it's conducive but that is the type of thing like when I think about management and Leadership what comes along with the role is like I don't like spending time on that stuff I don't want my employees spending time on that stuff it's to me it feels like such a distraction now I say

all of this as I'm ranting in a car I don't have a off the top of my head I don't have like a here here's the solution for it uh so yes I am just complaining about it but um I'm trying to acknowledge that there's aspects of the management role where I'm like these things don't feel they don't feel good they're part of the job that's the kind of stuff that if more and more of my time so if I was a more senior manager and I had more people reporting up to me and I had more situations where it's like hey we're trying to put this person up for promoe promotion and you know like me trying to help more people with that I could imagine that would that would Tire me out not because I don't want them to succeed it would Tire

me out because I would be frustrated by doing it so some of the if I I can think talk about some of the good stuff um because you might say well why the hell are you a manager if everything sucks that's not what I'm saying uh I actually love a lot of different aspects about uh management but I think the strategy part that I mentioned when giving that opportunity is great it's um I really enjoy being part of that uh it's an interesting intersection I find because it's uh you're working with product owners sometimes depending on the team and stuff or your organization you are also the product owner as an engineering manager and then you have uh input and influence on architecture um again depending on how your team and stuff is set up but historically I I found myself in a in a

situation like that which is cool and like I I don't um I don't sit there and just like I make the decisions do what I say um even if I let's say in in whatever team setup if I have the final say on uh like if I am the product owner if I have the final say on architecture I'm still working with everyone on the team or the stakeholders to make sure there's alignment I'm not like doing it in isolation but I enjoy those parts um I really enjoy um and I talked about this in other videos but uh I really enjoy like the the mentoring part and helping people grow in their careers it's uh it took me a long time to realize like the type of impact that has and I mean if you if you watch a lot of my videos like

kind of like what was saying earlier right like I don't make money from this I actually I literally lose money making YouTube videos it takes a lot of my time like I make 10 to depending on the week like 10 to 15 YouTube videos a week between these Vlog entries and between my main Channel and it cost me hundreds of dollars every month on top of that and editing fees and I'm not saying this to complain to you I'm saying this because like you would say like why the hell are you doing it right and it's like because it's rewarding for me it feels good to try and be able to help I enjoy it so what I'm doing in all these videos um it's obviously it's structured differently right but a lot of the topics we discuss and things like that like these are

sometimes similar conversations or similar topics at least that I would have with some of the engineers on my team right depending on what they are so being able to help people navigate challenges uh coach them Mentor them like giving them the tools instead of like giving them the answers and then watching them grow through that is it's like that's super super rewarding um and again I think I talked about this in the video from yesterday so time frames are all messed up on this stuff when you're watching because you don't know when this videos posted I don't know when it's going to be posted compared to the other ones um but I was talking about this idea that like when you're when you're mentoring people like even as a you know senior engineer and stuff like you you might not realize the impact that has

or you might not feel like it's very valuable because you want to just focus on coding and I absolutely get it like I love to code um um and when you don't I think one of the challenges is like when you don't notice how impactful it is to be able to help others like truly help them grow you're like ah it's like kind of feels like a waste of time like I can't get my job done but um when you do a good job with the mentoring and the coaching and stuff like you're literally multiplying the impact right and um and helping someone kind of grow and be able to have better traj in their career so I think yeah it took me a long time to notice that and just kind of repeating that it's a part that I do really enjoy um what

else what else I think when we talk about so this P okay let me kind of go back to the article right so this person was talking about like what do they want to do now that they feel so absolutely burned out from doing this they were saying like I want out um but they still want to remain in like Tech so my thoughts are um first of all if you like if you like the type of thing that's being done but you're burnt out from specific things I would say like maybe switch companies go to do the same role but switch companies right not I'm sure not every company is constantly reorg and stuff so maybe switch companies maybe switch companies to something smaller where the reorgs if they're happening feel like there's a good reason it's because the company's growing and it's like

this doesn't make sense anymore versus sometimes reorgs at bigger companies are like it's cost savings or just like realignment because there's so much like extra fluff because it's grown so massive so maybe a smaller company but I mean if this person likes the role uh I I personally wouldn't give up on it I understand that they're they're burnt out but I think it might be where they're at like physically at the company um um I can't imagine because they listed out some other other roles and stuff I can't imagine that going from a senior manager to like a middle manager would be a step in the direction because you're going to go from you know don't like the reorgs to like guess what like you're not even part of the decision process you're kind of just like the umbrella for the rest of the team

um middle management is not a good spot for for this kind of thing so I don't think for them a good move is to go back to like middle management personally um they talked about some other types of roles and I think maybe there's something interesting here um so they were like what about like a a product manager and by the way like I'm not my goal with talking through this is not to say like oh just because someone was a senior manager they can obviously do the job of a pro a product manager easily not what I'm saying I just mean in terms of the interests okay so just want to clarify uh I realize that on the internet everything is a touchy subject and if I don't add a disclaimer to everything I say someone will get upset probably thumbs down my video

and not explain why don't do that if you're going to thumbs down my video at least write me a mean comment or something so I understand um otherwise I don't know why you're thumbs Downing it I can't make it better the um the idea of a product manager in terms of what their interests are I think is interesting being able to talk more about the product strategy I think could be could be interesting um again a lot of orgs when you have product management you might have a similar type of thing going on where the higher up in product management you still find yourself like you're a product manager but also a people manager kind of thing again this is entirely dependent on how organizations are structured but are you going to find yourself in the same position at some point where you're in Senior

Management for product managers and you're dealing with reorgs and that kind of stuff I don't know are you going to find yourself in position where there's oh man I don't know if the the 360 camera probably won't pick it up but the guy in front of me or the girl in front of me their back right wheel is like it don't look so good the tire is all all over the place like I really don't want to drive behind them so we will change that in just a moment so one sec let's get away from them um yeah what if you have things like products are being product lines are being cut products are being merged I don't know like I feel like at some point you're going to run into the same but uh Perhaps Perhaps there's some good Runway where you're kind of

like taking a step back from sort of the more senior closer to exec role and getting a bit of a I don't know yeah like a reset on responsibilities like that might be an interesting opportunity um they also said though that like they like to code right so one of their concerns was like my my coding skills have rotted this is a fear of mine as a manager right I don't for the first eight years as a manager I was also coding at work so I managed uh smaller teams I you know sometimes managed multiple teams that were small and I would still code the more people I manag the less I was writing code um and then at Microsoft so for almost 5 years now I don't code at work I manage more people but I code every day outside of work I love

to program so for me like not coding at work I'm like I don't give a because I know I'm going to be coding at home like I still have that opportunity not Everyone likes to do that not everyone wants to not everyone has the same schedule that I have which is totally fine but for this person who went from manager into Senior Management over their career they're like look like my coding skills gone so they're even like okay do I go back and I don't know like this one to me seems a little scary or like do I go back and just like brush up on coding and kind of start from there um I don't know it's it would be hard for me to answer that um um because I don't know how much of a passion they have for that because that's truly

like for those of you that aren't aware like when you're going into management and then especially going into Senior Management the amount of like Hands-On coding time like should be essentially zero at that point I would have no expectation that someone in Senior Management is writing code just zero not saying it doesn't happen I'm just saying there would be zero expectation of that um so yeah I don't know it's just like that's that's a really big uh change but if that's really what they love to do then perhaps but um you know for me speaking from my own personal experience like uh I my goal is like as long as I have an employer is to continue to work towards Senior Management because I would like to be more and more involved with strategy and have impacted a broader level um I've spent like I

said almost almost 13 years helping other engineers in their careers and I have almost 13 years of experience being a manager I would like to help other managers I think I'm very able to do that and I think I could have a very big impact helping other managers so being a manager of managers is like that is my my goal at least for the next step right now with that said the only other path that I have in my mind is like is not being employed by an employer it would be to have my own software company and if that happens it's a complete reset because if I have my own software company you bet I'm going to be doing all of the roles like essentially like would be CTO style role I'm going to be writing code I'm going to be doing architecture I'm

going to be doing whatever um whatever needs to happen it's blowing stuff everywhere but uh I'm not going back to a coding role unless it's for my own company is essentially what I'm saying which at some point in my career I'd like to do like I don't I think I don't think I will feel fulfilled in my I don't know like my entire career journey I don't think I will feel a sense of uh true fulfillment until I've uh built something for myself and I realized this video is taking like a huge tangent and stuff but hope you're enjoying it um but uh on that note like you know where I was working before obviously not like I'm solely responsible for it but like where I was working before that company got bought for $2 billion they went public and got bought back to private

for $2 billion so I made or helped two people basically have more money than they could ever spend in the rest of their life and was a part of that Journey since the beginning and I've seen a lot of the that goes into into building a company obviously there's aspects to it like sales that I am not good at but in terms of growing engineering teams and stuff like that like I I lived that and uh I would I would love to do it for myself instead of doing it for other people and I think that would be a sense of fulfillment like hey if I can if I can do it for someone else I should be able to do it for me the difference is that I did that when I was younger and now I'm bald and I'm old I got white

in my beard just going to make sure I have enough energy for myself to do that someday so moral of the story is I think if you're reflecting on your career where you're at if you're not totally happy I think it's good to do a bit of a reflection and um and try to figure out what your next steps are taking a step back or doing a role change or whatever that's not don't look at that like a failure because if you're so burnt out that you can't even do your job properly or you hate going to work every day I would say that's not a good spot change that so thanks for watching uh if you thought this was cool if you if I remember to link the Reddit thread um I will try if you want you can go look on experience devs

uh subreddit if I haven't linked it and if you thought that this was helpful and you want to share it back there I would appreciate that like I said you know um not not making money from these so it's really nice when people can help spread the word um and help grow the channel so thanks so much I'll see you next time