[xenotux]

The original ethos was that you didn't want the company ran by MBAs, so you wanted to build your management team by tapping into talented engineers.

Of course, this can backfire in many ways. You end up wasting engineering talent, and as the organization grows, managers spend more time on paper-pushing than on creative work. And there's no shortage of engineers who are just bad at reading, talking to, and managing people.

But the huge perk of management is leverage. If you're technically competent and credible, and want something to happen, your team will see it your way. If you're a random "ideas guy" in an IC role, that's not a given.

[JustExAWS]

> But the huge perk of management is leverage. If you're technically competent and credible, and want something to happen, your team will see it your way. If you're a random "ideas guy" in an IC role, that's not a given.

There are three levers of power in an organization - relationship, expertise and role. Role power is by far the least effective. If you can’t get team buy in for your ideas or they believe you’re an idiot, you won’t get anything done.

A high level trusted IC who builds relationships inside and outside of the team and who is strong technically can work miracles.

At my current 700 person company, I’m pushing through a major initiative that management up to the CTO was at first skeptical about because I convinced them of my vision and I built relationships to get buy in.

I’m a staff engineer.

Even at BigTech I saw L6s and L7s ICs push through major initiatives the same way.

[xenotux]

> Role power is by far the least effective.

To be frank: it sounds nice, but I don't think that's really true. It's the power of "who's going to decide my promotions", "who is going to advocate for my team and get us more resources", "who approves my expenses", "who is going to protect me if something goes wrong", etc.

This doesn't give the manager a pass if their ideas are objectionable, but if they're credible, it's a huge advantage. Small disagreements disappear and people fall in line behind your vision, get excited about it, and make things happen.

In contrast, in an IC role, you can successfully push for initiatives, but you're always working against that dynamic. The merit of your idea aside, folks might simply feel that you're pushing them in a direction that's less likely to get them rewarded or recognized within their reporting chain. That takes extra effort to overcome.

Being very visibly anointed by some VP helps, but that's tapping into the exec's leverage, not yours. And that approach has downsides; I worked with more than one architect / uber-TL person who were universally disliked and feared. The perception was that they showed up to make your life worse by putting extra work on your plate, without having much skin in the game.

[ip26]

And wielding all three at once is the most effective.

[lovich]

> Role power is by far the least effective.

Eh, maybe at faangs or at the executive level but at non faangs you might not notice a role having power because most roles with the Manager title are no longer actual managers but supervisors.

I had more agency over where capital was deployed as a teenager deciding how many people were going to be on the shift for closing, then I have making over 200k/yr as a Senior Manager.

Any role that has decision making power over where money goes automatically has a massive amount more power than a role that does not