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Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem is not enough companies have a robust technical career ladder. There should be technical equivalents to each management position, that would have some overlap with management responsibilities (mentorship, translating business requirements into technical actions, representing technical needs to the business, etc). But without things like employee evaluations or hiring/firing (but still be involved in candidate selection / interviews).

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Completely agree. The other big issue is that some companies do nominally have higher technical positions than "tech lead" but in practice the number of people in these positions is much lower than in "equivalent" management positions so it's still a much better career/financial move too get into management even though it's technically possible to have a similarly good advancement path staying technical. For example in the group under my director there are maybe 4-5 "Architects" but there are around 15-20 people in engineering management that are probably around the same "level". And even for the architects, afaik none of them are actually writing code. They seem more like technical advisors who are still in "management" but don't have direct reports.

It's kind of insane when I think about it, how at a huge tech company all of the people with a lot of experience who mostly did very well as engineers are making $400k-$2mm/year as managers while all the actual technical product (in terms of code) is being written by people with 0-15 years professional experience. Of course it's not that weird that managers make more than employees but it does seem weird that there are so few people with a lot of experience and successful careers actually working directly on the product.

"it's not that weird that managers make more than employees" -- this is something that I really never understood, where it is expected that everyone under a manager makes less than them. At least considering what each role brings to the company's bottom line. After all, it really wouldn't be weird if a manager who makes, say 150 K a year brought in a consultant at $200 bucks an hour. Or purchased a machine that amortizes out to a couple million a year. Whereas if they have permanent employees that are developing product that is the lifeblood of the company, then the manager has to make more than any of their direct reports even if all they are doing is human resource type tasks.

I think from a logical perspective, you're right, but not from a practical perspective. For better or for worse (especially at large companies) your title basically defines where you are on the totem pole, and if the average salary for your title is lower than someone else's average title, that de facto puts you lower in the hierarchy. That's why I think PMs need to make as much as the devs pretty much everywhere and why the managers need to make more than the managed pretty much everywhere - it's not because these jobs each produce exactly that much value, or even that the skills to do the job have that particular rate on the market, but that you need these relative salary relationships to create a stable working environment.

Also, if engineering management paid less than engineering, I think you would mostly end up with non-technical engineering managers which doesn't sound like a very pleasant experience.

Lots claim to, but then end up with a manager per 10 devs, a senior manager per 5 managers, a director for 5 senior managers.

vs 2 principal engineers for the entire org up to the director.

So you can either jump over to management and be a senior manager a few years later and a director a few years after that, or you can stick around at senior engineer for another 5-10 years and maybe move up to principal.

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