Why do most engineers want to be a manager? 20

[ParabolicTet]

I've been an individual contributor for my entire 15+ year career . I enjoy coding, simulation, and supporting other engineers who do the same. To me this is what engineering is all about. But I seem to be a minority. The vast majority of engineers spend only a few years doing actual engineering then quickly become team leaders and project managers.

I never thought of that career path since I do not enjoy talking in front of people and building relationships. If I was good at that, I would never have chosen engineering. I would have been a lawyer or a businessman !

I guess I wonder why these folks chose engineering if their end goal is to be a manager? If you look on linkedin, nearly every engineer is a manager type and highlights how they manage projects worth $x millions.. Why not just get an MBA and go into business or marketing? Why are individual contributors like me in such a minority? I suppose one can argue that my work all gets out-sourced to India! I've tried to stay ahead of the curve by developing expertise in new areas of simulation that are not "off-shorable" yet...

I know there are a lot of generalizations in my post. But hopefully you see the point and can comment !

 

[KENAT]

Do they go into engineering with the goal of becoming managers, or do they see that the management path appears to offer higher rewards and so go that route <edit> once already in engineering <edit>.

Since most people in management either wanted, or at least are ok with, the management path they possibly expect other engineers working for them to be the same and reward those who are while possibly neglecting or even implicitly punishing those that don't.

Personally, while I've done some project management etc. it's not where my heart lies so I've been trying to avoid it most of my career.

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[JohnRBaker]

Been there. Done that. Got the T-Shirt.

But I have to admit that after spending something like five years in various supervisory/managerial roles, when I got the chance, I opted for a staff position to the VP of development as I felt that was where I could make the biggest contribution to the success of our organization. BTW, it worked out OK and I never looked back.

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[Maui]

$$

 

[HamburgerHelper]

There is more money in management so instead of people going into management because they are good at managing people, you have a bunch of people who are tired that they have peaked salary-wise in their present position going into something they have no ability or interest. It too is used as a carrot inappropriately. A company has a technical employee that they don't want to see leave, so a promotion into management is used as a reward to keep them. Nevermind, there is nothing technical about managing.

 

[IRstuff]

I don't think that most engineers plan on becoming managers, but as Maui says, at a certain point in their careers, the only way in a lot of companies to make more money is to be a manager. However, I would dispute the "most;" as I look around our building, there's a finite number of managerial slots, whose occupants are readily looking to move up or elsewhere. That puts the majority of our engineering talent NOT in the management pool. I think that most companies would look that way, i.e., a pyramid with managers in the crowded apex, and the majority of engineers down below; although most companies have relatively flat structures, given the massive layoffs over the previous 40 years did away with "middle management" that stood between you and the department heads. At Boeing, the department head "managed" about 200 engineers.

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[zeusfaber]

Then there's the people who came into engineering because they enjoy solving problems and discovered that the engineering manager gets a more bountiful and varied collection of problems to solve than anybody else in the enterprise.

A.

 

[SandCounter]

A company had hired me out of school for a specific engineering role but stuck me in project management after just 2 years because I could do it when others couldn't. After 8 years of project management hell I jumped ship and went to a staff position in another company. It was like a demotion but I actually enjoy my job now.

Young engineers get pushed into management because their problem-solving minds make them very adaptable and their attention to detail out-paces career middle managers.

I used to count sand. Now I don't count at all.

 

[KENAT]

We're so short of people that pretty much any warm body with a hint of potential is getting projects to manage.

No one to do most of the work, but hey management have their beloved 'one neck to hold' for most projects.

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[Ron]

I spent about 18 years of my career with a company that had a dual career path....management and engineering (technical). Each branch office of reasonable size had a manager and a chief engineer. Each had specific responsibilities and were supposedly equal in corporate stature.....wasn't necessarily so (surprise, surprise). We even had a technical position that was beyond the chief engineer position. It was a corporate level consultant/principal. I checked all the boxes....was even an office manager for a while. Hated it. Enjoyed the technical side and made it through all the technical positions available, even to a VP level....the branch managers always made more money, even in the same salary class! Oh well.

Maui is right!

 

[IRstuff]

My former and my current company have dual paths, and the current company does not appear to have any limits on the technical path, and both paths include bonuses. I've been a manager twice in my career and while I didn't hate it, it certainly was less fun than a purely technical job.

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[CheckerHater]

They don't.

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
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[moltenmetal]

Most companies DON'T have two paths for engineers- not really. Some don't even try to have two paths. Others have two paths all right, but the purely technical path is truly a dead end, while the management path at least continues upward for a while. They only way you can escape the dead end in most places is to become a manager of one, i.e. to go out on your own as a consultant.

 

[BamaStructural]

I think SandCounter hit the nail on the head. Any young engineer that shows any bit of problem solving ability and initiative gets automatically pushed toward the management path because these skills can be adapted to most situations. The higher end management automatically thinks this is everyone's ultimate goal. The new $ blinds the young engineer and after a year or two of a soul-sucking management role, the young engineer morphs into the typical management type.
Terrible cycle. I am thankful everyday that I escaped back to a technical role before becoming a management zombie.

 

[epoisses_]

My previous company did have the two paths well defined.
The technical specialist route is a bit of a one-way street with less and less side-streets as you move along.
The management route seems to open up more and more options as you move along. This is the general perception. It appears to be the safe choice. It's a choice without really choosing.

The reality of the management route is, if you're not a particularly good manager, you will quickly meet the Peter principle and end up in a situation where you are jack of all trades, master of none. Not particularly satisfying.

If you really like the technical domain you're working in, for pete's sake dig deeper and enjoy it. As you will gradually become indispensable or almost, your value for the company can rise fast.

It's great for a company to have an army of hungry under-30's that want to be a manager and think it takes working overtime and Saturdays to be promoted... only to work even more overtime and Sundays too.
At a certain age (this is a 45 yrs old writing) you realise all of a sudden you have a family and money enough but not enough time and it's impossible to turn back the clock. Last year I applied for my previous boss' position. An under-30 co-worker got the job instead of me and 6 months later I realise it's the best thing that happened to me in all of 2016.

 

[coloeng]

Somebody has to manage the company. Do we want to hire someone that doesn't know diddly about engineering or do we want someone that knows engineering and in some cases can be a good manager?

 

[KENAT]

Sadly, it seems many managers with a nominally technical background forgot anything about Engineering shortly after becoming managers.

How much this is related to people that aren't the cream of the crop technically being more likely to go the management route as a way to advance their careers (which are limited sticking technical) I'm not sure.

So from my own anecdotal experience, much of the time whether the person has a technical background can be at most a secondary factor.

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[HamburgerHelper]

coleng,

I have seen very little to indicate a technical background is required to be a good manager. One of the best managers I had, had years of experience, only a high school degree, knew enough to size proposals up, and what everyone knew. If you have someone without a great technical background, I think that it in someways forces them to manage people and resources because they can't just go do it themselves. I don't think there are very many people that are inherently good at managing people and only picking from your technical group is a mistake.

 

[moltenmetal]

We weren't asked whether engineers make good managers, or bad ones- just why engineers "want" to be managers. Many of them don't- but many of them see the writing on the wall and are smart enough to read it. It's unfortunate that there isn't a meaningful parallel technical path for all engineers who might prefer it, but there just isn't.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The best managers that I've every had were ex-salesman. Salesman, particularity when working in a highly technical field, tend to appreciate more the value that technically capable people bring to the table. They know that they need them to be successful and even if they move into a managerial role that if not part of a sales organization, at least I've found, that most of them bring with them this appreciation for the people who have the answers when he needs them.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without