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Why do most engineers want to be a manager? 20

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ParabolicTet

ParabolicTet

Mechanical
Apr 19, 2004
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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 !
 
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As someone starting their career, I've already had many senior people tell me that management is the only way to reliably breach the six figures ceiling so as to earn enough so that you can save for retirement and still no suffer from want.

<somewhat related tangent>
I just had this conversation with some of my colleagues. One senior engineer that went to management told me that once he became a manager he realized "I could be an excellent engineer, but I could only ever be an average manager" so he took a staff position at the company. That being said, since he is an excellent engineer, his experience naturally allows him to make prescient decisions so he likes trying to manage our manager who is not as technically proficient but is very good at reading and dealing with people. So in the end, he likes being some hybrid of technical and managerial worker.
<\somewhat related tangent>
 
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"I've already had many senior people tell me that management is the only way to reliably breach the six figures ceiling so as to earn enough so that you can save for retirement and still no suffer from want. "

So, six figures can be achieved with going through management, but you may have to hunt around for companies that appreciate engineers at a corporate level. I've not spent more than 3 yrs of my 40 as a manager, and six figures was hit a long time ago. However, you can't be mediocre and expect excellent compensation.

Saving for retirement is more about doing it early, continually, with discipline, and with frugalness. You can run numbers on a number of retirement planning calculators online: This one, with a 6% return, says that you only need to save $5000/yr to hit $1 M at age 65. You don't need a 6 figure salary to save that much per year. If you were making $60k/yr, you ought to be able to say $5k/yr without working too hard at it, and you should be able to save double that if you were serious about saving for retirement. There are those that can save triple or quadruple that, but they are probably uber-disciplined and statistical outliers. Being frugal means not eating out every meal, not buying a new car every 2 years, and not living large, in general. Bear in mind that one needs to have a few million saved up by retirement to cover contingencies. Unfortunately, the average person in the US getting on the cusp of retiring has less than $50k net worth, which means they'll be completely dependent on Social Security to live on during retirement.

If you treat living well in retirement as an engineering problem, how would you tackle that? As with any engineering problem, you determine the requirements, allocate them to subsystems, and synthesize the subsystems. I think that as engineers, we ought to be able to think our way through this problem, unlike people who aren't trained in analysis and synthesis.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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There is a lot of cynicism in this thread and I think I know where it comes from and have shared it at several points in my career. There is one factor that is mostly missing from the discussion--delegation of authority. For a while, as an individual contributor I had a DOA of a quarter million dollars and was incredibly happy with my job and my life, largely because I could identify, design, and implement a non-trivial sized project without asking permission. When the company did one of its quarterly reorganizations, a Supply Chain Management guy noticed my DOA and cut it back to $5k. Life got a lot less interesting when I had to ask permission to do most anything.

I had a couple of managers over the years who explained that the higher they moved in the management ladder, the the more they could do on their own authority and that motivated them. Not all managers are failed engineers, some of the engineers-moved-into-management just wanted to be able to implement larger-scale stuff without having to ask for permission.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist
 
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I've worked in three companies and each had a 'technical expert' development path and an engineering management path. Both skill sets are needed but the technical experts tended to be the types who would be polishing the oar locks on a life boat rather than rowing.

I chose the management path in order to make sure the smart engineers had work to do, had obstacles that prevented them from completing their work removed, and had policies and practices in place that provided some inertia to make the process less dependent on personality
 
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One of the best managers I ever worked for, did not have any, engineering background, he sold dresses in a women's department store prior to working for the company. But he knew how to delegate and how to select the best person for the job.
Priceless.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
 
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Because they don't know any better.

On a more serious note, "management" is subjective in nature and depends on where you work. My employer has three career tracks: Technical, Operations, & Management. The operations track relates becoming a project manager, which is probably the worst assignment in the company (although some say it's department manager). How one gets into the management track is a mystery because the HR propaganda is vague.

As far as saving for retirement, I completely agree with IRStuff.
 
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I call this "the trap", and it is as many others have said in this thread. An engineers earning potential peaks as an engineer in most places at 8-12 years, meaning you'll get your 1-3% per year in perpetuity until you quit, die, get fired or retire.

So for engineers to move past the (real or perceived) salary ceiling, they need to move into management-into "the trap"

Are engineers good managers of people or projects? A few; not all of them. Engineers are trained to technical minded, technical problem solvers, what-if thinkers. There is a mind set change moving from engineer into management, some love it-some hate it. Those that love it often didn't find much thrill in the technical aspect anyway; they started out more interested in the soft side of engineering.

So, to stay out of "the trap" you either A. Find a Company that TRULY has an equivalent technical track B. Start your own company so you can make well into 6 figures and still be an engineer-why work so hard marketing and getting work for someone else?? or C. Be happy being an individual contributor and making your 1-3% more per year each year.

Cynical? No, it's just the crappy truth.
 
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"So for engineers to move past the (real or perceived) salary ceiling, they need to move into management-into "the trap""

That's assuming:
> they want to be managers
> they're any good at it
> upper management actually thinks that you and not someone else is the appropriate candidate.
> there's an actual opening

My group isn't big enough to have more than one or two slots open every few years, and even then, there needs upper management consensus to choose the ones that get the open slots.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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At some places on this world, becoming a manager means a good pay. If you stay as what you are now, you will never get better pay and other good benefits.
But, don't get me wrong, even being a mere engineer also in some industries, someone is getting really good pay and benefits.
It's up you and where you are working. If everything goes fine and you really enjoy with what you are doing and money is not your concern, why should you become a manager or higher level person.
It's just my thought.

R.Efendy
 
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I can only speak for my discipline here:

I think that a lot of engineers are faced with prospect of tackling essentially the same problems over an over again with minor tweaks and adjustments to fit the situation or latest incremental evolution of the state-of-the-practice. What do you do if you get too bored? Change jobs and take a pay cut? Move into management and get a pay increase?

In light of this, management provides benefits that may be (are to me) very attractive. First, you get to learn an entirely different set of problem (people) solving skills while leveraging your existing human capital. Learning and becoming proficient with people skills can make life more satisfying outside of the work place too. It seems that to a lot of engineers, engineering and problem solving is the end-all-be-all of life existence. In reality, engineering is a means to an end for most people.

Also, it is very nice to be able to make decisions without being required too check in with your daddy (boss) if it is okay. Mid level managers get a mixture of authority combined with some policies for checking in with daddy. Its actually kind of nice to have some authority while also knowing you have higher level support when needed.
 
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"However, based on Dilbert's premise, this will happen automatically, by random chance if nothing else"

Not necessarily. Unless every boss is the dumbest person in the world, there's bound to be people who are either dumber or no smarter than they, so the probability of hiring really smart people is much less than 50%. That's not the kind statistic that makes a Google or Facebook.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Apparently there are some out there who do not quite appreciate why Dilbert is such a popular cartoon strip ;-)

While a bit 'off-topic' but since we've brought-up Dilbert, this is my all-time favorite (note that I spent considerable time working with customers to identify user requirements that I would then pass on to our software R&D group):

dilbert_1_jfddak.jpg


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
 
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ParabolicTet said:
Why do most engineers want to be a manager?
Click to expand...

There is an old joke that exists in many different variations, so don’t judge harshly.
It goes like this:

“Is that true, that you won $1000000 in the lottery?”
“Not me, but my neighbor, not won, but lost, not $1000000 but $100, and not in the lottery, but in the game of cards. But it’s true.”

So, let us take a closer look on the OP’s question.

On the matter of “most”: In any occupation, there is a group of people dissatisfied with their choice of career for different reasons: low pay, lack of recognition, missing sense of accomplishment, occupation is not prestigious enough, etc.
From my observation, people choosing engineering out of their love for everything mechanical/ electrical/ chemical (insert your favorite science) usually used good judgement before making a choice and later show higher loyalty to chosen profession.

On the matter of “engineers”: There are engineers and there are engineers. There is a duality in how term is perceived. Engineering is seen as both position of “expertship” (as in technical), and position of “leadership” (as in organizational).
For engineers who have chosen position of leadership especially based on technical knowledge, it’s only natural to advance into some kind of management position without sacrificing their integrity.
There were already several posts in this thread about companies allowing for “dual tracks”.

On the matter of “want”: It was also pointed out here, that people sometimes are “forced” rather than “want”: financial troubles, scarce job market, lack of opportunities putting person into position with not so many choices.
And engineers being able to apply their systemic thinking and problem-solving abilities sometimes becoming good managers even against their will.

On the matter of “managers”: we already touched matter of “dual tracks”, companies having administrative managers (saying what to do) and technical managers (saying how to do it), so there are managers and managers.

So, not exactly most, not exactly engineers, not exactly want, and not exactly managers. Other than that, OP asked legitimate question.


"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future
 
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JohnRBaker said:
Apparently there are some out there who do not quite appreciate why Dilbert is such a popular cartoon strip
Click to expand...

Apparently there are... [wink]

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future
 
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Dilbert is one of my favorite strips, only second to Calvin and Hobbes.
Seems like SOMEONE has been following the political news:
However, there are always multiple facets to any organizational dynamic, and while the pointy-haired manager gets the brunt, along with his higher-ups, one has to wonder about Dilbert, Wally, Alice, and Dogbert, and why they are who they and where they are.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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