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 !

 

[HamburgerHelper]

All the cookies.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

MacGyver52000,

 

[Murec]

It could be that most engineers are humans, they want to be important or at least look more important than others.

I am OK with doing basically the same thing I did 30 years ago, only now I do it much better and I am more cynical about it.

 

[IRstuff]

I was just thinking about the Dilbert strip above that talks about the 400 features and how humans can't use a product with that level of complexity.

Humans do; just consider Excel. How many people use all the features of Excel? Most don't, but they do use the parts of Excel they want to. Seems to me that it's a bit of compartmentalization; you reject the overall complexity of Excel and substitute your own.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Maui]

IR, I wish that I could more fully utilize Excel's capabilities. It can do so much more than I am currently able to command of it.

 

[KENAT]

I think I've forgotten how to do more stuff in Excel than I actually know how to do stuff in many SW packages. Never really got back up to speed after the change to the 'fluent' interface - I muddle through but not as well.

Relevant to this thread but related to another I started recently, in conversations with management in the last few days I had very similar to the Dilbert Moment IRstuff linked (

http://assets.amuniversal.com/07b853c0c94f013441df005056a9545d).

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(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[djs]

At a recent review, I was asked what my ideal position in the company would be. I answered PLC programmer. Later I realized that it was a hook to try and get me into company management. Glad I missed that one.

 

[fel3]

In my experience, most engineers don't want to be managers, at least not in the corporate sense. Most want to be engineers.

I'm a consulting civil engineer working mostly on municipal infrastructure improvements for small cities, so the projects are generally not that big (fees usually in the $25k to $200k range). In my field, about as far as most engineers want to get is project management so they can be in charge of their own work.

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, lets not confuse project management with corporate management. I've done both, but when I was running a project I never really considered this as being a 'manager', not in the sense of when I was actually the 'boss' of a department, with hiring and firing responsibilities and supervisors reporting to me.

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

 

[MikeHalloran]

I was forced to act as a manager for about a year.

In addition to the usual duties, it became apparent that I was expected to act as a bidirectional filter.

The passband of said filter was expected to be different in each direction.

In neither direction did the allowable passed content resemble truth.

I hated it.

Then they got an MBA to be my boss.

I hated that more.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[truckandbus]

For the admiration and respect

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Being an owner would be a thousand times better than being some filter between upper management and employees. I could see it being interesting and rewarding training a hard hitting crew from the ground up. Managing someplace that would require you to be unethical or implement bad policies would be terrible even if doing it meant you had a chance to track high up in the organization.

 

[berkshire]

Having been an owner , I can assure you the Peter principal is alive and well, you very rapidly rise to the level of your own incompetence , You then have to get employees who can bail you out of that , or you fail.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[WARose]

I think people can just get burned out on design (every day) and want a change of pace. That happened to me once. It was partly because the designers/drafters I was working with were so terrible.....I just had to get away from it.

 

[epoisses_]

The winning move is to become a manager and then spend all your time on your engineering hobby horses with noone in a position to tell you to bugger off