Engineering Management Is Dying

July 9, 2012

Now engineering managers divide much of their time between status reports (which often say nothing of how the work is progressing), and a growing load of HR paperwork. There is little that might be construed as “making the future happen”. Instead, we tend to the career aspirations of our charges, show or feign an interest in them as people, provide formal feedback as needed for legal and compensation purposes, mediate disputes, put under-achievers on “performance plans” and carry out the occasional firing. All the while the hackers themselves tend to the business of building things. Our new responsibilities are valuable, but they’re not management. We have become social-workers.

Snipped, worth a read if you’re into this sort of thing, but this key paragraph pretty much killed me softly with its song.

8:32am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZEG6ZyO-Bu7P
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(Notes: 21)