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It really only works in orgs that are large enough to accept a bit of bloat, mature enough to have good managerial practices and invest in growing managers, and where the new manager has only a couple reports (2 is the perfect number). So you take a very good, senior IC who wants to be a manager, you cut their IC duties by 25-50% and you give them 2, maybe 3 direct reports. This is after doing some sort of formal managerial training, internal or external, and with the acknowledgement from their director/senior manager that they're going to be spending more time with them for the next 2-6 months and having skip 1:1s to make sure everything is going ok.

How many organizations do you think check all those boxes and are willing to do that? It's not many.



Yeah, I've never seen one that checks all that.


I've bounced back and forth between IC and EM (intentionally) and I've seen some that get very very close then completely blow it with one of these. One in particular would put people through management training for a full day each week for months, give them a very senior director, all the "right things" but then cut their IC duties by maybe 10-15% at most and give them a team of 12 people to manage. And they wondered why fully half of new managers wanted to go back to IC work after a year or two.

The best realistic thing I've seen, and my current workplace, is pretty good with small teams and training and all that, but basically doesn't offer any pay increase from upper level IC to first-level management and so you have to be okay with basically 20% more work for the same money. It's not perfect but one benefit is you don't get any managers who are only in it for the money.


I don’t see your contact info in your HN profile but could I get in touch with you to learn more about how teams can get this right? My email is in mine.


I reached out!




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