And thousands of VPs. See POHTO of Milford Graves House, Jamacia-Queens, Ney Nork. You have to judge this sort of thing by the entire community response cycle, though. What makes you say this? Most organizations actively try to support internal mobility (admittedly with varied success). "I told you I could do it," he said looking straight to my eyes. What I saw was somebody using biased and bigoted thought to justify their reasoning. Remember there are two sides to every story - for example, maybe they were underperforming and disengaged for a long time, and then randomly raised the question after their manager reached a breaking point? I think women get this better treatment then men but I didn't say they should turn it down nor did I say they didn't deserve it. > Probably due to the very poor and misleading article title, which frames the situation as a "demotion", something that happens to us, not something that we decide to do. > Smart tech companies have two paths, the management and the engineer path. So yeah, management is really important, and a good manager is definitely more effective than a single engineer. When was the last time you tried to add a recurring meeting to a development team's calendar? But over time, I think I've come to develop a taste for, the style of communication that happens in most typical business meetings. We're trying to avoid internet hell here, so repeatedly being pushed into a flaming pit is something we'd kind of prefer to avoid. That means statistical evidence is your only option (a stronger option btw) so where is it? The only orgs where I've seen managers to be actual force multipliers were body shops. It's tongue-in-cheek as a sibling commenter is saying, but I'd argue it's also quite literal. Roger Frampton shares advice on how to protect your posture with his follow-along online stretching guide The Essential Guide To Stretching.. David Mitchell dives into his analysis of the world we live in in his new book Dishonesty Is The Second-best Policy.. PLUS Chris explores the meaning of life, a naughty parrot, £10 Poundland products, … More importantly, ignoring empirical evidence by making a rational appeal to the truth of this tautology creates a rather pointless conversation. My current dream is to be "demoted" from senior SWE at a non-tech company to a mid level (or even junior! My reputation or two flags has nothing to do with whether or not I'm a feminist or not. When I clicked the article I thought it would be about maybe a Senior Developer, Technical Manager or Architect going to developer...which...is kinda what happened to me (less meetings & responsibilities, more coding). As Graves predicted, she also gravitated to playing music and the drums.Â, When Graves met my daughter backstage at Vision Fest-24 in Brooklyn on June 11, 2019, Graves called my daughter "Nova" and the name has stuck ever since.Â, Graves also began to personally redesign the exterior and interior of his Jamaica, Queens home and received praise from several architecture magazines.Â. Best career move I ever made was to quit a managerial job and learn coding. You wanna get educated go educate yourself. It's REALLY strange to me that this is the first time I've read someone talking about this phenomena and on how exploitative it actually is and, like other comment noted, this is a very convenient co-opting of the Peter principle in order to get more senior people for cheap in the guise of "trials" and similar. [0] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=yG3PAK6ZOucC&pg=PT229. If you want to move up and someone else is iffy on it, sure, skip the raise to help convince them. [1] Soon, Graves was declining all their offers to join them to record and play live. This is significant because it's much easier to become a senior IC at a FAANG than to become a Regional Director at the typical company in the USA. At my workplace those who really thrive on technical stuff can follow a path to technical glory and those who love the intricacies of managing people get to do just that. I truly love HN's ability to shit on Javascript -- even when no one was talking about it at all! The value isn't in multiplying force, it's in just showing up... To clarify, I'm not suggesting managers don't have value, and certainly don't believe there doesn't exist a spectrum between those in the position. I feel this too. They know how to find and exploit people strengths while also minimizing their weaknesses. Saying that we know good managers force multiply by improving performance of reports -- and then defining "good" to mean "improve the performance of her direct reports" -- is absolutely a tautology. I responded because imo under normal circumstances nobody would be offered this kind of deal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069552, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069593. The more critics slammed him, the more intense Free Jazz records he released. And these people rarely (I can't think of any examples) became our algorithm experts who led the way in optimizing the scaling of large systems. If you feel "trapped", start searching for something that you love doing (and also can get paid for that) that doesn't feel trapped. Managers are less likely to be fired, and when it happens they can have more savings as they salaries are higher. I have a feeling it’s just that my resume doesn’t say I’ve already been a manager and that when I interview, I don’t lie and tell people how I’ve managed teams of direct reports. His debut album, "Ocean Breeze" was released in 2002; only to be followed by "A Very Special Christmas" in 2005 and "From the Heart" in 2007. As the maely unfolded around Graves- after watching his drum set spill off the stage and crash into the orchestra pit- he told me he had come to the realization that along with the all night club sets- it was time to reinvent himself.Â, Graves started taking medical and veterinary classes and told me he started wearing Orthodox Jewish overcoat and hats. Now, if you hate 1:1, org planning, and successful meetings, that's another thing. I'm delighted to have no direct reports and be free to spend my time outside work focusing on sharpening my technical saw. She went from being high on the job ladder ("Director") to low on the job ladder ("Associate"), reflecting the fact that she's still developing the capabilities needed to do her new discipline. Indignation, provocation, trolling often gets heavily upvoted—but then the rest of the community reacts appropriately and flags it. As I said in another comment, I completely agree with this. "  Think I'm being too harsh A.G. ? I'd also say this is the same thing as when I said his anecdotes were not true. Even before I landed by current SV big tech job, I had more than made up for the initial paycut I took at a local startup. Things a director should be pretty damn good at. > On the other hand, I loathed management. That's how I identify and IMHO it is a very challenging and honorable job. Does "director" mean something much lower than it sounds like? Usually people go into management because it pays more. And you are exactly right about them. And the reality is that while, as you say, there are master engineers who can crank out great inventions largely autonomously, the vast bulk do so in large part by mentoring and guiding others. I've always believed and practiced this too. (The flagged comment ALSO contained some completely unwarranted -- and unsubstantiated -- sexist assumptions which I think are better ignored than disputed.). So she actually did have some skills, though maybe not as formal or structured as say, a tech recruiter, might want to. Other aspects are completely non-essential - "responsibility for staff completing health and safety training lies with line management". After moving the chairs aside, no matter the strength of his opponent, Milford Graves dodged every strike and always pinned his opponent quickly and decisively. It doesn't even make sense how I was flagged. Htf do you call yourself a feminist with posts like this? It’s a generally accepted principle in economics/finance that the more risk you take on, the more up-front compensation you can expect. Or unless you're actually looking to get that kind of experience, I guess I could amend it to "Never move up when someone else wants you to unless you get a pay bump. You need both, and it's fundamentally a partnership, I wish more people realized that. You're starting at neutral. I was a Sr Manager for about 4 years, two different "teams", one IT based, one QA based. In fact it was Graves who gave Corea his first big break when he told band-leader-Montego Joe Sanders- that, even though Corea was Italian, to let him join the Latin-Jazz-dance-combo.Â,  https://twitter.com/burn_amb/status/1360378272341778432, 1960's Revolutionary-Free-Jazz drummer Milford Graves passed away last Friday 2/12/21 at age 79.  If his innovative and explosive-dynamic free-jazz drumming that he created himself was all Mr. Graves was known for, he would have left an indelible mark on the history of music, Jazz and drumming.Â, However Milford Graves was far more than just a jazz drummer.Â, Like Leonardo Da Vinci, Milford Graves was modern-day renaissance man way ahead of all his contemporaries in many fields of study and whose complete body of work overlaps several mediums such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, cardiology, martial-arts, education, horticulture, cooking, architecture and art.Â, Above all the titles and merits of Milford Graves- above all else- he was a healer. Haranguing other users who show up here to discuss their work is one of the worst things anyone can possibly do here—and yes, that's what you've did: "If that's the case present your data!" Does a Kohls Director Of Whatever with tens of direct reports and thousands of people below those reports have more leverage than a single engineer at Amazon? The allure of a demotion seems pretty real to me. An inspirational story that anyone, at any level, can always reinvent themselves given time, patience, and a plan. It's just not a relevant anecdote, really. As a manager I went home emotionally exhausted. >I'm saying what's the point of even keeping score when the odds are so stacked against women. Why is that? She was given leeway and my guess is because she's a woman among other things. Recruiters called it "soft skills" when you have corporate experience, but it's not directly applicable to software development. Strategic decision-making is not the same as people managing, and people managing can even create blind-spots that get in the way of good decision-making. This is true -- but your manager won't always act in your company's exact best interest either! I know many distinguished engineers and SDEs who are ICs. (Blog post author here) Referring to my job change as the company offering me charity is offensive and incorrect (I took a pay cut and worked hard to learn what I need to in order to be effective). But think about what value for the company it is to have a developer who has a clue about design and can communicate way above average. This isn't just your run-of-the-mill-benighted-white-male-newsroom-racism. Memento mori (remember you will die) as the Stoics say. It's fairly normal for staff-level engineers to spend a lot of time in meetings, but there are also staff engineers who spend most of their time coding. My previous manager was non technical, my current manager is an ex-developer, it makes things a bit simpler to have an ex-developer as manager but it isn't 'that' different, it just meant that before I had to simplify the description of the issues, which is a good thing anyway (most of the time). If, at work, I am doing anything but working on code, or preparing to (researching, reading, etc. Kudos to you and to your manager. But why does a position with greater risk necessitate greater compensation? He also helped Alyer and many other Free Jazz comrades to get signed with the label he recorded with, Impulse Records. That was a pretty major defect. If you ask me, the "demotion" in this article is not going from Director of Design to Software Developer. When I look at other fields and the credentials required/pay it’s somewhat a marvel that some uneducated kid with barely no experience such as myself was able to get into what’s considered a high paying technical field. But look at Amazon. It was so obvious once he said it. In short the qualifications a VP vs an IC (as you called them) are in different stratospheres. Did you take a pay cut? Language isn't always about formal definitions - it's more often about how people use it. Can you define "good" in a way that would allow us to empirically test this statement that doesn't make this statement a literal tautology? Anyway, congrats to anyone who does makes this kind of quality of life change! As the maely unfolded around Graves- after watching his drum set spill off the stage and crash into the orchestra pit- he told me he had come to the realization that along with the all night club sets- it was time to reinvent himself. Oh no, women have one advantage over men (if it were true) in a male dominated field. But so much of the sentiment regarding confidence and self-doubt were the exact emotions that I had experienced . Promotion depends on perspective. > This is not an economic move for the company. Yes, there are ICs who make as much as a VP. It's the second group of "managers", I think, that the OP is confused about. I think the title on HN is different than the title in the actual article, and has different implications. But in my opinion, it was a HUGELY successful program. Year 1 leads get lead pay. Then on the other hand, you have unusual guys like me who are trying over and over to get into management, but 20+ years in I'm still at the bottom of the totem pole. Senior director or Vice President (or in a team like you describe, ‘sales manager’ hah). Gaya patal is the odd gal out in this dyke session. Thanks for clearing that up. Pretty sure this commenter thought of themselves as non-biased. Have you ever wanted to change things up at your company, but felt constrained, knowing that others would perceive you based on your previous performance in a previous role? Not to mention that a lot of the times it's much harder to reverse an engineering decision vs a managerial one. The audience panicked and started stampeding to the emergency exit signs. Managers should be shielding teams from unproductive meetings and pushing for productivity (action items) from the meetings that happen - holding their peers to a degree of standards. Do you think it's possible to live in a world where women are the only gender that is mistreated? He still talked, danced, drummed and swung head-high MMA kicks into the air as he had in that office for decades.  Â. Which is great, but if I decided to change careers to building furniture, I wouldn't say I "got demoted to making furniture.". I don't think I've ever interviewed from the same angle but I have been clear with my managers that I want to avoid moving into any sort of people management. I'm so glad I've found this comment. "If you want to learn the Praying Mantis, you got to learn from the Praying Mantis. I'd say just tough it out with the goal to F.I.R.E. This is probably the single most significant differentiator between skills academic CS or programming courses and real world development. There are other ways to look at the world. Org-charts are about management structure and directors weirdly get very highly placed on them while their role isn't person-management driven. And sometimes, I really do come out of the most productive meetings feeling very energized, and hearing from my peers how much clarity they gained or how much more confident they are about a decision that was previously questionable/uncertain, is truly a great feeling (at least as good for me, as producing a solid piece of beautiful code). I mean, in an alternate universe, alv is the CEO-elect :) Imagine the scenes! I feel like we all kind of "stutter" in our career... "You are smart as hell. I'm not aware of a colloquial usage of "anecdote" which covers confessions of a behavior, let alone a habitual behavior. It's pretty hard for a single, middling manager to inflict costly mistakes anymore than an individual engineer. He was the only teacher I ever had who did not begin to speak slow and loud to me after learning I am completely dyslectic and the only one who encouraged me to take a shot at publishing( I thanked him for that in the acknowledgments of my first book- Ambushed: Secrets Of The Bush Family, The Stolen Presidency, 9-11 & 2004 (Trine Day Press 2004.Â, For all those who ever met or saw Milford Graves live, it usually was a life changing event. On top of that the perception of status is higher from the outside if you are a Director vs a Developer. You asked if you should be ashamed for being feminist, I replied no, but you should also not be proud of this, because there is nothing easier and more mainstream today than being a feminist. If you want to get on the managerial side, you have to learn how to get people to listen to you and do what you ask of them. I also didn't start at the very lowest rung of pay for this role: they took into account my years of building up knowledge about our product and other non-programming skills like communication and design in determining my new salary. Your manager, as a representative of the company, is wise to amicably transfer an unsatisfied employee to another part of the organization. Not to mention that if you mention it much at all, it can raise questions in colleagues minds about your dedication to the new field. Especially if their failures were causing problems with other teams. Which careers and jobs will best fit your traits as a Highly Sensitive Person? The message in the title can easily reinforce people's insecurities and discourage them from pursuing their dreams, because they'll just get "demoted". I think that's not the case. Still, even if your definition of "anecdote" extends to admissions, I don't see how you could then call it false. Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Milt Jackson also started to be seen in the back of the room wherever Milford Graves was to play. Just listen to yourself, you're so full of hate. I think it’s just to make an attention grabbing title. Pay me. My current boss is actually trying to make me 'care less'. That would cause a snowball effect in large organizations, resulting in extremely high turnover for leadership positions. What'd you really hope to accomplish with this post? I'm always thrilled to hear stories from people who have or reach this level of self-awareness, about what determines their mood/satisfaction. >You can't find someone else's anecdotes untrue. Sometimes women are given an advantage, in a way that is completely unfair and only gives a small boost to certain women with certain personality, attractiveness and age characteristics. Plus in this example, OP was a high performer and had already shown initiative, putting in legwork to upskill themselves for the new role. They also had a plan to make money. Free teen university movies. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but at Facebook when an IC switches to EM, I often hear people offer their condolences. And a semi-tech IC track has been fine for me through various iterations. The HN title implies that getting "demoted" wasn't the goal but a bad effect of following dreams. I think you have "Filtered HTML" turned on here. He also was a master chef- and would hold private concerts in his basement that included courses of food like his take on African Peanut Butter soup and his infamous home-brewed herbal "hallucinatory tea. I'm looking at a career change (possibly to tech), and I can't help but wonder: is there a way to be one of these managers, but without being a coder first? After a recording session with Bley for the ESP Label, Graves met the label's CEO Bernard Stollman and after another session and record with Logan, Graves formed his own Jazz collective- The New York Art Quartet - and hit the studio with poet Leroy Jones to record their self titled debut which All About Jazz reviewer Clifford Allen wrote that the group "cut some of the most powerful music in the free jazz underground. A manager with 5 direct reports and a multiplier of 110% is only producing as much net value as 0.5 of his/her reports. Companies that work in logistics, banking, engineering etc. - Product Designer, Product Design Lead, Director. Both managers and devs have risk with their decisions. I didn't say anything hateful towards women. How much of our developer job is really about coding? > The skills involved in figuring out what to build are entirely separate from the skills involved in building, and you are making the classic mistake of worshiping the skill of building to the exclusion of all other skills. However, I re-read it and realized it had little to do with the relationship between risk and compensation. If you want to be strict, sure. If you self-insure, you're doing #4. We do not host any movies or TV shows on our server, All movies and Tv shows are linked to non-affiliated third parties website. >Why can't we focus on the rights of both genders? Show me the data for this specific case of horizontal movement in engineering organizations for women and you have an argument that can change my view. Now I'm on my way to Senior Staff SWE, and I keep telling my managers that I don't want to manage, which so far has been working OK. But in others, bringing your knowledge of X into the team that does Y can be quite valuable. Maybe I'll feel differently once my kids are a little older, but right now I've got plenty on my plate without worrying about others' careers and the millions of additional meetings that managers have. Neither is "better" in some absolute sense, much less moral sense. Please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with. Graves notices that cardiac doctors only observed a heart beat pattern but not the pitch or tone of the heart.Â. There are various methods to address risk: When you buy insurance, you're doing #3. 1,539 Likes, 8 Comments - MIT Science (@mitscience) on Instagram: “A “sensational” map 🗺 of the brain 🧠 A team of researchers from Massachusetts Institute of…” > I don't have an equivalent story for women because I work with significantly less women. You are misusing that word. An anecdote could certainly include an admission; anything can happen in personal stories. A good manager will improve the performance of her direct reports. That's where I think the "demotion" terminology makes sense. All content is copyright Black Star News © 2020. The first year working as a developer was rough. Could relate to some of the emotions as I went from a founder ceo in biotech to sales engineer in tech, to software engg, then manager, then back to software engg with some unintentional devops detour in the middle! I don't have an equivalent story for women because I work with significantly less women. So do what you need to do to become qualified. As other commenter said, if there wasn't a pay cut, is because of the company charity. It also goes without saying that people often tell bald faced lies in the form of anecdotes. NEWSFLASH NEW YORK TIMES- not publishing an obituary on Milford Graves is equally racist as that ignorant white male journalist you just fired. It seems clear to me from the title that the demotion was deliberate. Everything about it. 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