Breaking the Timlide Stalemate: Software Engineering Manager has more salary, better prospects - and we hire them in batches
The classification of posts in modern, especially technological companies is confusing not only with an abundance of abbreviations and a mix of terms in two languages, but also with the nuances of the content behind them. This is not taught anywhere - an understanding of the subtleties, content and specifics of certain posts comes with experience and is transmitted only with experience. Over time, we plan to systematize our knowledge in this area, but for now let's talk about the vital: the next Hiring Tournament will take place on Saturday in Moscow. The tournament - or rather, safari - in which four software companies, DevFactory, Aurea, Ignite and Crossover, immediately went hunting for the heads of the rare Software Engineering Manager beast, trying to entice him for an annual salary of $ 100,000. This is for the creation and how in the corporate jungle SEM differs from the twin position - Team Lead.
The more perfect the company's processes are, the more they resemble a conveyor regardless of its profile.
Team Lead , especially in small teams, is a universal soldier who scatters on command and can stand behind the machine to show how to work or close a hole in resources. In general, the team leader is in all the team leader - the father of the development team.
')
However, if your company has Software Engineering Manager , “semes”, then they will also lead development or engineering teams, monitoring and ensuring the team’s working capacity, and maintaining working contact with “neighboring” development departments. So what's the difference with timlid? We asked Maxim Vinnikov, VP of Technical Product Management of Aurea Software to help bring clarity to us in details.
At the previous place, at AT Consulting, he worked for almost two years just as a Senior Software Engineering Manager. In general, almost all of his career led him to the moment when he was able to help us write this article on Habr :)
The difference between Team Lead and Software Engineering Manager is between therapist and the pulmonologist. In our latitudes, Team Lead usually manages multidisciplinary teams and can itself be a multi-gun. “Semes”, with due competence in the applied technologies and methods, do not take part in writing code, tests, and so on, and are focused on a specific front of work or operation. Yes, a similar approach may seem controversial to some, but it fits perfectly into the paradigm of Factory development. Software Engineering Manager is an expert in its field, and a high-class specialist who performs the functions of a manager and organizer, leaving work with the code to linear programmers of his team.
However, not only SEM should grow to this level of specialization, but also the company as such. In the early days, most businesses need universal soldiers. But as soon as growth begins - the specialization of employees and the “mechanization” of processes are necessary in order to be able to step over to the next step of development.
For the specialists themselves, the narrowing of their profile carries costs, for which one must be prepared. When the workload of working directly with the code is a thing of the past, yielding exclusively to managerial responsibilities, its activity becomes more understandable and transparent to others - and therefore, less suitable for people who are inclined to emulate a sense of self-employment, burrowing in a pile of diverse tasks.
Steep SEM should be a powerful specialist, in which the manager won. Another problem for fans of antagonizing these roles. At the same time, SEM has no right to “rust” and stop in its own literacy: it must, from the beginning to the end, understand what technologies its team works with and easily monitor possible problems.
As a communicator, Software Engineering Manager should always monitor the input and output points of the tasks performed by its team. In order for the company to pump the product as the Nord Stream pumps gas, each pipe segment must coincide with its neighbors in thickness, diameter and position in space at least. At the “entrance”, SEM must clearly understand what is required of his subordinates, and at the output, transfer the finished product (as part of code, tests, and so on) to the next SEM and its “fighters”, who will accept it for further work. Especially when it is not about primary product development, but the ongoing support of, say, SaaS solutions — the flow of tasks becomes continuous, and the development cycle is rapidly rounded — the slightest failure in this process threatens with the consequences of a loose nut in the wheel when going to the highway.
But well-established processes are not a reason for relaxation. Having debugged the processes, they should be started to be cleaned. A trivial example: increasing the number of commits is good, but if as a result 50% or more of them are subsequently ruled, then this is not an increase in productivity, but running on the spot with a burden. Debugging processes, SEM increases the amount of work done, cleansing them - reducing the cost of performing its specific elements, resulting in a constantly growing ratio of result to effort. That is the very productivity.
Many senior-developers dodge the Timlid positions imposed on them, fearing the professional pit - how you turn out to be a leader, you will still have to find out - but the grip, skills, and relevance of the developer experience are guaranteed to shed.
But this choice is worth the risk. Even if you dedicate yourself all the time to perfecting your coding skills, you only polish the glass ceiling above your head. At some stage, the salaries simply stop growing - all that remains is to change the location, moving from the edges more severely, with a conditional five dollars per month, more sunny regions, where they pay 15 even more - but where life is incomparably more expensive and taxes bite more . In general, if you want to accumulate not only respect and respect for old age, this ceiling cannot be noticed - Hattori Hanzo could have made the best katanas in Japan, but if he had opened his factory instead of a workshop, it would have become much richer.
And the transition from the “masters” to the managers is the most obvious and common path on the other side of the glass cabinet. A good specialist gets more of a mediocre manager, but a proud junior, picking his nose in front of his friend- “manager” in some Euroset is driving himself into a trap: top managers will always earn more specialists, and owners and partners more employees.
And if you decide to take this step, then the SEM position will be an excellent testing platform. Unlike the same team leader, which in this case only hurts: in the human orchestra mode, being constantly distracted by the code and related tasks, it will be easy to confuse your head - and it’s hard to impartially assess your real potential for the transition to the caste of managers.
Software Engineering Manager is a place where developers come to die in order to grow out of their own ashes by managers. Further, however, the chain in many companies is not too long. In subsidiaries of the holding company ESW Capital, for example, SEM reports to VP, which, in turn, report directly to the company's CEO. But on the other hand, what are the steps: from the salary of a “senior”, say, $ 5K per month - to $ 8K from a “family” in our clients' companies. And on the next step is the notorious million rubles a month in the position of VP. It is possible to make a reservation that this growth is also not unlimited, but your future glass ceilings will be glass domes. And the view from there opens a completely different one.
Another reservation is that the salaries accepted in the companies of the ESW Capital group, which includes and, in fact, Crossover, differ from the market, and strongly and for the better. $ 8000 is a positive fluctuation in our case. On average, in the capitals, Software Engineering Manager can expect to earn from $ 2500-3500 per month. In general, the choice between breakfast and subway ride is not required. So the game is still worth it - to try yourself as a manager would cost many developers.
You can start right on March 10th by signing up to participate in the Hiring Tournament organized by us. Do not be confused by the “tournament” in the title - this is not a game and we do not distribute places among those who came, but we evaluate the results of the participants on an objective scale - theoretically, almost everyone and no one can be above a given bar.
The current SEM operating in ESW Capital companies will lead the tournament and share their experience on the spot. And on Skype, the VP of Engineering of Aurea Software SlavaKulakov , which we hope to be able to join, and the co-author of this post, Maxim Vinnikov, will communicate via Skype. We consider the participation of specialists of this level in Hiring Days to be very important - because we believe that the most valuable knowledge about your future work is not how to get on it, but how not to get stuck on it. In this sense, our VP definitely has something to share with SEM, both future ones and those in force, if one of them suddenly set his sights on changing jobs now. Well, Habr's users have the privilege to ask questions in the comments throughout the week. As usual, our colleagues will answer as much as possible, but promise to devote time to at least the most interesting questions.
The more perfect the company's processes are, the more they resemble a conveyor regardless of its profile.
Team Lead , especially in small teams, is a universal soldier who scatters on command and can stand behind the machine to show how to work or close a hole in resources. In general, the team leader is in all the team leader - the father of the development team.
')
However, if your company has Software Engineering Manager , “semes”, then they will also lead development or engineering teams, monitoring and ensuring the team’s working capacity, and maintaining working contact with “neighboring” development departments. So what's the difference with timlid? We asked Maxim Vinnikov, VP of Technical Product Management of Aurea Software to help bring clarity to us in details.
Maxim Vinnikov - one of the pearls of the Crossover. We invited him to Aurea Software, one of the subsidiaries of the Texas conglomerate ESW Capital, not so long ago, in January last year - and then to the position of Technical Product Manager. But in July 2017, Maxim moved to the (virtual) chair of the vice-president.
At the previous place, at AT Consulting, he worked for almost two years just as a Senior Software Engineering Manager. In general, almost all of his career led him to the moment when he was able to help us write this article on Habr :)
Narrow specialist vs specialist of a wide profile
The difference between Team Lead and Software Engineering Manager is between therapist and the pulmonologist. In our latitudes, Team Lead usually manages multidisciplinary teams and can itself be a multi-gun. “Semes”, with due competence in the applied technologies and methods, do not take part in writing code, tests, and so on, and are focused on a specific front of work or operation. Yes, a similar approach may seem controversial to some, but it fits perfectly into the paradigm of Factory development. Software Engineering Manager is an expert in its field, and a high-class specialist who performs the functions of a manager and organizer, leaving work with the code to linear programmers of his team.
However, not only SEM should grow to this level of specialization, but also the company as such. In the early days, most businesses need universal soldiers. But as soon as growth begins - the specialization of employees and the “mechanization” of processes are necessary in order to be able to step over to the next step of development.
For the specialists themselves, the narrowing of their profile carries costs, for which one must be prepared. When the workload of working directly with the code is a thing of the past, yielding exclusively to managerial responsibilities, its activity becomes more understandable and transparent to others - and therefore, less suitable for people who are inclined to emulate a sense of self-employment, burrowing in a pile of diverse tasks.
Steep SEM should be a powerful specialist, in which the manager won. Another problem for fans of antagonizing these roles. At the same time, SEM has no right to “rust” and stop in its own literacy: it must, from the beginning to the end, understand what technologies its team works with and easily monitor possible problems.
As a communicator, Software Engineering Manager should always monitor the input and output points of the tasks performed by its team. In order for the company to pump the product as the Nord Stream pumps gas, each pipe segment must coincide with its neighbors in thickness, diameter and position in space at least. At the “entrance”, SEM must clearly understand what is required of his subordinates, and at the output, transfer the finished product (as part of code, tests, and so on) to the next SEM and its “fighters”, who will accept it for further work. Especially when it is not about primary product development, but the ongoing support of, say, SaaS solutions — the flow of tasks becomes continuous, and the development cycle is rapidly rounded — the slightest failure in this process threatens with the consequences of a loose nut in the wheel when going to the highway.
But well-established processes are not a reason for relaxation. Having debugged the processes, they should be started to be cleaned. A trivial example: increasing the number of commits is good, but if as a result 50% or more of them are subsequently ruled, then this is not an increase in productivity, but running on the spot with a burden. Debugging processes, SEM increases the amount of work done, cleansing them - reducing the cost of performing its specific elements, resulting in a constantly growing ratio of result to effort. That is the very productivity.
Career is over, long live career
Many senior-developers dodge the Timlid positions imposed on them, fearing the professional pit - how you turn out to be a leader, you will still have to find out - but the grip, skills, and relevance of the developer experience are guaranteed to shed.
But this choice is worth the risk. Even if you dedicate yourself all the time to perfecting your coding skills, you only polish the glass ceiling above your head. At some stage, the salaries simply stop growing - all that remains is to change the location, moving from the edges more severely, with a conditional five dollars per month, more sunny regions, where they pay 15 even more - but where life is incomparably more expensive and taxes bite more . In general, if you want to accumulate not only respect and respect for old age, this ceiling cannot be noticed - Hattori Hanzo could have made the best katanas in Japan, but if he had opened his factory instead of a workshop, it would have become much richer.
And the transition from the “masters” to the managers is the most obvious and common path on the other side of the glass cabinet. A good specialist gets more of a mediocre manager, but a proud junior, picking his nose in front of his friend- “manager” in some Euroset is driving himself into a trap: top managers will always earn more specialists, and owners and partners more employees.
And if you decide to take this step, then the SEM position will be an excellent testing platform. Unlike the same team leader, which in this case only hurts: in the human orchestra mode, being constantly distracted by the code and related tasks, it will be easy to confuse your head - and it’s hard to impartially assess your real potential for the transition to the caste of managers.
Software Engineering Manager is a place where developers come to die in order to grow out of their own ashes by managers. Further, however, the chain in many companies is not too long. In subsidiaries of the holding company ESW Capital, for example, SEM reports to VP, which, in turn, report directly to the company's CEO. But on the other hand, what are the steps: from the salary of a “senior”, say, $ 5K per month - to $ 8K from a “family” in our clients' companies. And on the next step is the notorious million rubles a month in the position of VP. It is possible to make a reservation that this growth is also not unlimited, but your future glass ceilings will be glass domes. And the view from there opens a completely different one.
Another reservation is that the salaries accepted in the companies of the ESW Capital group, which includes and, in fact, Crossover, differ from the market, and strongly and for the better. $ 8000 is a positive fluctuation in our case. On average, in the capitals, Software Engineering Manager can expect to earn from $ 2500-3500 per month. In general, the choice between breakfast and subway ride is not required. So the game is still worth it - to try yourself as a manager would cost many developers.
Glass ceiling tournament
You can start right on March 10th by signing up to participate in the Hiring Tournament organized by us. Do not be confused by the “tournament” in the title - this is not a game and we do not distribute places among those who came, but we evaluate the results of the participants on an objective scale - theoretically, almost everyone and no one can be above a given bar.
The current SEM operating in ESW Capital companies will lead the tournament and share their experience on the spot. And on Skype, the VP of Engineering of Aurea Software SlavaKulakov , which we hope to be able to join, and the co-author of this post, Maxim Vinnikov, will communicate via Skype. We consider the participation of specialists of this level in Hiring Days to be very important - because we believe that the most valuable knowledge about your future work is not how to get on it, but how not to get stuck on it. In this sense, our VP definitely has something to share with SEM, both future ones and those in force, if one of them suddenly set his sights on changing jobs now. Well, Habr's users have the privilege to ask questions in the comments throughout the week. As usual, our colleagues will answer as much as possible, but promise to devote time to at least the most interesting questions.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/350610/
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