Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

For the first quote maybe. But for the second ("I'm also responsible for delivering code and 50-75% of my day is meetings"), not really.

Technical Managers and Tech Leads need to participate in meetings but some also need/want to keep their coding skills and codebase knowledge sharp. A compromise is spending only 25%-50% of the time coding.

Some people are good with both and prefer to keep doing it.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution.



I think your description is sound, but only for people managers of some kind. I burnt out pretty hard trying to meet similar expectations as an IC twice though. The first I was just trying to get code written when I was constantly being dragged into bureaucratic agile planning meetings, or talking to the PM about why my thing isn't done yet, or joining an "all hands". The 2nd had very little of the former, but I was responsible for fixing customer reported bugs, communicating with them in a timely and asynchronous manner about those bugs, and then also delivering features. It didn't help that they put me on some incredibly mundane React project near the end, but I reached a point where I'd sit at my computer and just feel bad about the day. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in meetings all day, but I don't know that coding is what I'd want to be doing with the time in between, at least not to try and meet deadlines. To me, that'd be a recipe for deep depression.


Yeah, it really depends on the kind of management, kind of programming and the person. It's definitely not for everyone or for every situation. But when it works it's much better than the alternative.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: