Before that the manager was essentially the best engineer in the team (or the one that wanted to get promoted). Being a manger meant you were respected directly for your skills and you were expected to still be a full time contributor. Directors meant you were one of the best ICs out there. Now, being a manager or a director means you sometimes did an MBA in an unrelated field. This brought a ton of politics, nonsense meetings (because the most visible output for managers is more meetings where they can posture).

Let's go back to what it used to be. We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings. We don't need a full layer of managers syncing with each others and taking political decisions that will mainly advance them. We don't need another layer of gatekeepers.

I'm not saying all managers are bad, but this charade has been pushed a bit too far.

Google and Facebook are allowed. They are still a net negative on society.

The world would be a better place without them.

That surely would work very very well in society. Literally the same thing is happening with Google, Facebook, TikTok etc.

You probably work for bigtech and your salary depends on people losing their braincells so I don't expect you to suddenly get some ethics and understand all of this.

The incentive for Apple or Microsoft is to make a good product that you will gladly pay for. This is very different.

A good restaurant makes an excellent product bit it doesn't mean that I will spend 5 hours there.

I so hope that Google goes down. (And I pray the same for Facebook and a couple others).

I have 20 toes. Therefore I should fly 10 times better.

Amazing how you lost your critical sense just because you want Tesla to succeed and drink everything Musk says.

This must be one of the most stupid takes that gets repeated non stop by Tesla fans.

I just don't get it. Humans also have emotions and other biological senses that Computers don't have. You just cannot compare both. What makes human so good at driving is that they can react relatively well to unknown new events. Teslas cannot do that, and with the current hardware never will.

Both are great career choices but lately being an EM means spending over 6 hours a day in meetings and having very little agency over your time. Your whole job is basically being in meetings and being a human router for information between people.

This changed when BigTech redefined the roles of an EM. Back in the days, the EM would naturally be the best engineer in the team that wanted to stay technical and grow the team. Since 2010, Bigtech has decided that EM should especially NOT be technical. They should do "People things" only. I think that was a turn for the worse in our industry,

As an IC I have way more control over my time. I can decide when I work.

That being said it depends what I want to optimize for. I think if your goal is to climb up the ladder you will do that more easily as a driven EM than a driven IC.

As an EM if you are driven and put the hours in and play the game well, you could get promoted to Director/Sr. Director. The skills here are not especially difficult. Getting promoted is all about being at the right time at the right place and playing the right game. If you are an EM in a growing company, you will almost certainly grow with the compant and get more scope.

As an engineer it feels way more difficult to get promoted past Staff. After Staff you are competing with people that are absolutely cracked coders and dedicated 12+ hours a day working. Most of them have a talent level that is almost unmatchable.

But really, if you want to manage your time, don't become an EM.