No! No! I don't want to conduct performance reviews! You can't make me!

"Field promotions" we used to call them. I have done the management thing, I was "okay" at it, but it wasn't my passion.

When I was studying for PMP, I remember there was even a term for this. Because you're good at one thing, it was expected that you would be good at something else as well, not taking into consideration that managing people is completely different from the domain they were an expert on. Of course, sometimes it helps to have some previous domain knowledge to be able to lead a specific team, but that doesn't mean it's automatic.

What companies really need to realise is that there should be different promotion tracks, and some of them are individualistic, i.e. being promoted as an expert in their field, rather than being promoted to have to manage people.

You got a raise?!? They took my commission and said managers don't get commission or a raise

Yeah... I feel like I contributed so much more before but managing people, but this is where the money is sadly. I went from supply chain/purchasing/logistics manager to operations manager. I used to be a one man team and single handedly saved maybe $200k this year so far, and took our aged inventory from about $1M to basically nothing, all of our KPIs are primo. This is a company that pulls $10M/yr in revenue... small company.

I got rewarded with spending half my time babysitting the warehouse team, getting reamed by my boss when they're not getting through things fast enough, and fixing their mistakes and bandaiding bad processes. But I got a 30% raise so I guess it's worth it? I could be doing so much more.

Great. More responsibility and being the scapegoat for everything bad coming from the ones under you.
I'd need 150% of my salary to start thinking about doing that.

It doesn't necessarily matter that you make poor decisions. That's all of us. At some point. It matters that you take ownership of it and don't pawn it off on somebody else. And, that you make things right when necessary. Competence is important but integrity is way more important.

That you, Vova?

I had been a servant leader for a number of years in a big corporation in a remote location where I could break away from their older 50's style management structure. I had a great crew that was able to do wonderful things. The company took notice and wanted me to move to other locations. I wasn't interested in moving so far away. I would be sent to train and show other locations how we streamlined so well. We eventually closed down our location as the largest customer *we served closed after 90 years.

I was going to walk away from it all then one of my old customers wanted me to come and help them grow, move, and re-invent themselves. I was able to bring in some of the old crew and it was a lot of heavy lifting. Having the ownership in the location didn't make it easy as they were into the old 50s style mentality so it was a constant fight to implement all the great things they loved about my old location that served them. I was pretty burnt out by the end with being left to navigate Rona on my own with the crews when ownership went and hid in their homes. They didn't take it seriously at first and then when they flipped it was left in my hands to deal with while they freaked out about the end of the world.

Eventually they sold to a larger company and I was excited for this change. Turns out the new company spouted everything that sounded good but they were so disfunctional and full of themselves it was tough. I was glad to go when they folded our location into another existing one.

I miss working with the people daily and helping them grow and remove those road blocks but I was tired out by the latest ownership disfunction especially when they drank their own Kool aid so much they couldn't see how badly they were making it for the staff.

The only saving grace for this last ownership group was the previous ownership was so terrible, the new owners seemed like a good upgrade. They were in some ways. It wasn't for those of us that had worked for structured and properly run companies. It's been rough on the staff that remain and the steps backwards they had to endure in the process. The new owners are fairly certain they are doing great things. I wish them all luck and I'm glad to be out.

Why would you say that if you think otherwise on the inside?

I'm at a spot where I'm headed towards technical leadership rather than managerial leadership.

I have a small team, and it's up to me to use them to magnify my effectiveness with my work. It's actually kind of a good spot, but I'm worried I'll be asked to do more management stuff

I'm not close to retirement, but I see this starting to happen to me.

I'm not opposed to managing people, but I would rather self immolate than to review timesheets.

Do they force you into it anyways? Two jobs ago I told them that all the time. They used to make us fill out a career advancement plan every year, and every year I said "I'm exactly where I want to be", but every 6 months they'd stick me at the head of some team and I'd have to do that for a few months until I weasled my way out of it.

Is IC individual contractor in context?

The problem is that you'll fall off the technical curve eventually. It's almost inevitable. Even if you read and study every day and keep up with every bit of technical meta, your brain will slowly turn to goo and you'll find it hard to stay ahead of younger engineers purely on technical competence alone. At a certain point you need to develop some form of leadership skills so you can turn your experience into a multiplier.