Maker vs Manager - Work Life Balance Edition

Why this post ?

I often get this question from ICs who have interest in management, how is the work life balance(wlb) of a manager. Often times they dont have visibility into what their manager is doing or what the day to day might look like. The common notion may be that the manager's life is pretty chill and some ICs may be motivated to take the job because of that, which may be the wrong way to approach it.

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y-combinator wrote the famous blog post on the Makers schedule vs the Manager's schedule. I would recommend that to anyone who wants to try out management or even a high Tech Lead role with a lot of surface area. The goal of this post is to demystify a bit about the manager's wlb and how that is different from ICs.

What can lead to poor wlb for ICs ?

ICs have delivery pressure. They have goals and timelines to hit. So they have to be on top of the timelines, deal with complexity/breadth in a timeboxed manner, manage expectations around feasibility/risks and escalate in a timely manner. Complexity/breadth are the variables which lead to feasibility/risks to the project which may lead to poor wlb.

What can lead to poor wlb for managers ?

As a manager you dont own your calendar. It belongs to the team as you have to make yourself available for team members, cross functional peers(PMs, Data Science, User Research, Business, Analytics), partner teams, etc. So as your surface area grows and as the team grows the number of variables outside your control increases. You have to available often after hours for leadership escalations, issues your team members may be facing, shared goals changing, partner teams priorities changing, issues with cross functional relations, etc. Bottom line is you have to put out fires in your area and fires dont have a schedule. Also given managers have so many meetings during the day, often times they have to work after hours for design reviews, doc writing, upward presentations, talent reviews, roadmapping when they can focus on real work.

What does a stable state look like for ICs and Managers ?

ICs can have good wlb when they have a strong manager with good projects. When the manager can set reasonable goals, prevent thrash, smoothen out priority changes and transitions for the team.

Manager's can have a good wlb when they have a strong team of rockstars who can solve complex/broad problems and be able to deal with variable complexity/variable breadth(cross stack,versatile) as needed. I keep complexity and breadth both as variables because that is dependent on the team and business/product/technical challenges on that team.

What are the pitfalls to be aware of as you make career choices ?

Having read the above, you can probably infer which role is worst. Hint : combination of both tends to not work out as it stretches you on both the axes at the same time. Often times it happens when you are new to the manager axes and those muscles are not yet built out.

References

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html - Makers schedule vs Managers schedule