Engineer to Manager Transition

Irish_Elect_Eng

Hi All,

I am considering making the move from a senior engineering position into an engineering management role.

While I believe that I have most of the required skills and the ability to develop those that I don't have at the moment I have two concerns:

(1) Moving away from the day to day technical work.
(2) Dealing with management politics.


I would be interested to hear your experiences, positive and negative about making such a transition.

Regards;

Turbulent Bill

I think it's the natural career progression in Ireland, where we don't have a culture of senior engineers having salary/status equal to managers.

As for your concerns, you have to learn to delegate technical tasks to your team, and empower them to do it. I think management politics are inevitable given that you'll be stuck somewhere in middle management, but being absolutely straight with your own team members is a necessity.

I went on Beckinridge's "Management Skills for Technical Professionals" course and would recommend it, good eye-opener for making the transition. Haven't had much chance to put it into practice yet though.

merengueca

6 years after making the move one of the hardest aspects is accepting that technology has moved on so much in my time away from the front line that I'd have difficulty leading from the front these days.

It may be the way my own organisation is set up, but, the hardest aspect for me was that I was no longer one of the 'useful' people.

Also the camaraderie of being one of the team - no matter how well you get on with your team there needs to be some seperation to ensure the dynamics work.

Equally its nice being the one making the decisions and not having to live with what is dictated down to me.... also as much as I get frustrated with my team it feels like a true acheivement when I see the good guys progress.