Any regret for getting into management or vice versa

[Spanky]

Does anyone have any regret on getting into management (or a leadership role) from a technical or professional position (e.g., engineering) or vice versa?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I liked doing it, but unless you're getting some fat stock options or some other bonus compensation, the salary benefits might not outweigh the crap you have to deal with.

If you're really an 'upward mover' and want to make twice your salary some day, you can by moving up the ranks a slot or two. But you're gonna earn it.

 

[riskadverse]

In my last career, I avoided going into management on several occasions. I was in a highly technical role and remained very happy for many many years. I never regreted not moving into management there. In one previous career, I did move into management, and found that although I was capable, I disliked managing people.

 

[sgeeeee]

Does anyone have any regret on getting into management (or a leadership role) from a technical or professional position (e.g., engineering) or vice versa?

I wouldn't say that I regreted getting into management, but the rewards and kinds of satisfaction were different. I missed some aspects of being an individual contributor, but I also enjoyed many of the rewards of being a corporate executive. When I was a professor, I found teaching to be very rewarding too. I owe my ER, in large part, to the compensation packages I was able to get after I moved into management.

 

[ex_CFO_now_RVer]

I enjoyed my position and its pay as it provided me with the chance to RE.


Dave

 

[Howard]

I enjoyed most aspects of the job, but dealing with affirmative action is like walking through a mine field.

Groups have their own agendas, some people know the system, one hire worked for me less than 3 weeks but took a 5 month paycheck to leave.

The status, the income afforded, the opportunity for International Travel was fun, I was fortunate to have worked with Pfizer, a class organisation, TYCO'd over, generous package made life very easy and ER at 53..

 

[SteveR]

I am still in management and have been since 1975 when I took my first promotion from lab rat to lab rat supervisor. I am now with my third company and have had over 13 different job moves; promotions and laterals; all in some level of management or another. I have managed small groups within one lab and large multi-site international organizations and everything in between. My nest egg is in great part due to being a survivor in the management game.

It has also taken its toll on me. 32 years in managment for mega corp. eats a hole in your soul and drains your will to keep doing it. I have waded through more Bull S@it than a feed lot operator in Kansas. The smell sticks to you after a while.

Management is a lonely road. It is difficult to form lasting friendships with people you may have to fire or lay off someday. You need to keep some distance from those that work for you because you hold their livelihood in your hands. That makes for a very stressful time when the company finances are heading South or when upper management get a wild hair up their collective butt and you have to be the instrument of their whims. You have to be the one to tell people their jobs are going away; you are the one that has to sit down and listen to people cry about their personal financial situation or personal lives that are causing them to fail in their work life. You are the one that gets to do performance evaluations using a system that is so fraught with BS that the message gets lost in the system. You are the one that has to tell people that the reason they only got a 2% increase despite doing excellent work was that the company put a cap on merit increases. Etc. Etc. Where the rubber meets the road, YOU are the company to those that work for you.

Despite all the negative comments above, I still enjoy the good parts about being in management. I enjoy creating a working environment that people can feel free to thrive within. I enjoy watching people mature in a job and then get promoted. I enjoy standing up to upper management for my people. Being FI makes my job optional and management here knows it. I do not allow them to bully me into anything and they respect me for my freedom and it also messes with their minds because they can't hold anything over my head or intimidate me with a job or benefits. It is a nice feeling for me and my people love it because I cut through the BS as much as possible without hurting them. As long as I enjoy what I am doing I will stick around until my wife retires in 23 months.

Management is all about managing your boss.

 

[Howard]

Management is all about managing your career.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered.

 

[grumpy]

I had reached the top step of my federal pay grade in a journyman position. The only path to the next grade was to become a supervisor. Since my wife was staying home to raise our two children I really needed to bring home more money. I applied for and got the job as a manager. It involved supervising a small staff and also required a good bit of travel. I definitely did not like having to referee the spats between members of my staff and I hated the gov't process for hiring new folks. I am sure that being in a middle management position ultimately affected my mental and physical health. I retired the day I became eligible for an immediate pension. I couldn't be happier than I am now being retired.

Grumpy

 

[Spanky]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. It seems that one of the benefits of being in management is to expedite ER. Since I am already FI, I have no desire to pursue the management path. I do not have the energy to deal with people issues.

 

[Sheryl]

I definitely regret that I have to go to meetings instead of sitting around drawing buildings, but as others said, I don't regret the salary that came with being "management."

 

[unclemick]

Hindsight being 20/20 - I don't think I would have cut the mustard in management - being an INTJ, research oriented lab rat at heart.

29 years as an average grunt engineer.

Without detailing the old aerospace 'matrix dealy' - did several years as project engineer with 25-30 people reporting technically and the stand -up quartly presentations to upper management and NASA always made me nervious.

Was a group engineer dude with 5-10 engineers for about ten years and did the reporting deed to middle mangement/ senior NASA engineer counterparts.

People stuff was always more of a hassle than technical. Totally different skill set (in my mind) - never felt confident of mastering it.

Research was fun - the other stuff a mixed bag - success in research- meant you went into 'production' - ie followed thru with  the cycle - always meant you had to find another job/research thing/project.

NASA cats were always on the whole pretty cool to work with - even the senior management ones with a few 'jerk wad' quirks.

Management in aerospace - would have been hazardous to my health. Some earned their pay - some didn't - like many things in life.

A bigger nest egg, pension, and more bennies would have been nice.

BTY - my view as a layed off engineer without a funded project in 1993 would have been more testy.

heh heh heh

 

[Clark]

Yes.  And no.

I went from being a working professional (trial lawyer) to a being a managment toad supervising working professionals (other trial lawyers), assigning their work, evaluating same, holding ultimate settlement authority, etc, etc.  I was pressed into this because of seniority, because that is the way the federal government works, and because the fellow who had been handling that function thought (incorrectly) that he had a coronary one day, and despite learning that it was a false alarm he quickly retired after contemplating his own mortality.

The negative aspects were that (1) I had to watch "the kids" have all the fun sparring with the opposition and trying the cases; and (2) managing trial lawyers is a lot like herding cats.  I just hated it.  All of it.  Going to work became a chore instead of an adventure.

The positive aspects were that (1) I worked much more regular hours - no more nights and weekends getting ready for the next trial; and (2) I disliked the whole thing so much that I retired fairly young (50), which has turned out to be the best thing I have ever done for myself.  That was over five years ago.  But for the change from working professional to management toad, I'd probably still be working myself into an early grave.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I owe my ER, in large part, to the compensation packages I was able to get after I moved into management.

Me too, but if you're like me, the effect was really brought on by the irrational exuberance coupled with the stock portion of the compensation.

Given that I dont think thats something you can count on, and given that my stock options at most of the companies I've worked for were never really worth much, I dont know if thats a strong ER motivator.

Knowing now what I know, and as much as I really, really liked being a manager, about the only way I'd do it now is if I was running my own small business or in a small partnership where I could set the tone and business environment. Working as a manager in a regular company would drive me back to battiness in about a week.

 

[LOL!]

I guess I am in management ... VP of something or other.  I help manage a small group of PhDs et al.  They are really sharp people and a joy to work with.   The most fun is when you tell someone that you are going to pull their strings right before their eyes and turn them into better people.  If you do it right, they come and thank you.  They even come back for more string-pulling.  And better yet, your boss comes to thank you as well.  Best yet, is that anything that gets dumped on you ... you get to dump on someone else.

Note that pulling your strings is not the same as jerking your chain.

 

[Brat]

At least Home Depot is gives a hint of it's expectations for a management position!  Look at this link and pagedown to "Other Qualifications": http://tinyurl.com/cn78p

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Yeah, at least they're up front with it. "We're going to pay you for 40 and work you 55".

 

[Outtahere]

That's the way it's always been with retail management, I did my stint as store manager for about 10 years. Horrible hours that only get worse at Christmas, most of the time your hourly employees make more money than you. At the end of the year most bonuses are based on P&L numbers and they find a way to pay you as little as possible. After 10 years of that I found a job in computer tech, took me almost a year to figure out what to do with my nights and weekends.

 

[Spanky]

I wonder if pharmacists receive extra pay for working extra hours. Anyway, it seems to be a nice, low-stress job with decent pay. I do not image that they have performance reviews, individual development plan/goals, meetings, project deadlines, and travels.

 

[Brat]

Actually most are paid extra for extra hours. It is so difficult to find pharmacists today that they are in the compensation driver's seat.

The one exception at the moment is that many may be not logging in all their time as they try to work through the new Medicare pharm coverage.

 

[WilliamG]

I was in I/T and enjoyed management for quite a while. Stayed involved with projects, customers etc and enjoyed the wider scope of action/responsibility. About last 10 years though, gradually became the pits as spent about half my time on recurring "downsizing" fits. Not fun when you have enjoyed building and being part of teams rather than dismembering them. Up side, compensation helped reach my beginning goal of retiring at 55, minimum age where I worked to receive pension/cash value benefit.

 

[SteveR]

I wonder if pharmacists receive extra pay for working extra hours. Anyway, it seems to be a nice, low-stress job with decent pay. I do not image that they have performance reviews, individual development plan/goals, meetings, project deadlines, and travels.

I have a good friend that ERd from Mega Drug corp. He is a pharmacist and now works a couple of days a week at Walgreens and gets paid for all hours he works on an hourly basis. He has some benefits but does not need them due to Mega corp. He has no performance evals. no meetings to attend, no travel unless he is on vaction, no real stress except filling Rx as fast as he can. Other than that, he is having a ball and works for fun and toy money. He has a lot of offers for PT work but likes where he is since he can walk to work.

I tried to get my son to go into this field but he has no interest in that kind of work.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I suppose it comes down to this.

On the plus side, you get an extra 20% pay and the benefits of guiding your employees careers.

On the negative side, statistically, half of them dont care about you or the company, and are just in it for the paycheck. Once a year you'll have to pick 3-5% of your staff who are to be told out of the blue that they're underperformers because according to human resources, 5% of every staff group is an underperformer. When you're done delivering that message, you'll get to sell the 2.5% raise the rest of your employees got as being "the regular raise everybody is getting due to the off year you had", while your CEO took another 250 million as a bonus and raked down another 200 million in stock options. You'll be sitting in a meeting with a bunch of other people making six figures, operating a company bringing in billions of dollars in revenues. You've hit a momentary hiccup in revenue. You spend 2 hours discussing which employees in your division can have their pagers and/or cell phones taken away to save a few bucks to make the quarter look better. You think about the guys throwing deck chairs off the titanic.

An hour later after "justifying" not doing this in your division, some senior mucky-muck says everybody has to give them all up. You're tempted to pose the question "why did we give them cell phones if they dont need them?". Months later people are still trying to call the employees on cell phones they dont have or on numbers that arent correct anymore. You saved a hundred dollars on the exercise, and as a result millions of dollars worth of employees are not reachable in a timely manner.

In traditional corporate america, these sorts of scenarios play out weekly. Some peoples heads explode the first, maybe the second time they encounter such a situation. If that doesnt concern you, consider that a lot of your peer managers (making the same $ as you) will see the perfect sense in these sorts of things.

Would someone hand them another deck chair, please?

 

[yakers]

(), that was terriffic. It hasn't been that bad for me generally but there were times like you described. Actually more like The Caine Mutiny. Dilbert and Office Space are humorous because of the common experience they reflect.
One approach, after surviving the initial phase, is to navigate from the fsat track to a more comfortable position that leaves time for family and personal activities. There is a financial cost to this but often ultimately a bargain in life.

 

[Jay_Gatsby]

I suppose it comes down to this.

On the plus side, you get an extra 20% pay and the benefits of guiding your employees careers. 

On the negative side, statistically, half of them dont care about you or the company, and are just in it for the paycheck.  Once a year you'll have to pick 3-5% of your staff who are to be told out of the blue that they're underperformers because according to human resources, 5% of every staff group is an underperformer.  When you're done delivering that message, you'll get to sell the 2.5% raise the rest of your employees got as being "the regular raise everybody is getting due to the off year you had", while your CEO took another 250 million as a bonus and raked down another 200 million in stock options.  You'll be sitting in a meeting with a bunch of other people making six figures, operating a company bringing in billions of dollars in revenues.  You've hit a momentary hiccup in revenue.  You spend 2 hours discussing which employees in your division can have their pagers and/or cell phones taken away to save a few bucks to make the quarter look better.  You think about the guys throwing deck chairs off the titanic.

An hour later after "justifying" not doing this in your division, some senior mucky-muck says everybody has to give them all up.  You're tempted to pose the question "why did we give them cell phones if they dont need them?".  Months later people are still trying to call the employees on cell phones they dont have or on numbers that arent correct anymore.  You saved a hundred dollars on the exercise, and as a result millions of dollars worth of employees are not reachable in a timely manner.

In traditional corporate america, these sorts of scenarios play out weekly.  Some peoples heads explode the first, maybe the second time they encounter such a situation.  If that doesnt concern you, consider that a lot of your peer managers (making the same $ as you) will see the perfect sense in these sorts of things. 

Would someone hand them another deck chair, please?

Wow. I'm speechless.

Seriously though, () aptly described the significant downsides of management in a large to medium sized organization. True, the pay is better, but the sacrifices usually outweigh the increased pay unless there is a real potential for stock options or bonuses. Perhaps the better course would be to save your money while you're young, and rather than FIRE (if it's even possible by age 30-35) elect to launch your own business where you're the boss. Management is a whole lot different if you're the one with the ultimate decision-making authority (as well as the one collecting the big $$$). The worst that can happen is that you discover you're not suited to being an entrepreneur, and you head back to the cubicle...