Over drinks a few weeks ago, a friend told me he'd been offered a promotion, to an Engineering Manager role. He planned to decline it, but wanted to hear my take first.
Until recently, my answer in such conversations was always “100% go for it”. My logic was that it’s a super valuable experience, even if someone is not looking for the management career path. I told every engineer that a couple of years as an EM would teach them valuable skills, and they could always go back afterward.
This time, we had a long discussion about the tradeoffs, and I finally agreed with him that he should not take that step.
Here are the main arguments from our conversation:
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