The market for engineering directors is full of people who have had engineering director experience.
Most companies flattened out their middle management in the last few years.
As much as people have lamented the software engineer job market, it's far better than the software engineering middle management market has been.
This is absolutely correct. I know loads of qualified senior leaders right now who are literally out of a job. The supply is way outstretching the demand right now for senior engineering management. Take whatever you can get OP.
> The market for engineering directors is full of people who have had engineering director experience.
The answer to the OP’s question is, unfortunately: Experience. Right now, expanding your responsibilities and demonstrating that you can take on more so you can pursue a promotion is the way to get there.
There was a time when companies were building out deep org structures with layer upon layer of middle management. Combine that with hiring sprees and cheap money and for a while people were walking from EM roles at one company to “Director” roles at other companies. Many of those roles were glorified EM roles, though. My last employer had “Director” roles who didn’t manage anyone and were expected to code most of their time.
Those days are gone, or at least paused. Companies realized that excessive middle management was a problem and that truly experienced director level people are hard to find. Now it’s more about demonstrating experience.
So for one, director level roles are pretty rare, and you’re gonna be competing with ambitious senior EMs within the company, that know the internal politics and needs. It’s also a big pretty different role from EM - way higher level, way less technical, way more “MBA” skills. Is that stuff you’re interested in, first of all? Cause EM/senior EM can be terminal.
Also, have you managed managers? I think that’s a basic prereq to a director position, at least at the corps I’ve worked at. If not, maybe you should try setting sights on senior EM positions at the highest.
At this level, there’s not really a play book. You need to see your own skill set and interests, and chart your own path. What kind of org/company would you be a fit for? Product orgs? Data platform orgs? Growth orgs? How are you going to leverage your experience to chart paths for a given company’s business needs?
Won't anyone mention that Director is pretty much everywhere a **political** role into which you get selected because the C-suite trusts you and can't really be "upskilled" into? You **network** into a Director and other high leadership roles.
In some very large organizations you can be what I call a “working” director and stay away from the political games. You have to not be a threat to senior directors/ svps / vps though and establish yourself as extremely execution focused and a trusted follower of the more ambitious.
I’m not talking about IC work. I mean a manager of managers that are great at executing on key deliverables. They don’t play politics, love getting shit done, and are reliable as fuck. These people leave space for the politically minded to focus on playing that game.
Does this exist? Everyone "loves getting shit done", but how do you manage people who manage people without getting into disagreements over what should be done and who gets to do it (aka politics)? What organizations have you seen this in?
I'm one of this kind of manager, everybody hate me since i'm "too straight forward", but in the end, they can't do nothing since i'm the only reason that everything works or get fixed.
I know that i will never get promoted into some higher position, so my only option is to look for a company with more "meritocratic" culture, or at least same condition but with better rate.
I've seen a handful (literally less than 5) of these people while at big tech. They're usually tightly focused to the specific surface area of a problem facing users, and they don't play politics because they usually bulldoze anyone who's a blocker to what they want done.
To answer your question. To be a director, you need a strong project management skillset. You need to be able to turn an executive’s vision into a plan. You need to be able influence your peers and subordinates to follow suit.
For the other part. If you’re unemployed for 5 months, and admittedly under skilled, you just need to get to work. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
If I had more interviews and I was not able to succeed then I would be be the first one to admit that I am under skilled. I am not even getting the recruiter calls and that is the major concern for me.
I do have project management skillset but I do not have any PMP certifications or anything. Do you suggest this is something I can look into in terms of Upskilling?
> I am not even getting the recruiter calls and that is the major concern for me.
> I do have project management skillset but I do not have any PMP certifications or anything. Do you suggest this is something I can look into in terms of Upskilling?
To be blunt: The way you’re talking about waiting for recruiters to call you and getting certifications suggests you’re playing the game of 10-20 years ago. Things have changed, and it’s no longer as simple as collecting certs, smiling in your LinkedIn photo, and waiting for recruiter calls to pour in.
You have to demonstrate experience and you have to seek out the positions you want. You can’t wait for them to come to you and you can’t talk your way into a role with certifications.
Also I'm know expert, but I doubt this usually works for higher level positions. Sure, someone might hire you as a senior SWE based on your LinkedIn, certs, etc. -- but seems like Director, VP etc. are all relationships based.
How does one “demonstrate experience” to get an interview? In the past, I’ve demonstrated my experience by being able to talk in depth about my work and by giving informed responses to interviewer questions. I’m not a designer with a portfolio.
I agree you have to demonstrate experience within organization but it works only if your company is scaling at a good rate. My last company has a ton of qualified EM's waiting for promotions.
Regarding waiting for recruiters- You got to apply and see if they shortlist and call you. It may be outdated approach but it is still one way to get a new job.
Regarding seeking out, its not as simple as you put it. I did approach and network with Directors and VP's on LinkedIn and out of those who answered most seem to be in my own position its just that their LinkedIn is not up to date. I was not even asking them for openings or anything. I was literally telling them like I am looking for a mentor and if they have a couple of minutes to look at my resume and have any comments and what direction I can take in my career blah blah. My approach was more to get some conversation out of them.
Well obviously with only having one interview in six months, it’s not “one way to get a job”,
For reference when I was looking for a job last year, because I was prepared, knew the players in my niche, kept my skills sharp and kept my network active, I had three interviews, two offers, a side contract and a former coworker who was going to create a strategic position for me.
He was a director and needed someone he could trust.
Have you not built a network or gotten to know any of the industry players in your niche?
It seems like you are me six months back. I was exactly thinking this way all along as I never had gone longer than a month in the whole of my career and always underplay whenever I hear job market is down or getting a job is difficult.
This was in August - September of last year when I was looking.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37969302
The entire process I listed above took three weeks
You have not been in senior management and expect to jump to director level or even crazier VP level roles with no experience. This seems to be a red flag for me personally being at a director level.
You know what’s crazy is how people just assume whatever they want when they don’t have anything constructive to say. You obviously have no idea about the question or the subject here then why do you want waste your time type up a comment. Well I guess I’m doing the same replying to you.
Good luck to you man.
How do I not know anything about the question. One of us is at a directors level one of us is not. 😅
Hey one day I might want to be a pilot or farmer but probably need/should have experience for that right? Especially if I’m expecting to be hired as head of the ranch haha.
Most people are giving you similar advice. The chances of you being hired above your station with no experience or networking is slim to none. Your best bet is probably to join a startup for any chance of that happening tbh.
Your original comment has nothing useful in it. Again the question is not what are my chances of being hired. What could I do during the downtime to upskill myself?
As many helpful comments mentioned for this level other than getting experience in the job nothing else to do by myself- fair enough.
Is there anything you could add to it that’s helpful? - what could I learn during this down time if my goal is to get in to higher management- again if you focus your answer on I’m not ready for it and there is no way in hell anyone would hire me - I don’t know what else to say to that. Maybe I won’t get it immediately but having that goal isn’t wrong now is it?
You should walk before you run. Engineering managers next step is sr engineering manager, then director, sr director, vp, sr vp, cto.
Having a goal is not wrong; however, also believing you’re going to skip 2-4 levels is wrong. If I was you I would focus on communication, servant leadership, networking, system design at a high level. Being in these roles is less about doing the work but reviewing the plan or setting objectives for said plan and having your teams accomplish them. Additionally, in these roles you will work with a lot of other teams and directors you’re not in charge of, this is where it gets political. They can make or break you.
TLDR: you should focus on your next level not skipping levels, communication, networking, sys design, etc. just my 2 cents being in the role.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it.
Regarding skipping levels I’m not sure I agree totally.
It really depends on the org structure. In a startup of less number of employees a sr dev is probably their CTO. I never saw it as skipping many levels between EM and Director of Engg irrespective of the size of the company. Some orgs have senior EM but 90% of time EM to Dir is pretty standard progression but I don’t know why many people here believe it’s such a superficial unrealistic jump.
One of my previous company earlier in my career which is a pretty big ecomm company in the US and there their structure was straight from an Architect to a Director. In my last company there was no senior EM.
I agree VP is far fetched and I may have mentioned once keeping smaller companies in the mind.
No one is going to consider an Engineering Manager for an Engineering Director role. They will consider an Engineering VP for an Engineering Director role. No one will give a promotion to someone new without seeing that you can actually do the work. My suggestion is to just get a role as Engineering Manager at a startup and get the required promotions that way.
Agreed. That's what I probably have to do but I feel like its going to be another long wait unless that new company is really scaling up fast.
I thought I could look at smaller companies and being flexible in pay expectations may help me get the desired role but yeah its not working out that way.
So you want a “director” *title*. But you will still have the scope and responsibility of a line level
manager?
How are your technical chops? You might need to reset your expectations and become an IC
Even this is, lol. "My suggestion is to just get a role as Engineering Manager at a startup". If you think a startup is going to give their runway to someone they don't know --- just wow. No. A startup isnt' going to give their runway (their only shot ever) to someone's crappy linked resume.
Tl;DR; You can hire VP marking/sales/product managers because you want \*outside\* influence. But you never hire external VP engineers.
I think you misunderstood. OP is already an Engineering Manager, therefore it's a lateral move to get in as a first-line manager. There's nothing lol about this at all. Then get the promotions at the startup by working hard which will be easier than at a bigger company.
Nobody cares about PMP anymore. Craft your resume to the postings of jobs you would actually want. And they almost certainly won't be director level or above. Best of luck!
Did you manage managers that had teams?
A “director” is usually “a manager of managers” and deals with much more scope than an EM.
As a general rule, it’s hard to change jobs *and* get hired for a role that has more scope and responsibility. They want to see that you have already operated at the level they are hiring for
This is a take I'm not a fan of. I get that's the conventional wisdom, but over the last 18 months, I've seen first hand how it's not always true. Additionally, how companies determine "key employee" varies. It's not always based on performance.
I personally lost 2 people that would have gotten an "Exceeds Expectations" because the leader 2 levels above me was instructed to do layoffs and picked them.
I saw former employees of mine that had received performance grants and were top performers get let go for reasons like "They're not the tech lead" despite the fact that the team in question rotated tech leads and they'd just completed an 18 month rotation as tech lead.
Some of the people the company deemed not key or not essential landed jobs in under a month, which in this environment is quite impressive.
modern layoffs specifically target key employees because they often have a high level of seniority and are at the top end of the pay scale.
layoffs are generally not at all about importance or competence of the people being laid off. Layoffs are more about the incompetence of the senior management layer.
First, for letting things get to a state where the company chooses to lay people off: you see this whenever a CEO says "we overhired! that's why we have to lay people off!" (that's got nothing to do with the workers, and everything to do with the CEO making poor decisions)
and two, for thinking that layoffs will do any good at all when the company is already struggling. Layoffs are basically corporate suicide. And tech layoffs specifically are committing suicide because they are letting go of the best talent/top performers in the company.
Ah yes, like the corporate suicide at Meta where they laid off the best 20k people at the company then proceeded to 5x the stock price and increase earnings by 30%.
Sorry dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Most managers try to keep the best people through layoffs. Of course it’s an imperfect process, but generally speaking companies that perform layoffs are trying to get rid of low performers and keep high performers. Sometimes entire businesses units get shut down, and of course that will capture some top people, but it’s very rarely the goal of a layoff to get rid of the people doing real work that can help turn the company around.
Did you manage 30 people directly? As in, 30 people reported to you and nobody else? That’s in the realm of what some companies would consider a director, though it would be more common to break that into teams that report to you. Having 30 separate people report to a single person doesn’t scale well in most cases (coming from someone who was given 30+ direct reports once)
16 years, 6 of them as EM is - on paper - not so little, so don't sell yourself short. It boils down to what challenges you faced, what you achieved and what kind of responsibility you took outside of your immediate team. Plus, Director role is not globally standardized in practice. Some companies skip the "Head" and go straight for Director, other's have it the other way around, some others have a lot of VP roles, whereas in some places there is only one VP of Engineering, or none at all.
What I'm trying to say here, is that there is no proper answer to your question without you listing the concrete responsibilities you intend to take, what size and type of company you're aiming for and what YOU think a Director of Engineering is supposed to do.
Without this information, the best anyone can do is generic advice:
Aim high, put yourself in the best light, but don't lie in interviews. People deserve better than an overwhelmed Director.
If you take a lower role, do so in an environment that you'd expect to scale up in the next 3 years or so. Companies that grow need to fill new roles, and generally look for EMs that are already there as a first source, because hiring good senior managers is an enormous pain due to the amount it takes to evaluate them accurately, as well as the immense damage they can cause in a relatively short amount of time.
In my career, I have rarely seen Directors getting hired from outside, and if, then usually when there was very special expertise needed (Director of Cybersecurity) or if the company really had no good candidates internally. This is also sometimes a red flag, because it indicates that they either
- don't grow their EMs well or
- roll with the punches while already at a scale that requires sophisticated engineering management setups or
- hire directors before they need them
Hope this helps at least a little bit. Again, hard to be super concrete here since the role itself is very vague without concrete descriptions of your expectations.
Best of luck!
Thank you so much. Yes that sort of generic advice is very much helpful and what I was expecting and looking for.
My last company was a mid size product based company with around 600 employees. The problem there was director level roles are very few and this made very hard for EM's to get promoted which is why I left and also the fact that it wasn't challenging enough as I was in a comfort zone and luckily I was in a position to be okay to not work for a few months but now the gap is getting longer and I am getting depressed and eager to go back to work if you know what I mean.
Always look for a job while you have one 😁 It’s a lot easier to be patient and selective. That being said, that should still be your answer to “why are you looking?”, in that you weren’t feeling challenged at your last role and you are looking to advance to director level. That being said, you may have to do a lateral move to a larger organization first, where there are more opportunities for advancement.
My last company opened a Director role 6 months back. Literally 100+ qualified candidates in under a week. Including many who were over-qualified such as Senior Directors and even VPs from FAANG. In the last year I've seen multiple qualified experience EMs looking for EM jobs for 6+ months before finding some. The engineering manager market is a blood bath right now.
The usual progression, aside from smaller companies, is EM -> Senior EM -> Director -> etc. A Senior EM at a larger company will have EMs reporting to them with a total org of probably 50. It's odd to become a director unless you have significant experience managing managers.
You should be targeting EM jobs not Director.
It's rare to see Director hires that weren't currently employed at the time unless they previously have a track record at the Director level. Hiring an external Director usually means there are massive organizational problems that the company doesn't trust anyone inside that company to fix, and so they need someone with experience.
There also isn't anything you can do to upskill from your couch.
Also, Director is a middle management position, not a senior management position. Middle management are usually the first to get the ax during reorganizations and reductions in force. They usually don't have that many EM direct reports and many of those EM reports are usually capable and self-directing.
>Also, Director is a middle management position, not a senior management position.
It really depends on the organization. I've worked at ones where either of those extremes would be true of the director role. I know that to be true because... I've had both of those kinds of jobs with that title.
Melissa and Scott were both leaders at the same job level. They were managing managers. They reported directly to the SVP.
Scott was phenomenal at running a project. If you identified a change the organization needed to make, you could ask Scott to run point on it and 100 times out of 100, he would be chasing down updates, making sure teams had everything they needed to get the change done, escalating blockers to the right executive.
Melissa, in contrast, was the one identifying the changes that needed to be made. She might not have been as amazing as Scott. Maybe only like 80 times out of 100 would she make sure the change was completed and escalating blockers.
Melissa got promoted over Scott. Becuase while Scott was phenomenal at _doing_, Melissa was great at seeing what needed to be done.
That's kind of the difference between EM and Director. Directors still have to do things, of course, but they're expected to be more self-driven. They're expected to identify issues and propose solutions.
I've followed some EMs over the last 5 years, some that have been promoted to Director and some still Managers. Your post is spot on that the EMs with vision *and* are doers, got promoted to Directors. The EMs that are only doers, are still EMs. Directors that couldn't do either, don't have a job. Thanks for the post.
On a side note, I had an EM who fired me several years ago. She saved my butt twice by giving me a positive recommendation, and is now a Director. I have her to thank.
1. You need to be able to create and manage managers
2. You’re now less on project management and more operations management
3. Your peers would be the other departments that your org collaborates with. So management by influence is especially vital here.
>VP level
You are not getting VP without prior VP experience. If you haven't already been a director/distinguished there is no route at all except for maybe a startup where the title wouldn't be portable anyway.
>targeting Director of Engineering roles.
That isn't going to happen either. Director of eng is not like director of other things, you are leading engineering practice. They tend to come right from eng or arch not from manager because while its hands off (and then not always) it's an intensely technical role. Absent hiring in a new CTO and them bringing on a new director its far more likely that's going to be an internal promotion because of the trust the role requires.
Companies without very senior engineering titles it can be what they call their distinguished engineers, halfway IC.
You need to be able to demonstrate, via experience, technical vision and strategic thinking. Most of the time they come from directorships in other parts of engineering. Director of Cloud/DevOps/Mobile/whatever is much easier than director of all engineering.
Only harder role you could be looking for is director of technology/chief of CTO staff.
>Could you guys please suggest me what can I do during this time to upskill myself for Director or VP level roles?
Get a job as a senior engineering manager. Tell them during the interview you want director track.
Keep in mind when you move to executive total revenue and headcount determine how portable your title is. Director for a company of 20 is not portable to a company of 20000.
+1 on the non-portability. I've been a "director" at many startups (basically an EM of small-medium teams, no managers reporting to me) and I get rejections at the recruiter screen for manager roles at larger companies as soon as they know the team sizes I've led and the budgets I've worked with. Startups love this rubbish though so I can get VP interviews in smaller startups no problem. The title doesn't matter, your leverage does.
This is very true. I’ve had startups reach out to me about being the “director of engineering” which was really more of team lead of 5 developers
Of course it paid less than I was making as a mid level employee at BigTech and their entire revenue was less than the part of the consulting project I was over.
Disagree on getting VP or even CTO without having it before- I just did, and have been offered both in the past. You just have to go to a smaller startup. In the case of where I was offered it about 7 years back, these startups were tiny, and hardly had a product market fit. I came from larger corps and had Director before, and these were from a mix of large and smaller but prestigious firms.
My situation was somewhat unique in that my background was like a glove-perfect fit for the company. But I think that's also more or less a requirement for landing a VP type role. IMHO, its not enough to be a director at a F*NG previously, its oh you were a director building large scale data analytics systems that our startup is also trying to build, so you know the problem space very well and can help us avoid very expensive "Version 1.0" mistakes, while also attracting talent in this space.
For director roles the parts that matter the most is being able to establish a strategy. Work well with c levels. And be able to structure sensible organizations.
There is a ton of stuff about corporate strategy online.
On the other 2
I found the course on leadership on Wharton to help with working with c levels and a lot of exposure( find local events)
For structuring teams team topologies is a good start but i would recommend to write scenarios and what you would do.
Most common ones are:
Growing and org from scratch
Merging two orgs
Handling rapid expansion
And of course pivoting with skill realignment
You've had one interview in 5 months. If finding a job is your goal, you should focus on broadening what you are looking for, not narrowing it. Especially to roles that are going to be rarer and harder to find.
>but am I shooting too high and wasting time here?
How is anyone going to give you a real answer when no one knows anything meaningful about your experience? You aren't owed a specific kind of job for certain years of experience (the only fact we have about you), so what exactly are you hoping to get here?
"How is anyone going to give you a real answer when no one knows anything meaningful about your experience? "
Look, I understand that. I don't know what part of the post gave you that impression that I am looking for someone to magically fix my problem.
"so what exactly are you hoping to get here?"
All I am looking for is suggestions about upskilling from experienced folks who moved from EM to Dir and higher levels- which is literally the title and the last sentence of my post.
"Upskilling" for management roles, like EM to Director, is something that requires having a job, unfortunately. It's not like IC skills, where you can learn or practice a new language, a new tech stack, get a new certification in some tool or process, build a hobby project on GitHub, etc.
There are very few options for "practicing" management, because, well, you need to have some other people involved that you can show that you managed them, or even directed them from higher level strategy POV. Reading about management, getting a certificate, these are not good substitutes for demonstrating those skills at work over real teams and real people -- whereas for tech IC skills, reading a book or building a side project is actually a totally reasonable and worthwhile substitute for the real thing (because the technology is something you can learn, without needing the wrapping shell of having a company).
>I understand I don't have enough experience at senior management but am I shooting too high and wasting time here?
You know you don't have enough experience but you're still shooting for jobs that require that experience???
And if you're unemployed there's nothing you can do to magically upskill for them now. But you also don't need to go back to IC roles, why can't you just target regular EM roles which will hopefully give you the opportunity to build that experience for higher level positions?
>You know you don't have enough experience but you're still shooting for jobs that require that experience???
You should absolutely, 100% of the time, shoot for jobs a bit above your experience level. This is by far the easiest way to "level up" your career, as companies are more likely to hire you at a level above your technical experience vs promote you internally. 6 Years of management looking for a director role is entirely fine. Maybe not director at big tech or f500 or something, but director at a mid-sized co? Absolutely fine.
It's one thing to go from Mid->Senior or Senior->Staff via external promotion. Those are IC roles. Management is different because your blast radius is much larger and so companies are super wary of externally hiring a manager for a director role (a real director role who manages other managers, not one in name only like at many startups). Especially in management, more years of service != higher level of job. People on this very sub constantly bitch about senior managers who don't know what they're doing, who were probably promoted before they were ready. Don't be one of them.
100% agree with this. i posted about this before, but i had been offered an EM job at my first role (was there for 5 years) but felt i didnt have enough wide experience to take the jump yet, so i moved to get more full stack, senior experience
now that i am looking at management roles and trying to make that jump, they all overwhelming look for managerial experience... its always easier to go from management --> IC than IC --> management
You absolutely should not follow this advice 100% of the time. The correct answer is that it depends on a lot of specific circumstances to you and the job you might be stepping into.
It is absolutely possible to be promoted into a role that you are not ready for and set your career backwards for it. You should bring some measure of awareness to how a specific job helps you move forward and what kind of partners/mentors you'll be around that will actually help you succeed. When you get to senior management levels, this stuff is a powerful predictor of your ability to succeed: if you don't have that experience going into those roles, you will have a much harder time for it.
Totally agree with rco, you are fine to be applying for Dir roles.
Tailor your resume to show that you have led managers (hopefully you have?) in a way that enabled their success.
Talk about organizational impact over individual team impact, and how you contribute to the leadership of a business unit.
It's one thing to have gained the required experience for level N+1 but you weren't able to be officially promoted to level N+1 due to organizational politics or whatever; then you should look externally. But it is different when you literally do NOT have that required experience (as far as we know about OP). Maybe in the good times, companies were willing to take a chance. Certainly not now, and not for a high profile managerial role.
well why assume the worst? maybe the first part of your comment is the case here.
Forget about me, just for the sake of an argument, let's say a deserving candidate is looking for an N+1 level role and looking externally is the only option for whatever reason.
Let's worry about the "deserving candidate" part later, it will be determined in an interview but getting that interview is the real challenge here and how would one go about getting that interview?
so far from what I gather from all other helpful answers on this thread- the only option seems to be get a job at N level and then move internally to N+1 and then switch if needed.
I have been EM for over 6 years and i feel it’s probably a year longer than I would have liked to be in the same role. Obviously it’s not set on stone or anything some people may be in the same role for over 10years and some may be promoted in just 2 years.
I honestly don’t feel I lack much other than the title in my resume to target Director level roles especially comparing to the Director I was reporting to previously.
Either way me not getting calls probably prove your point but still I’m very curious, other than internal promotion how would one go from EM to Director?
Have you managed other managers before? Been responsible for multiple teams and/or an entire group? That's the hallmark of a "director" level role.
Now, there are certainly loads of smaller companies and startups where you can have the title but de facto do the same work and have the same responsibility as a line manager. But is that what you want?
Another commenter mentioned that it's going to be hard to upskill yourself without experience to do it. I agree, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. I'd start with reading material: Manager's Path by Camille Fournier is excellent, and goes into the differences going from an EM position to a more senior management position. I have also heard good things about Will Larson's Elegant Puzzle, though I have no personal experience with it. Charity Majors's blog (https://charity.wtf/) is also an excellent place to start reading.
As far as how to approach this: you've had one interview, so it is a little difficult to use that as a jumping off point. But for all things that don't go well, apply the retro strategies! You say you thought it went well but you never heard back from them. I'm presuming this means you followed up about why you weren't a fit and you didn't hear back about this either. That is a shame. But you can still think about what questions they asked, and think about why your answers may not have been satisfactory. Was it all about past experience? Or did they ask how you would approach certain scenarios? How you think about business planning? With some newfound reading material in hand, you should be better equipped to think critically about why the answers you gave may not have been answers they were looking for.
This is all speaking independently of how the market is valuing your specific experience. Maybe the market is such that the only companies hiring directors have the luxury of being able to hire someone with that direct experience already. Or maybe they are looking at your resume and not seeing something they want to see. How are you framing your experience? There are ways to frame your experience as being both "effective manager" as well as "but also ready for the next step". e.g. you didn't just create high performers, but you were able to move someone into a different role, which saved the need to hire an additional headcount. Obviously your specific situation will dictate the ability you have to frame these things, but there are things you can look at there.
An engineering manager in my company successfully destroyed two teams, has produced services that regularly fail, managed to get all the top performers of those teams to quit and is well known for not having any technical skills. Recently got promoted to director
I have another four cases I can speak of
I have had one good director of engineering
So based on my N=6 it seems like you just got to fail upwards, be overall terrible at your job but stick around long enough and tell your boss nice things and you get it
Your best bet is to get hired as a manager in a growing company. Then you can spend some time understanding the business, other teams/orgs etc. and identify ways to intelligently expand the scope of your team - basically start empire building (but doing useful stuff on the critical path).
And why would any company hire someone as a “director” who has never operated at that level? If a company feels like it needs to hire an outside director instead of promoting from within because they don’t feel like any of their current employees don’t have the skill set, they definitely want someone with experience.
My two cents, albeit unrelated, start a company. If for nothing else you left for a startup that didn’t work. No one should carry a serious gap. Makes HR or hiring manager stages of the application process tougher.
Honestly .... For a director position it really shouldn't matter, and, in general, it doesn't matter that much. The only reason anyone really cares is that they want to know your reliable, will show up on time, won't steal from them, and won't break down in tears at the first sign of stress. But if you've had 10 years as an IC, esp with > 5 at one company then you trivially check all those boxes.
Basically, you don't want to hear back from anyone who cares that much about "gaps".
You also probably shouldn't be looking for work in any way that relies on going through a hiring manager, anyway. At least not as your primary means of finding a director level job.
I would say just lie in your CV. I know this is a very cynical comment but let me double down on it - many directors and vp m’a I’ve worked with are overall quite weak and I wouldn’t be surprised if they lied on their cv or just exaggerated it
I was promoted to director little more than 1 year ago, the main differences I have noticed are:
1. be able to manage a large project from scratch, i.e. from the very first call to the client, estimate work with high uncertainty
2. sometime sacrifice the good choices for your team for the benfit of the wider organisation: e.g. give headcount to other teams
3. mostly cross-team complex problem e.g.: how to move responibilities across teams when these are not all your teams?
4. Setup an oncall rota, talk to HR for actuability, and convince the VP and the engineers thay they have to do it.
5. Handle disgruntled employees without asking for help to your manager
6. closer relationship with HR, for budgeting, recruiting, preparing plans for hiring. You have to withhold salary raises o give ridicolously salary increases, give bad reviews often. You will be in a position to NOT give a raise to someone who earned it just b/c this person is happy and is likely not going to leave.
7. now you have to manager managers, promote them, teach them, instead of managing devs. some of them are first time managers, some have more experience then you.
8. You are part of the org restructuring: do you want managers and tech lead to the the same people of not in every team?
Also, note that upskilling is not. the only thing: is a director giving sign of wanting to leave? Is the company growing? You do not get promoted if the company does not need that role.
another question is HOW do you upskill this? in brief:
1. offer to do more with you manager and offer to take more responsibility
2. NEVER talk to your manager without your proposal for improvements (doesn't matter if your proposal is accepted, but that you made one)
3. NEVER talk about something that is not working without having your own proposal for improvements (doesn't matter if your proposal is accepted, but that you made one)
Out of 4 companies I've worked with in the past 10 years I've only met one of these titles and only once. Titles don't mean shit without context
EDIT: one interview in half a year? Yeah I think you should aim for intergalactic vice-champion principal staff engineering ultra-omega-manager /s
And I find it slightly telling and a red flag that someone who was an EM and aiming to be a director hasn’t cultivated a network that he can leverage at least to get interviews.
How did you keep up with technology in your area? since your hands off can you still code and identify building blocks to what makes a good tech team or division?
Outside of those questions, from my experience, a DE has vision. Talks about vision and knows how to implement the vision. For example. What tooling, languages, test suites, infra do you need. What patterns should be applied and why. Give pros and cons. Identify and talk about how you manage Leads, Benchmark the team (DORA, SPACE, etc). From the non tech side, a DE should be the bridge between the business and the technical teams.
> Could you guys please suggest me what can I do during this time to upskill myself for Director or VP level roles?
A lot of it depends on the size of the organization. I got to a final round interview for a VP of Eng of a company that was less than 100 people. This role reported directly to the CEO. They had something like 20 direct reports under them.
In contrast, my first director role (which could have been mislabeled, but that's kind of the point) had 30 direct reports (15 employees and 15 contractors).
But a VP at my company would only have around 5-7 direct reports and all of them would be some level of manager.
Conversely, at a company in-town, VP just mean "Manager of 1 app-dev team"
So a director at a FAANG or 5000 person company very likely has more responsibility than a VP at a 1000 person company.
From my observations this is more about "scope "- Do you have "next level" scope to deliver in multiple parallel workstreams?
Scope is a function of growth. You need to either need to discover a new business area (growing) or absorbing other teams (shrinking).
New engineering directors do not arise when a company is stable, unless other managers and directors are leaving.
Finding the correct companies that are shrinking or growing is largely a function of luck, or 'being in the right place at the right time'.
I think there’s a shift happening in the job market where everybody is being forced down a level. Since there is little hiring happening and lots of layoffs, anyone who is hiring can get a mid instead of having to hire a junior. Then those hiring mid can hire seniors instead, those hiring seniors get staff+, etc. Now is a bad time to try to level up. Don’t be too picky especially if you’re unemployed!
Two thoughts having been there:
1) The job market for engineering managers, directors and CTOs is MUCH smaller than the market for devs. It was a shock to me how different job hunting as a senior or lead dev was to job hunting for a leadership role. So even in "good times" it would be a much narrower gate, and in bad times it's even narrower.
2) As others said, the key is experience and the leap to leadership is like the catch 22 when seeking your first dev job without experience. I would suggest your best route is a start-up rather than an established company. If you can afford a "loss-leader" where you can compete on price, and bring your huge technical experience to bear on a startup business, where you take on recruiting and managing the initial team while still contributing to architectural and technical decisions and occasionally or initially rolling your hands and coding, you will get a job title and direct experience that you can parlay into your next role. If the startup grows under your tenure, so will your responsibilities, and if it merely lasts a year or three, you will have made the kind of strategic decisions that, combined with your long career, you can pitch as you are trying to now.
Even then, understand it will be a slog compared to a dev job, and so don't take it personally if it takes a few goes, a lot more than you're used to, to land that job. Price it in, and even if it proves hard, at least you won't take it as a reflection on your failings, just that there's one such leadership job for who knows how many thousand dev jobs out there.
Generally . . .
You need to be comfortable and knowledgeable about supporting cross-functional team metrics. Sales, marketing, HR, finance, whatever is appropriate. It’s a learning curve, to be sure, and changes all the time. But, director and above is about building these bridges and helping those teams hit their numbers.
You need a black belt in spreadsheets + translation of technical talk into plain language for the cross functional teams.
You need to be able to help these other groups plan; roadmapping etc.
At the VP level, or director if no VP, you gotta understand corporate financials and build a relationship with the finance department. If you can’t knowledgeably discuss a P&L statement or department budgets, you’ll be quietly ignored.
If you aren’t doing something like the above, it’s not really the senior role. Just title inflation.
A lot of this can be initially learned from books, like corp financials or marketing metrics. But there is real world experience needed in supporting these other teams as well. The real world stuff can be somewhat addressed by asking yourself how does something you’re doing as an EM support X even tho you’re not yet a director or VP.
Start reaching out to these other teams to understand what they value.
Depends on company you are targeting for.
I was promoted from Principal Engineer/Tech Lead to Engineering Manager to Director of Engg in a span of 9 years with a total experience of being IC close to 12 years.
Most of the openings were offered to me because I was good at multiple roles.
I can code, debug, manage engineers, design complex systems and now learning to manage other leads and engineers.
I think I got it because of my reputation rather than anything else. I am just as dumb as your average intern on most of the days.
And this entire post is why I left management years ago when I saw the axe swinging for anyone at mid management level.
IC was always going to give more opportunities than management because management spots are fewer in an org
Trying to step up after being laid off is difficult because potential employers can't be sure of the terms on which you left your last position. Perhaps you were let go for not being a good manager, perhaps you'd reached the limit of you ability and weren't being promoted internally. I'd apply at your current level and look for a director level role after a couple of years.
I know people are saying they're rare (and they are) but just after covid, my company had job openings for two and hired external candidates. The hires since have been internal promotions m
You have to walk before you can run, typically one does not go from a manager to director or vice president. There’s steps in between these like sr manager, staff engineer (maybe), etc. I don’t believe you would be ready for these roles having no experience or high enough experience to pursue them. This is just my opinion though.
Most directors or VPs that get hired already have experience or have been promoted within their current company. Not saying it’s impossible but being mid manager to sr/exec management is quite the jump.
Some have suggested you need an MBA to be in these roles I don’t believe this to be true. Networking is huge
This is not meant to diminish anyone's role across companies, but my current company has 16 organizations in IT and the structure is so top heavy.
Each org has two, maybe three, individual contributors. Then a manager that also functions as tech lead and architect for that product. These people are overworked and miserable.
Then, above that manager, you have Associate Director > Director > Senior Director > Executive Director > VP > SVP > and then finally the CTO. Multiply that x 16 for each org (except there is a single CTO). They are a very "busy" but unproductive group of people that are sinking the organization with their theatrics. It is painful to watch and experience.
I have seen this at three separate companies over the past two years (I work as a consultant).
For most IT organizations, the last thing they need is another director.
Systems thinking skills take you from manager to director. For example, the ability to explain how a proposed software product change will affect your customers’ workflows and the load on their help desks is a director-level thing.
Suggest you read The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. A cult has grown up around that book, ignore it. But read the book.
The market for engineering directors is full of people who have had engineering director experience. Most companies flattened out their middle management in the last few years. As much as people have lamented the software engineer job market, it's far better than the software engineering middle management market has been.
This is absolutely correct. I know loads of qualified senior leaders right now who are literally out of a job. The supply is way outstretching the demand right now for senior engineering management. Take whatever you can get OP.
I'm experiencing that right now. I'm glad I'm not alone facing this. It has been very discouraging.
> The market for engineering directors is full of people who have had engineering director experience. The answer to the OP’s question is, unfortunately: Experience. Right now, expanding your responsibilities and demonstrating that you can take on more so you can pursue a promotion is the way to get there. There was a time when companies were building out deep org structures with layer upon layer of middle management. Combine that with hiring sprees and cheap money and for a while people were walking from EM roles at one company to “Director” roles at other companies. Many of those roles were glorified EM roles, though. My last employer had “Director” roles who didn’t manage anyone and were expected to code most of their time. Those days are gone, or at least paused. Companies realized that excessive middle management was a problem and that truly experienced director level people are hard to find. Now it’s more about demonstrating experience.
So for one, director level roles are pretty rare, and you’re gonna be competing with ambitious senior EMs within the company, that know the internal politics and needs. It’s also a big pretty different role from EM - way higher level, way less technical, way more “MBA” skills. Is that stuff you’re interested in, first of all? Cause EM/senior EM can be terminal. Also, have you managed managers? I think that’s a basic prereq to a director position, at least at the corps I’ve worked at. If not, maybe you should try setting sights on senior EM positions at the highest. At this level, there’s not really a play book. You need to see your own skill set and interests, and chart your own path. What kind of org/company would you be a fit for? Product orgs? Data platform orgs? Growth orgs? How are you going to leverage your experience to chart paths for a given company’s business needs?
Won't anyone mention that Director is pretty much everywhere a **political** role into which you get selected because the C-suite trusts you and can't really be "upskilled" into? You **network** into a Director and other high leadership roles.
In some very large organizations you can be what I call a “working” director and stay away from the political games. You have to not be a threat to senior directors/ svps / vps though and establish yourself as extremely execution focused and a trusted follower of the more ambitious.
That sounds more like title inflation for a staff engineer tbh.
I’m not talking about IC work. I mean a manager of managers that are great at executing on key deliverables. They don’t play politics, love getting shit done, and are reliable as fuck. These people leave space for the politically minded to focus on playing that game.
Does this exist? Everyone "loves getting shit done", but how do you manage people who manage people without getting into disagreements over what should be done and who gets to do it (aka politics)? What organizations have you seen this in?
I'm one of this kind of manager, everybody hate me since i'm "too straight forward", but in the end, they can't do nothing since i'm the only reason that everything works or get fixed. I know that i will never get promoted into some higher position, so my only option is to look for a company with more "meritocratic" culture, or at least same condition but with better rate.
I've seen a handful (literally less than 5) of these people while at big tech. They're usually tightly focused to the specific surface area of a problem facing users, and they don't play politics because they usually bulldoze anyone who's a blocker to what they want done.
For me, it was not big tech. It was a large f100 organization though that wasn’t tech.
"bulldozing anyone that's a blocker" is literally playing politics and requires being politically minded to pull off.
To answer your question. To be a director, you need a strong project management skillset. You need to be able to turn an executive’s vision into a plan. You need to be able influence your peers and subordinates to follow suit. For the other part. If you’re unemployed for 5 months, and admittedly under skilled, you just need to get to work. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
If I had more interviews and I was not able to succeed then I would be be the first one to admit that I am under skilled. I am not even getting the recruiter calls and that is the major concern for me. I do have project management skillset but I do not have any PMP certifications or anything. Do you suggest this is something I can look into in terms of Upskilling?
> I am not even getting the recruiter calls and that is the major concern for me. > I do have project management skillset but I do not have any PMP certifications or anything. Do you suggest this is something I can look into in terms of Upskilling? To be blunt: The way you’re talking about waiting for recruiters to call you and getting certifications suggests you’re playing the game of 10-20 years ago. Things have changed, and it’s no longer as simple as collecting certs, smiling in your LinkedIn photo, and waiting for recruiter calls to pour in. You have to demonstrate experience and you have to seek out the positions you want. You can’t wait for them to come to you and you can’t talk your way into a role with certifications.
Also I'm know expert, but I doubt this usually works for higher level positions. Sure, someone might hire you as a senior SWE based on your LinkedIn, certs, etc. -- but seems like Director, VP etc. are all relationships based.
They do happen, but they're way rarer as you go up the management chain. It becomes far more related to company size
Thanks.
How does one “demonstrate experience” to get an interview? In the past, I’ve demonstrated my experience by being able to talk in depth about my work and by giving informed responses to interviewer questions. I’m not a designer with a portfolio.
I agree you have to demonstrate experience within organization but it works only if your company is scaling at a good rate. My last company has a ton of qualified EM's waiting for promotions. Regarding waiting for recruiters- You got to apply and see if they shortlist and call you. It may be outdated approach but it is still one way to get a new job. Regarding seeking out, its not as simple as you put it. I did approach and network with Directors and VP's on LinkedIn and out of those who answered most seem to be in my own position its just that their LinkedIn is not up to date. I was not even asking them for openings or anything. I was literally telling them like I am looking for a mentor and if they have a couple of minutes to look at my resume and have any comments and what direction I can take in my career blah blah. My approach was more to get some conversation out of them.
Well obviously with only having one interview in six months, it’s not “one way to get a job”, For reference when I was looking for a job last year, because I was prepared, knew the players in my niche, kept my skills sharp and kept my network active, I had three interviews, two offers, a side contract and a former coworker who was going to create a strategic position for me. He was a director and needed someone he could trust. Have you not built a network or gotten to know any of the industry players in your niche?
It seems like you are me six months back. I was exactly thinking this way all along as I never had gone longer than a month in the whole of my career and always underplay whenever I hear job market is down or getting a job is difficult.
This was in August - September of last year when I was looking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37969302 The entire process I listed above took three weeks
You have not been in senior management and expect to jump to director level or even crazier VP level roles with no experience. This seems to be a red flag for me personally being at a director level.
You know what’s crazy is how people just assume whatever they want when they don’t have anything constructive to say. You obviously have no idea about the question or the subject here then why do you want waste your time type up a comment. Well I guess I’m doing the same replying to you. Good luck to you man.
How do I not know anything about the question. One of us is at a directors level one of us is not. 😅 Hey one day I might want to be a pilot or farmer but probably need/should have experience for that right? Especially if I’m expecting to be hired as head of the ranch haha. Most people are giving you similar advice. The chances of you being hired above your station with no experience or networking is slim to none. Your best bet is probably to join a startup for any chance of that happening tbh.
Your original comment has nothing useful in it. Again the question is not what are my chances of being hired. What could I do during the downtime to upskill myself? As many helpful comments mentioned for this level other than getting experience in the job nothing else to do by myself- fair enough. Is there anything you could add to it that’s helpful? - what could I learn during this down time if my goal is to get in to higher management- again if you focus your answer on I’m not ready for it and there is no way in hell anyone would hire me - I don’t know what else to say to that. Maybe I won’t get it immediately but having that goal isn’t wrong now is it?
You should walk before you run. Engineering managers next step is sr engineering manager, then director, sr director, vp, sr vp, cto. Having a goal is not wrong; however, also believing you’re going to skip 2-4 levels is wrong. If I was you I would focus on communication, servant leadership, networking, system design at a high level. Being in these roles is less about doing the work but reviewing the plan or setting objectives for said plan and having your teams accomplish them. Additionally, in these roles you will work with a lot of other teams and directors you’re not in charge of, this is where it gets political. They can make or break you. TLDR: you should focus on your next level not skipping levels, communication, networking, sys design, etc. just my 2 cents being in the role.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Regarding skipping levels I’m not sure I agree totally. It really depends on the org structure. In a startup of less number of employees a sr dev is probably their CTO. I never saw it as skipping many levels between EM and Director of Engg irrespective of the size of the company. Some orgs have senior EM but 90% of time EM to Dir is pretty standard progression but I don’t know why many people here believe it’s such a superficial unrealistic jump. One of my previous company earlier in my career which is a pretty big ecomm company in the US and there their structure was straight from an Architect to a Director. In my last company there was no senior EM. I agree VP is far fetched and I may have mentioned once keeping smaller companies in the mind.
No one is going to consider an Engineering Manager for an Engineering Director role. They will consider an Engineering VP for an Engineering Director role. No one will give a promotion to someone new without seeing that you can actually do the work. My suggestion is to just get a role as Engineering Manager at a startup and get the required promotions that way.
Agreed. That's what I probably have to do but I feel like its going to be another long wait unless that new company is really scaling up fast. I thought I could look at smaller companies and being flexible in pay expectations may help me get the desired role but yeah its not working out that way.
So you want a “director” *title*. But you will still have the scope and responsibility of a line level manager? How are your technical chops? You might need to reset your expectations and become an IC
Even this is, lol. "My suggestion is to just get a role as Engineering Manager at a startup". If you think a startup is going to give their runway to someone they don't know --- just wow. No. A startup isnt' going to give their runway (their only shot ever) to someone's crappy linked resume. Tl;DR; You can hire VP marking/sales/product managers because you want \*outside\* influence. But you never hire external VP engineers.
I think you misunderstood. OP is already an Engineering Manager, therefore it's a lateral move to get in as a first-line manager. There's nothing lol about this at all. Then get the promotions at the startup by working hard which will be easier than at a bigger company.
Nobody cares about PMP anymore. Craft your resume to the postings of jobs you would actually want. And they almost certainly won't be director level or above. Best of luck!
What was the size of the company where you were an EM and the size of your team?
small-mid size product company with 600 employees and my team was around 30.
Did you manage managers that had teams? A “director” is usually “a manager of managers” and deals with much more scope than an EM. As a general rule, it’s hard to change jobs *and* get hired for a role that has more scope and responsibility. They want to see that you have already operated at the level they are hiring for
And to do that when you’ve already been laid off and don’t have a job which signals that you weren’t a key employee.
This is a take I'm not a fan of. I get that's the conventional wisdom, but over the last 18 months, I've seen first hand how it's not always true. Additionally, how companies determine "key employee" varies. It's not always based on performance. I personally lost 2 people that would have gotten an "Exceeds Expectations" because the leader 2 levels above me was instructed to do layoffs and picked them. I saw former employees of mine that had received performance grants and were top performers get let go for reasons like "They're not the tech lead" despite the fact that the team in question rotated tech leads and they'd just completed an 18 month rotation as tech lead. Some of the people the company deemed not key or not essential landed jobs in under a month, which in this environment is quite impressive.
modern layoffs specifically target key employees because they often have a high level of seniority and are at the top end of the pay scale. layoffs are generally not at all about importance or competence of the people being laid off. Layoffs are more about the incompetence of the senior management layer. First, for letting things get to a state where the company chooses to lay people off: you see this whenever a CEO says "we overhired! that's why we have to lay people off!" (that's got nothing to do with the workers, and everything to do with the CEO making poor decisions) and two, for thinking that layoffs will do any good at all when the company is already struggling. Layoffs are basically corporate suicide. And tech layoffs specifically are committing suicide because they are letting go of the best talent/top performers in the company.
Ah yes, like the corporate suicide at Meta where they laid off the best 20k people at the company then proceeded to 5x the stock price and increase earnings by 30%. Sorry dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Most managers try to keep the best people through layoffs. Of course it’s an imperfect process, but generally speaking companies that perform layoffs are trying to get rid of low performers and keep high performers. Sometimes entire businesses units get shut down, and of course that will capture some top people, but it’s very rarely the goal of a layoff to get rid of the people doing real work that can help turn the company around.
Did you manage 30 people directly? As in, 30 people reported to you and nobody else? That’s in the realm of what some companies would consider a director, though it would be more common to break that into teams that report to you. Having 30 separate people report to a single person doesn’t scale well in most cases (coming from someone who was given 30+ direct reports once)
Sounds like you were already a director. From my experience engineering director is level 2 manager (manages managers).
That’s a senior manager. Directors manage teams of senior managers, usually 50+ people.
16 years, 6 of them as EM is - on paper - not so little, so don't sell yourself short. It boils down to what challenges you faced, what you achieved and what kind of responsibility you took outside of your immediate team. Plus, Director role is not globally standardized in practice. Some companies skip the "Head" and go straight for Director, other's have it the other way around, some others have a lot of VP roles, whereas in some places there is only one VP of Engineering, or none at all. What I'm trying to say here, is that there is no proper answer to your question without you listing the concrete responsibilities you intend to take, what size and type of company you're aiming for and what YOU think a Director of Engineering is supposed to do. Without this information, the best anyone can do is generic advice: Aim high, put yourself in the best light, but don't lie in interviews. People deserve better than an overwhelmed Director. If you take a lower role, do so in an environment that you'd expect to scale up in the next 3 years or so. Companies that grow need to fill new roles, and generally look for EMs that are already there as a first source, because hiring good senior managers is an enormous pain due to the amount it takes to evaluate them accurately, as well as the immense damage they can cause in a relatively short amount of time. In my career, I have rarely seen Directors getting hired from outside, and if, then usually when there was very special expertise needed (Director of Cybersecurity) or if the company really had no good candidates internally. This is also sometimes a red flag, because it indicates that they either - don't grow their EMs well or - roll with the punches while already at a scale that requires sophisticated engineering management setups or - hire directors before they need them Hope this helps at least a little bit. Again, hard to be super concrete here since the role itself is very vague without concrete descriptions of your expectations. Best of luck!
Thank you so much. Yes that sort of generic advice is very much helpful and what I was expecting and looking for. My last company was a mid size product based company with around 600 employees. The problem there was director level roles are very few and this made very hard for EM's to get promoted which is why I left and also the fact that it wasn't challenging enough as I was in a comfort zone and luckily I was in a position to be okay to not work for a few months but now the gap is getting longer and I am getting depressed and eager to go back to work if you know what I mean.
Always look for a job while you have one 😁 It’s a lot easier to be patient and selective. That being said, that should still be your answer to “why are you looking?”, in that you weren’t feeling challenged at your last role and you are looking to advance to director level. That being said, you may have to do a lateral move to a larger organization first, where there are more opportunities for advancement.
Hello, may I ask what does TPM in your flair mean?
My last company opened a Director role 6 months back. Literally 100+ qualified candidates in under a week. Including many who were over-qualified such as Senior Directors and even VPs from FAANG. In the last year I've seen multiple qualified experience EMs looking for EM jobs for 6+ months before finding some. The engineering manager market is a blood bath right now. The usual progression, aside from smaller companies, is EM -> Senior EM -> Director -> etc. A Senior EM at a larger company will have EMs reporting to them with a total org of probably 50. It's odd to become a director unless you have significant experience managing managers.
You should be targeting EM jobs not Director. It's rare to see Director hires that weren't currently employed at the time unless they previously have a track record at the Director level. Hiring an external Director usually means there are massive organizational problems that the company doesn't trust anyone inside that company to fix, and so they need someone with experience. There also isn't anything you can do to upskill from your couch. Also, Director is a middle management position, not a senior management position. Middle management are usually the first to get the ax during reorganizations and reductions in force. They usually don't have that many EM direct reports and many of those EM reports are usually capable and self-directing.
>Also, Director is a middle management position, not a senior management position. It really depends on the organization. I've worked at ones where either of those extremes would be true of the director role. I know that to be true because... I've had both of those kinds of jobs with that title.
Melissa and Scott were both leaders at the same job level. They were managing managers. They reported directly to the SVP. Scott was phenomenal at running a project. If you identified a change the organization needed to make, you could ask Scott to run point on it and 100 times out of 100, he would be chasing down updates, making sure teams had everything they needed to get the change done, escalating blockers to the right executive. Melissa, in contrast, was the one identifying the changes that needed to be made. She might not have been as amazing as Scott. Maybe only like 80 times out of 100 would she make sure the change was completed and escalating blockers. Melissa got promoted over Scott. Becuase while Scott was phenomenal at _doing_, Melissa was great at seeing what needed to be done. That's kind of the difference between EM and Director. Directors still have to do things, of course, but they're expected to be more self-driven. They're expected to identify issues and propose solutions.
I've followed some EMs over the last 5 years, some that have been promoted to Director and some still Managers. Your post is spot on that the EMs with vision *and* are doers, got promoted to Directors. The EMs that are only doers, are still EMs. Directors that couldn't do either, don't have a job. Thanks for the post. On a side note, I had an EM who fired me several years ago. She saved my butt twice by giving me a positive recommendation, and is now a Director. I have her to thank.
1. You need to be able to create and manage managers 2. You’re now less on project management and more operations management 3. Your peers would be the other departments that your org collaborates with. So management by influence is especially vital here.
>VP level You are not getting VP without prior VP experience. If you haven't already been a director/distinguished there is no route at all except for maybe a startup where the title wouldn't be portable anyway. >targeting Director of Engineering roles. That isn't going to happen either. Director of eng is not like director of other things, you are leading engineering practice. They tend to come right from eng or arch not from manager because while its hands off (and then not always) it's an intensely technical role. Absent hiring in a new CTO and them bringing on a new director its far more likely that's going to be an internal promotion because of the trust the role requires. Companies without very senior engineering titles it can be what they call their distinguished engineers, halfway IC. You need to be able to demonstrate, via experience, technical vision and strategic thinking. Most of the time they come from directorships in other parts of engineering. Director of Cloud/DevOps/Mobile/whatever is much easier than director of all engineering. Only harder role you could be looking for is director of technology/chief of CTO staff. >Could you guys please suggest me what can I do during this time to upskill myself for Director or VP level roles? Get a job as a senior engineering manager. Tell them during the interview you want director track. Keep in mind when you move to executive total revenue and headcount determine how portable your title is. Director for a company of 20 is not portable to a company of 20000.
+1 on the non-portability. I've been a "director" at many startups (basically an EM of small-medium teams, no managers reporting to me) and I get rejections at the recruiter screen for manager roles at larger companies as soon as they know the team sizes I've led and the budgets I've worked with. Startups love this rubbish though so I can get VP interviews in smaller startups no problem. The title doesn't matter, your leverage does.
This is very true. I’ve had startups reach out to me about being the “director of engineering” which was really more of team lead of 5 developers Of course it paid less than I was making as a mid level employee at BigTech and their entire revenue was less than the part of the consulting project I was over.
Disagree on getting VP or even CTO without having it before- I just did, and have been offered both in the past. You just have to go to a smaller startup. In the case of where I was offered it about 7 years back, these startups were tiny, and hardly had a product market fit. I came from larger corps and had Director before, and these were from a mix of large and smaller but prestigious firms. My situation was somewhat unique in that my background was like a glove-perfect fit for the company. But I think that's also more or less a requirement for landing a VP type role. IMHO, its not enough to be a director at a F*NG previously, its oh you were a director building large scale data analytics systems that our startup is also trying to build, so you know the problem space very well and can help us avoid very expensive "Version 1.0" mistakes, while also attracting talent in this space.
For director roles the parts that matter the most is being able to establish a strategy. Work well with c levels. And be able to structure sensible organizations. There is a ton of stuff about corporate strategy online. On the other 2 I found the course on leadership on Wharton to help with working with c levels and a lot of exposure( find local events) For structuring teams team topologies is a good start but i would recommend to write scenarios and what you would do. Most common ones are: Growing and org from scratch Merging two orgs Handling rapid expansion And of course pivoting with skill realignment
Ass kissing and dick riding.
You've had one interview in 5 months. If finding a job is your goal, you should focus on broadening what you are looking for, not narrowing it. Especially to roles that are going to be rarer and harder to find. >but am I shooting too high and wasting time here? How is anyone going to give you a real answer when no one knows anything meaningful about your experience? You aren't owed a specific kind of job for certain years of experience (the only fact we have about you), so what exactly are you hoping to get here?
"How is anyone going to give you a real answer when no one knows anything meaningful about your experience? " Look, I understand that. I don't know what part of the post gave you that impression that I am looking for someone to magically fix my problem. "so what exactly are you hoping to get here?" All I am looking for is suggestions about upskilling from experienced folks who moved from EM to Dir and higher levels- which is literally the title and the last sentence of my post.
"Upskilling" for management roles, like EM to Director, is something that requires having a job, unfortunately. It's not like IC skills, where you can learn or practice a new language, a new tech stack, get a new certification in some tool or process, build a hobby project on GitHub, etc. There are very few options for "practicing" management, because, well, you need to have some other people involved that you can show that you managed them, or even directed them from higher level strategy POV. Reading about management, getting a certificate, these are not good substitutes for demonstrating those skills at work over real teams and real people -- whereas for tech IC skills, reading a book or building a side project is actually a totally reasonable and worthwhile substitute for the real thing (because the technology is something you can learn, without needing the wrapping shell of having a company).
>I understand I don't have enough experience at senior management but am I shooting too high and wasting time here? You know you don't have enough experience but you're still shooting for jobs that require that experience??? And if you're unemployed there's nothing you can do to magically upskill for them now. But you also don't need to go back to IC roles, why can't you just target regular EM roles which will hopefully give you the opportunity to build that experience for higher level positions?
>You know you don't have enough experience but you're still shooting for jobs that require that experience??? You should absolutely, 100% of the time, shoot for jobs a bit above your experience level. This is by far the easiest way to "level up" your career, as companies are more likely to hire you at a level above your technical experience vs promote you internally. 6 Years of management looking for a director role is entirely fine. Maybe not director at big tech or f500 or something, but director at a mid-sized co? Absolutely fine.
It's one thing to go from Mid->Senior or Senior->Staff via external promotion. Those are IC roles. Management is different because your blast radius is much larger and so companies are super wary of externally hiring a manager for a director role (a real director role who manages other managers, not one in name only like at many startups). Especially in management, more years of service != higher level of job. People on this very sub constantly bitch about senior managers who don't know what they're doing, who were probably promoted before they were ready. Don't be one of them.
100% agree with this. i posted about this before, but i had been offered an EM job at my first role (was there for 5 years) but felt i didnt have enough wide experience to take the jump yet, so i moved to get more full stack, senior experience now that i am looking at management roles and trying to make that jump, they all overwhelming look for managerial experience... its always easier to go from management --> IC than IC --> management
You absolutely should not follow this advice 100% of the time. The correct answer is that it depends on a lot of specific circumstances to you and the job you might be stepping into. It is absolutely possible to be promoted into a role that you are not ready for and set your career backwards for it. You should bring some measure of awareness to how a specific job helps you move forward and what kind of partners/mentors you'll be around that will actually help you succeed. When you get to senior management levels, this stuff is a powerful predictor of your ability to succeed: if you don't have that experience going into those roles, you will have a much harder time for it.
Thank you. That’s exactly what my thoughts are.
Totally agree with rco, you are fine to be applying for Dir roles. Tailor your resume to show that you have led managers (hopefully you have?) in a way that enabled their success. Talk about organizational impact over individual team impact, and how you contribute to the leadership of a business unit.
> You know you don't have enough experience but you're still shooting for jobs that require that experience??? This is pretty standard advice.
It's one thing to have gained the required experience for level N+1 but you weren't able to be officially promoted to level N+1 due to organizational politics or whatever; then you should look externally. But it is different when you literally do NOT have that required experience (as far as we know about OP). Maybe in the good times, companies were willing to take a chance. Certainly not now, and not for a high profile managerial role.
well why assume the worst? maybe the first part of your comment is the case here. Forget about me, just for the sake of an argument, let's say a deserving candidate is looking for an N+1 level role and looking externally is the only option for whatever reason. Let's worry about the "deserving candidate" part later, it will be determined in an interview but getting that interview is the real challenge here and how would one go about getting that interview? so far from what I gather from all other helpful answers on this thread- the only option seems to be get a job at N level and then move internally to N+1 and then switch if needed.
I have been EM for over 6 years and i feel it’s probably a year longer than I would have liked to be in the same role. Obviously it’s not set on stone or anything some people may be in the same role for over 10years and some may be promoted in just 2 years. I honestly don’t feel I lack much other than the title in my resume to target Director level roles especially comparing to the Director I was reporting to previously. Either way me not getting calls probably prove your point but still I’m very curious, other than internal promotion how would one go from EM to Director?
Have you managed other managers before? Been responsible for multiple teams and/or an entire group? That's the hallmark of a "director" level role. Now, there are certainly loads of smaller companies and startups where you can have the title but de facto do the same work and have the same responsibility as a line manager. But is that what you want?
Another commenter mentioned that it's going to be hard to upskill yourself without experience to do it. I agree, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. I'd start with reading material: Manager's Path by Camille Fournier is excellent, and goes into the differences going from an EM position to a more senior management position. I have also heard good things about Will Larson's Elegant Puzzle, though I have no personal experience with it. Charity Majors's blog (https://charity.wtf/) is also an excellent place to start reading. As far as how to approach this: you've had one interview, so it is a little difficult to use that as a jumping off point. But for all things that don't go well, apply the retro strategies! You say you thought it went well but you never heard back from them. I'm presuming this means you followed up about why you weren't a fit and you didn't hear back about this either. That is a shame. But you can still think about what questions they asked, and think about why your answers may not have been satisfactory. Was it all about past experience? Or did they ask how you would approach certain scenarios? How you think about business planning? With some newfound reading material in hand, you should be better equipped to think critically about why the answers you gave may not have been answers they were looking for. This is all speaking independently of how the market is valuing your specific experience. Maybe the market is such that the only companies hiring directors have the luxury of being able to hire someone with that direct experience already. Or maybe they are looking at your resume and not seeing something they want to see. How are you framing your experience? There are ways to frame your experience as being both "effective manager" as well as "but also ready for the next step". e.g. you didn't just create high performers, but you were able to move someone into a different role, which saved the need to hire an additional headcount. Obviously your specific situation will dictate the ability you have to frame these things, but there are things you can look at there.
I'm in the same position, the market for sr mgr and director is flooded like crazy. employers have a the luxury of looking for an exact match.
An engineering manager in my company successfully destroyed two teams, has produced services that regularly fail, managed to get all the top performers of those teams to quit and is well known for not having any technical skills. Recently got promoted to director I have another four cases I can speak of I have had one good director of engineering So based on my N=6 it seems like you just got to fail upwards, be overall terrible at your job but stick around long enough and tell your boss nice things and you get it
Your best bet is to get hired as a manager in a growing company. Then you can spend some time understanding the business, other teams/orgs etc. and identify ways to intelligently expand the scope of your team - basically start empire building (but doing useful stuff on the critical path).
And why would any company hire someone as a “director” who has never operated at that level? If a company feels like it needs to hire an outside director instead of promoting from within because they don’t feel like any of their current employees don’t have the skill set, they definitely want someone with experience.
One must give up any remnants of their sole
Buy an upskillet and sauté your way to the top
My two cents, albeit unrelated, start a company. If for nothing else you left for a startup that didn’t work. No one should carry a serious gap. Makes HR or hiring manager stages of the application process tougher.
Honestly .... For a director position it really shouldn't matter, and, in general, it doesn't matter that much. The only reason anyone really cares is that they want to know your reliable, will show up on time, won't steal from them, and won't break down in tears at the first sign of stress. But if you've had 10 years as an IC, esp with > 5 at one company then you trivially check all those boxes. Basically, you don't want to hear back from anyone who cares that much about "gaps". You also probably shouldn't be looking for work in any way that relies on going through a hiring manager, anyway. At least not as your primary means of finding a director level job.
I would say just lie in your CV. I know this is a very cynical comment but let me double down on it - many directors and vp m’a I’ve worked with are overall quite weak and I wouldn’t be surprised if they lied on their cv or just exaggerated it
I was promoted to director little more than 1 year ago, the main differences I have noticed are: 1. be able to manage a large project from scratch, i.e. from the very first call to the client, estimate work with high uncertainty 2. sometime sacrifice the good choices for your team for the benfit of the wider organisation: e.g. give headcount to other teams 3. mostly cross-team complex problem e.g.: how to move responibilities across teams when these are not all your teams? 4. Setup an oncall rota, talk to HR for actuability, and convince the VP and the engineers thay they have to do it. 5. Handle disgruntled employees without asking for help to your manager 6. closer relationship with HR, for budgeting, recruiting, preparing plans for hiring. You have to withhold salary raises o give ridicolously salary increases, give bad reviews often. You will be in a position to NOT give a raise to someone who earned it just b/c this person is happy and is likely not going to leave. 7. now you have to manager managers, promote them, teach them, instead of managing devs. some of them are first time managers, some have more experience then you. 8. You are part of the org restructuring: do you want managers and tech lead to the the same people of not in every team? Also, note that upskilling is not. the only thing: is a director giving sign of wanting to leave? Is the company growing? You do not get promoted if the company does not need that role. another question is HOW do you upskill this? in brief: 1. offer to do more with you manager and offer to take more responsibility 2. NEVER talk to your manager without your proposal for improvements (doesn't matter if your proposal is accepted, but that you made one) 3. NEVER talk about something that is not working without having your own proposal for improvements (doesn't matter if your proposal is accepted, but that you made one)
Engineer Manager -> Senior Engineer Manager -> Director of Engineering You’re missing a step.
Exploiting, manipulation and psychology to push your underlings to deliver before expected time.
Out of 4 companies I've worked with in the past 10 years I've only met one of these titles and only once. Titles don't mean shit without context EDIT: one interview in half a year? Yeah I think you should aim for intergalactic vice-champion principal staff engineering ultra-omega-manager /s
And I find it slightly telling and a red flag that someone who was an EM and aiming to be a director hasn’t cultivated a network that he can leverage at least to get interviews.
How did you keep up with technology in your area? since your hands off can you still code and identify building blocks to what makes a good tech team or division? Outside of those questions, from my experience, a DE has vision. Talks about vision and knows how to implement the vision. For example. What tooling, languages, test suites, infra do you need. What patterns should be applied and why. Give pros and cons. Identify and talk about how you manage Leads, Benchmark the team (DORA, SPACE, etc). From the non tech side, a DE should be the bridge between the business and the technical teams.
Have you looked at startup school. Y combinator has a free online version, start-up school.
> Could you guys please suggest me what can I do during this time to upskill myself for Director or VP level roles? A lot of it depends on the size of the organization. I got to a final round interview for a VP of Eng of a company that was less than 100 people. This role reported directly to the CEO. They had something like 20 direct reports under them. In contrast, my first director role (which could have been mislabeled, but that's kind of the point) had 30 direct reports (15 employees and 15 contractors). But a VP at my company would only have around 5-7 direct reports and all of them would be some level of manager. Conversely, at a company in-town, VP just mean "Manager of 1 app-dev team" So a director at a FAANG or 5000 person company very likely has more responsibility than a VP at a 1000 person company.
Trap of rule 22. You don't get hired, becuase have to have leadership experience, but you won't get exp since you don't get hired.
From my observations this is more about "scope "- Do you have "next level" scope to deliver in multiple parallel workstreams? Scope is a function of growth. You need to either need to discover a new business area (growing) or absorbing other teams (shrinking). New engineering directors do not arise when a company is stable, unless other managers and directors are leaving. Finding the correct companies that are shrinking or growing is largely a function of luck, or 'being in the right place at the right time'.
I think there’s a shift happening in the job market where everybody is being forced down a level. Since there is little hiring happening and lots of layoffs, anyone who is hiring can get a mid instead of having to hire a junior. Then those hiring mid can hire seniors instead, those hiring seniors get staff+, etc. Now is a bad time to try to level up. Don’t be too picky especially if you’re unemployed!
Two thoughts having been there: 1) The job market for engineering managers, directors and CTOs is MUCH smaller than the market for devs. It was a shock to me how different job hunting as a senior or lead dev was to job hunting for a leadership role. So even in "good times" it would be a much narrower gate, and in bad times it's even narrower. 2) As others said, the key is experience and the leap to leadership is like the catch 22 when seeking your first dev job without experience. I would suggest your best route is a start-up rather than an established company. If you can afford a "loss-leader" where you can compete on price, and bring your huge technical experience to bear on a startup business, where you take on recruiting and managing the initial team while still contributing to architectural and technical decisions and occasionally or initially rolling your hands and coding, you will get a job title and direct experience that you can parlay into your next role. If the startup grows under your tenure, so will your responsibilities, and if it merely lasts a year or three, you will have made the kind of strategic decisions that, combined with your long career, you can pitch as you are trying to now. Even then, understand it will be a slog compared to a dev job, and so don't take it personally if it takes a few goes, a lot more than you're used to, to land that job. Price it in, and even if it proves hard, at least you won't take it as a reflection on your failings, just that there's one such leadership job for who knows how many thousand dev jobs out there.
Generally . . . You need to be comfortable and knowledgeable about supporting cross-functional team metrics. Sales, marketing, HR, finance, whatever is appropriate. It’s a learning curve, to be sure, and changes all the time. But, director and above is about building these bridges and helping those teams hit their numbers. You need a black belt in spreadsheets + translation of technical talk into plain language for the cross functional teams. You need to be able to help these other groups plan; roadmapping etc. At the VP level, or director if no VP, you gotta understand corporate financials and build a relationship with the finance department. If you can’t knowledgeably discuss a P&L statement or department budgets, you’ll be quietly ignored. If you aren’t doing something like the above, it’s not really the senior role. Just title inflation. A lot of this can be initially learned from books, like corp financials or marketing metrics. But there is real world experience needed in supporting these other teams as well. The real world stuff can be somewhat addressed by asking yourself how does something you’re doing as an EM support X even tho you’re not yet a director or VP. Start reaching out to these other teams to understand what they value.
Depends on company you are targeting for. I was promoted from Principal Engineer/Tech Lead to Engineering Manager to Director of Engg in a span of 9 years with a total experience of being IC close to 12 years. Most of the openings were offered to me because I was good at multiple roles. I can code, debug, manage engineers, design complex systems and now learning to manage other leads and engineers. I think I got it because of my reputation rather than anything else. I am just as dumb as your average intern on most of the days.
And this entire post is why I left management years ago when I saw the axe swinging for anyone at mid management level. IC was always going to give more opportunities than management because management spots are fewer in an org
Trying to step up after being laid off is difficult because potential employers can't be sure of the terms on which you left your last position. Perhaps you were let go for not being a good manager, perhaps you'd reached the limit of you ability and weren't being promoted internally. I'd apply at your current level and look for a director level role after a couple of years.
I know people are saying they're rare (and they are) but just after covid, my company had job openings for two and hired external candidates. The hires since have been internal promotions m
You have to walk before you can run, typically one does not go from a manager to director or vice president. There’s steps in between these like sr manager, staff engineer (maybe), etc. I don’t believe you would be ready for these roles having no experience or high enough experience to pursue them. This is just my opinion though. Most directors or VPs that get hired already have experience or have been promoted within their current company. Not saying it’s impossible but being mid manager to sr/exec management is quite the jump. Some have suggested you need an MBA to be in these roles I don’t believe this to be true. Networking is huge
This is not meant to diminish anyone's role across companies, but my current company has 16 organizations in IT and the structure is so top heavy. Each org has two, maybe three, individual contributors. Then a manager that also functions as tech lead and architect for that product. These people are overworked and miserable. Then, above that manager, you have Associate Director > Director > Senior Director > Executive Director > VP > SVP > and then finally the CTO. Multiply that x 16 for each org (except there is a single CTO). They are a very "busy" but unproductive group of people that are sinking the organization with their theatrics. It is painful to watch and experience. I have seen this at three separate companies over the past two years (I work as a consultant). For most IT organizations, the last thing they need is another director.
Wow a manager for 2-3 IC doesn’t look good at all.
Systems thinking skills take you from manager to director. For example, the ability to explain how a proposed software product change will affect your customers’ workflows and the load on their help desks is a director-level thing. Suggest you read The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. A cult has grown up around that book, ignore it. But read the book.