Why do managers make more money

Yes, there were long nights, and deadlines, and you know what? Working until the problem was solved, until the code passed regression test, until the anti-gravity machine levitated, whatever the heck it was. And then hitting it again tomorrow - or after the tacos de heuvos and ojos de ovejas settled and realization dawned, as the case may be. It was work, it created something from nothing, it delivered products or services which had not previously existed - and at the same time, it was a blast because I was working on problems which I found interesting with a team with whom I loved to work.

Segue to management. A new thing to learn and master, a new path to investigate. I still come up with three or four technical innovations in the companies that I run or advise per year, which is always a kick, but turning them into cash money?

As an engineer, even at a very senior level, the level of work never exceeded my bandwidth. If I was moving slow, I could take some time off, provided that I hit my deliverables. If I was crammed, I worked longer. Little things, like hardware refreshes, or new software updates, or travel to conferences, or, you know, salaries for your whole team. Sophie Wessex gets a lick of approval as she cuddles up to specially-trained pooches during a visit to the Guide Dogs National Centre in Leamington Spa Emily Atack transforms into Anna Richardson for hilarious Naked Attraction parody Andy Dick arrested for felony domestic battery after hitting his boyfriend in the head with a liquor bottle Marc Anthony helps concertgoer pop the question to his superfan girlfriend with a surprise on stage proposal Return of the supermodels!

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Successfully conveying a sense of authority can be achieved in a myriad of different ways-some of which come at the expense of social morale. A new survey from SavvySleeper explores this correlation with sufficient rest as a backdrop.

These days I think it is more common in startups to promote engineers to management too early before they develop these skills. Osmose on June 24, prev next [—]. First, this is not strictly true; many senior ICs get paid more than managers, and the comparison between manager-track job levels and IC-track job levels varies at different companies.

Part of it is that good managers act as an umbrella for their reports and keep unnecessarily distracting or stressful issues from taking up their time. But that means the manager is dealing with that stress instead. Part of it is that managers often have a broader scope of responsibility. Senior managers and higher often have multiple projects under their belt and are held responsible for their continued success.

Part of it is that the success state of a manager's work depends on the success of other employees, which makes it more difficult for them to control whether they do well by their own effort. A really good manager could be paired up with a really bad employee who eventually has to be fired; did that manager do a bad job since their report got fired, or did they do a good job identifying that they needed to be fired?

It's situational, and that ambiguity increases the risk of being fairly rewarded. Higher risk demands higher compensation. Part of it is that demand for good managers is high enough that the market prices their salaries higher. Anecdotally, I can say that a bad manager hire has a much worse impact than a bad IC hire, so the stakes are higher, which raises prices.

Are those ICs getting paid more than their immediate manager? I happen to be getting paid slightly more: My experience is that I was much more effective as a team lead than an individual contributor. I was able to do and guide research, do proof of concepts that other people productized and had far more accomplishments guiding a team of junior to mid level developers.

Now, trying to implement the same kind of changes as an individual contributor is taking far longer. I can see first hand the effectiveness of my manager and his ability to be a force multiplier over my ability to get things done as an individual contributor. But the truth is, I could accomplish a lot more with a team of people reporting to me but I purposefully stay in my lane even though my manager and his manager are both pushing me to take a leadership position.

I took this job to learn and improve technically, not to manage. Tradition mostly, I think. The old idea that a boss should be paid more than the people they manage, because they won't be respected if they earn less.

From experience, most managers suck, period. With that being said, why do managers get paid more? Think of it as parents versus kids. Who has the most responsibilities? That is why manager have a higher salary braket in general. Plus, they usually come from an IC path with a big hands-on experience. Supply and demand. They spend all day in meetings gathering requirements, fighting to fund their staff, keeping their staff from being dragged off onto other projects.

Few can do it well. I'd also add while they may not be doing the work the direct manager should have general knowledge of what his people are doing and if they need assistance or guidance should be able to either supply it themselves or be able to summon the resources to make it happen.

They may not be doing the work directly, but the indirect influence they have to ensure they are building their employees and having an effective team is what they are getting paid for. This is the answer. The reason anyone gets paid what they get paid in the free market is supply and demand, whether it be for their labor, for a product they're selling, or for a security they own.

It's not about what they deserve— see the oft-quoted idea that teachers do work that's both difficult and important but are not generally well-compensated. What you make is not a function of what you abstractly deserve or how difficult your job is. It's a function of how many people are able and willing to do it, at what price, and how many people are able and willing to pay to have it done, and at what price. This applies to both IC's and managers. As others have noted in this thread, it's not always true that managers are paid more, but you're right to note that it's normal.

There are some dynamics at play to make it happen. Two that spring to mind are a managers are often promoted from the ranks of successful IC's. It adds up. They can make more expensive mistakes, and devote teams of IC's to making those mistakes with them. Their negative attitudes or incompetence can tank morale across lots of people, rather than just their immediate teammates.

Their inefficiency can lower the productivity of lots of IC's, rather than just themselves. All the same applies in the positive direction, but the negative is key, because loss-avoidance psychology is a strong force. So if I'm deciding peoples' compensation and I have a good manager, I'm going to pay them enough to keep them. If I don't, and I need to replace them, then I run the risk of making a bad hire, which would make a lot of people miserable and may lead to more attrition, especially among their direct reports, whose work is also valuable to me.

If you've been lucky enough to have bad coworkers fired quickly, you know that their ex teammates breathe a sigh of relief and thank management for dealing with it.

Lets break it down a bit. Ideally you don't want managers to write code since that would set them on a path where they can get preoccupied with stuff which is not the big picture. Managers tend to see the big picture and direct the team on its course with good people management skills. This is one of the most significant role in the organization. Most software engineers are pampered a lot unlike other profession so they tend to have an inflated ego to assume they are worth more than almost everyone.

Just having an ability to hard labor a building construction never meant the person is the most significant!. Not an ideal comparison but hope it drives home the point.

In most cases people envisioning bigger picture can get paid more but that is in no way an unfair thing. Because it is the only incentive to make a IC want to change into a manager role. Most of my engineering friends that went from doing interesting things to being manager always reference the need for more money.

Specially if they were getting gray hairs or getting their kids ready for college. I would expect anyone in a professional position to be receiving whatever the going market rate is.. This, at least has been the case for each of the SMBs that I've worked in which managers are purely non-technical and hired for their ability to manage people and projects can't afford to not have Engineers doing engineering.

At one place, my direct sup was expected to wear both the manager and Engineer hat being technical. The next two layers up were middle managers who only managed. Neither layer made more than anyone in engineering.

This is, in my experience, generally not the case. Setting aside all the implicit indirect contributions support, development, coaching, personality management, etcetera , managers generally shape work by deciding what work is going to be done, how to mobilize resources, communicating the results outside the team's domain, and being accountable for it. Those are direct, tangible contributions. I've never heard of the term 'individual contributor.

As I understand teams are built from managerial roles and "worker" or technical or engineering roles. I'm not sure which one of these are individual contributors. As per your description, engineers would be individual contributors. The following is simplified.