Pretty much every company I’ve been in or know of values a vertical trajectory instead of a horizontal one for its employees i.e becoming a manager nearly always means a faster salary progression than becoming an expert in one or multiple fields.
Why is expertise valued less?
Broader reach and generally more responsibility.
I’m definitely on the “expertise” track at work and have specifically avoided management because it simply doesn’t mesh with my skillset or lifestyle. At my company at least, the people getting the calls late in the evening or over weekends are the managers. They are the ones that have to deal with scheduling conflicts, budget overruns, or fixing the big issues. They still take calls and deal with emails when they are on vacation.
While execs make a lot and probably don’t have the big stress, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for middle management. They often don’t make that much more and IME are the most stressed group at a company.
Visibility
Because it takes a lot more than expertise to get anything done at large scale.
That doesn’t explain why leadership is valued more.
That’s an argument for both existing. Without leadership the expertise won’t be harnessed, without expertise, leadership means nothing.
I agree with you that exec compensation is nuts and most exec leaders arent all that unusually skilled.
That’s not what I’m saying there at all…
Edit: geezus I just realized you’re the person lacking reading comprehension from another thread. That explains why you added arguments here I’m not making.
I’m out here as well
Oh hi guy from other thread who was claiming young people are generally fascists. To be clear, you followed me here and replied to my comment. So please feel free to go wherever you like, I dont particularly care.
Putting it this way, project management is a skill that requires expertise. Lots of Laborers have the expertise to be the subcontractor, not all of them succeed at being the contractor/foreman.
The majority of disfunction in workplaces seems to be that the middle managers don’t have the skills to be there either or they’d have probably been promoted up the ladder even further already
At the end of the day, a single person can only do so much work. All the experience in the world doesn’t change that there is only 24hrs in a day.
A good leader can enable a team of people to work together achieving more than the sum of their individual contributions.
Leaders are force multiplier, and good ones should be compensated as such.
Sadly, we also over compensate the shitty leaders far too often as well :/
There’s 24h in a day for leaders too. A leader cannot achieve infinite output by being infinitely good, just like an expert cannot achieve infinite output by being infinitely good.
Expertise is also a force multiplier.
A single expert in a team of juniors can do so much more. Because it can delegate the junior work to the juniors while doing only expert work. Thus ending up with more expert work done.
A single expert in a team of juniors can do so much more. Because it can delegate the junior work to the juniors while doing only expert work.
This part is definitely true but I think it misses the point. A single expert can be a force multiplier, or they can be overbearing dead weight. There is the possibility a technical expert wants to micromanage and see every step as it is done (thus holding up work that can be done while the expert is elsewhere).
I conjecture that those skills and attributes that separate the two experts we’ve described is what “good leadership” consists of.
I would never trust a leader who has no technical skills, but neither would I trust a leader who has only technical skills.
You can also have shit leaders that micromanage. What even is your point?
Being a technical expert != being a good leader
There are a set of skills and attributes that enable one to leader well. An ideal leader will have both technical skills and leadership capability, but it is possible for each to exist independently in a person.
Your last paragragh describes a leader…
I hate when people use “also” and “as well” in the same sentence, and I die inside when I catch myself doing it. Not hating on you, just suffering flashbacks.
Why?
Redundancy, and not like the good hardware kind.
This is an online forum. Most of these comments are sent from the toilet. If we wanted perfect sentences, we’d use AI to rewrite our thoughts. I’d rather clunky imperfect writing that doesn’t flow well than have something even partially, let alone entirely, written by AI. That’s not so say all well written text is AI, but imperfections are human
I am not a good sentencer :(
We all could learn to words more gooder.
I’ve thought for a while adults should go back to school every ten years or so for some basic logic, driving, communication, and math refreshers.
I can get behind that. Even more frequently perhaps. Its insane that for a task as dangerous as driving, once you pass at 18, you don’t get re-tested until you kill someone…
I have to do anti-sexual harassment training every year for work, communication/math/logic refreshers once a year would actually be a lot more beneficial.
Leadership is undoubtedly important and good leadership even more so, but why do you bring singularity (“one person can only do so much work”)? Experts work in teams too. Is there some kind of connotation with expertise that leads you (or people) to believe that is something which cannot be brought into a team?
A good leader can enable a team of people to work together achieving more than the sum of their individual contributions.
That is true, but isn’t the ability of the team members important too? For example, if you have a team of juniors, you can get to a goal, however the question is in what state. And if the leader is just a leader but doesn’t have understanding of the sector, why should their leadership be valued more than that of the team members who do?
As for force multipliers, experts can be force multipliers too. An expert that helps out and resolves (or even prevents) tricky situations for fellow team members (or the entire team) can improve team cohesion and productivity. Experts also often have an educative role in the team to spread knowledge and understanding. That seems to be valued less, and I don’t understand why.
All your examples involve teams, and teams don’t typically happen without some form of leadership from someone. An expert without leadership skills will be far less effective at building a team around them than someone with the expertise and the leadership skills.
The expert your describing in your last paragragh IS a leader. If they aren’t being compensated as such, thats just them being exploited, and they need to advocate for more appropriate compensation.
Leadership takes effort and focus.
Having worked in orgs where everyone is expected to lead at different times, I can tell you that leading takes effort and focus - that’s effort and focus that’s not spent on your area of expertise.
Good leaders spend all their effort on making a team work better - no different than a good coach.
All the answers are bullshit. The real explanation is that leaders set salaries. Of course they’re going to value themselves over others. Then they’re going to rationalise it with the bullshit you see in this thread about “force multipliers” etc… it’s basic capitalism. It’s the same reason politicians in the us have free healthcare and great vacation and benefits and salaries rising above inflation, the people who control these things always make sure they get what’s fair then make excuses for why no one else does.
I think you’re confusing leadership with administration. Generally the boots-on-the-ground leaders aren’t the ones making salary decisions.
Are you just unlucky in your experiences? Expert team leads can absolutely make as much as managers.
But there’s a convergence as you spend more and more time making decisions and directing others that you will effectively be a manager.
Here’s a point though; to build vertical experience as an expert I’m starting to suspect that one would be less subject to changing companies.
Whereas leaders have no need to stay in place and change more often.
And one typically increases their compensation package much faster via changes of employer.
Just my thoughts contemplating that I just reached the low bar on my function band as a coe lead after 8 damn years into the function. Loyalty isn’t rewarded.
I used to scoff at the idea of “leaders” until I experienced good leadership and learned the difference between lead and manage.
I suspect a lot of people here think they mean the same thing.
Because you are mistaking technical skill with people skills.
People who go up manglement chains have people skills. You don’t want your middle manglement making decisions that technical people make.
Maybe we’re misunderstanding each other. I’m not talking about technical people going up the ladder. I’m asking why going up the ladder is valued more than becoming or being an expert on the ground.
Impact and risk.
Farther up the chain your decisions have broader impact, good or bad. Those kinds decisions have more value than decisions that have a much narrower range of effect.
As what my industry calls an SME(subject matter expert), at most my decisions effect one or two systems at a time, while a leadership decision impacts 10 or 100 (or more) people’s focus/direction. This includes the risks - so their decisions have a much broader scope.
2 things come to my mind
- Social pressure - There’s a need to be “seen”. Being a technical expert on ground doesn’t make you " seen".
- Money - The higher you go, the more money you make.
- Social pressure - There’s a need to be “seen”. Being a technical expert on ground doesn’t make you " seen".
Ah yes, exposure 🤔 So maybe by making technical experts seen, it would normalise increasing their salary.
- Money - The higher you go, the more money you make.
I’m questioning why this is the case ;)
Its just too many things packaged and loaded in that question. Haha
If you are a brilliant engineer, you might build an amazing feature. But if you are a director managing 5 teams of 8 engineers, your decisions affect the output of 40 people. Even a small 1% improvement in their efficiency multiplies across the whole group, resulting in massive financial impact.
If a VP makes a strategic mistake, an entire product line gets canceled, and 200 people lose their jobs. Higher pay is often a premium for taking on that personal and financial risk.
On the flip side, traditional corporate structure puts a cap on individual value. They operate like early 20th century assembly line, where a deeply technical engineer is seen no different than a blue collar drone.
As for the “being seen” situation, its not about being seen by your bosses. Its more about being seen by your family and friends. At least in certain cultures, “man of the house” is expected to weild power over others outside their house too. While some are OK being called potty as long as they’re paid forty, not everyone subscribes to it.
Ideally you want a balance of both, pure people skills ends with poor technical decisions, pure technical ends with inability to get the other employees on board.
Id rather they leave the technical decisions to the people they literally hire to do technical stuff, not the people they hire to do people stuff.
The direction a company should go in is a technical decision. It has to come from a leader of some kind, and if that leader is non technical or disconnected from the employees, that’s how you get poor decisions.
Using MySQL vs mariadb is not a managerial decision. Using Debian over Fedora is not a managerial decision.
Using Service Now over Top desk is a managerial decision.
That is what I mean when talking about technical people making technical decisionsA good manager points the org in a direction and let’s those hired for roles do their job in working to that objective.
Agreed, those arent high level manager decisions, but they aren’t intern decisions either. They’ll be made by a mid level manager or team lead.
The higher up the chain, the less technical and more general the decisions get, but they do still need to have some level of technical understanding, or the direction they point you in could be completely detached from reality.
“Manglement”. I like that. I’m gonna start using that to refer to the incompetent leadership at my workplace.
Because managers only understand leadership (if they understand anything at all). Expertise is for underlings.
Because at some point expertise is worth less than leadership. One person with expertise is still just one person, they can’t usually achieve anywhere close to the same results as a team of people with good leadership. Leadership is a multiplier of expertise.
If having a leader gives idk 10% productivity…
“… anywhere close to the same result…” implies that experts are insanely disorganized and can’t cooperate.
We often are.
I’ve had great leaders, and they really can be a force multiplier, by allowing experts to focus on their area of expertise.
Good leaders promote cohesiveness and keep a team pointed in the right direction - much like a team coach. They focus on strategy and smoothing the rough edges between players.
Until you’ve experienced this it’s hard to see - and I say this as a rough-edged expert who’s experienced both excellent and mediocre leaders.
Sure but “multiplier” by 10x or 1.1x?
IMO managers/bosses are there to take care of the anoying little things so the workers can focus on work. Workers can do all that and even organize amongst themselves (most of workers can). And there are thousands other variables. Question is of pay, so the question is of worth. IMO a manager is not always more worth then a worker, and I wonder how often one is.
Disclaimer: I worked construction and a bit of sales, not an office job.
Correction: 1.1x, not 0.1x.
Managers and such get more facetime with their higher management which gets them access to better pay. VPs and the higher tier can see how much they get paid themselves so its easier to pay lower leadership more by comparison, while workers and experts are more removed and are limited to the managers budget
People management is harder than it seems. Getting the people working for you to be happy and high performing is not hard but balancing those needs across a whole team becomes challenging. 5 people trying to coordinate a schedule is really tough - ask any gaming group about availability. A big 15 person team is more than 3 times as hard.
Leadership is also much harder to learn than experience. Experience is just surviving the ordeal and knowing how to get through it better. It’s persistence and observation as you solve the problems as they pop up.
Leadership is knowing who to talk to, how to appeal to a person, how to read social cues and pick up on unspoken behavior. A team member is equally capable of building the team as they are of poisoning the team. Good leaders can recognize talent and temperament that gels with the existing people. You’re effectively picking other peoples’ friends. (And not such good friends that no work gets done)
Experience can be taught. Leadership has to be learned.
And yet not everyone can become a nuclear engineer or rocket scientist, programm architect, lawyer and so on, so your “experience can be taught, leadership has to be learned” falls apart pretty quickly.
Leadership is not in anyway less then any other job that you can become an expert in. It is just focused on social sciences instead of engineering for example and both can be taught. It’s dumb to say that leadership is something special, its just that it is the more accessible of fields that have a high skill ceiling as it is present in pretty much every work environment.
Tldr, I think your end point is dumb, but I do agree that people management is hard and is definitely a skill. The best leaders are experts in their own right and it is just a matter of contextualising leadership as a skill you can become an expert in.
The value of experience is logarithmic. You’re going to learn far less in the tenth year of doing something than the first year. Since management usually doesn’t start at year one, they are still in the part of the curve that rises faster.
Also, a lot of the value in higher levels of experience is usually management adjacent, like knowing what order to perform different tasks on a project and identifying when there may be issues beforehand. Someone who remains an individual contributor isn’t going to be providing value for technical roles adjacent to management.
Because expertise doesn’t always mean you get paid more. Remember life is based around your income.
Because leadership makes the rules, why would you be surprised that those rules value the people who made them?
“Leadership” is a nebulous identifier that enables corporation CEO’s to get huge, gigantic, colossal monetary bonuses for very little work actually accomplished. If a company ends up with good staff and good employees it somehow gets attributed to the CEO, even though they are the furthest removed from the process.
There are a lot of good comments but there is a bigger reason.
Marketing and negotiation are softer skills that many technical professionals don’t have or appreciate.
Therefore they don’t market themselves properly (make people value their contributions) nor negotiate the best package for themselves.
In my experience, technical people with those skills quickly rise past their non-technical peers.
In my experience, technical people with those skills quickly rise past their non-technical peers.
They aren’t held back by the org that limits technical salaries and request that they take on leadership responsibilities?
The company is not paying you for the amount of expertise. It is paying for how much money you will make them. If you limit your work to only what you can do yourself (without leading others), then you have deminishing returns. Only because I can now solve very complex problems because of my expertise, I cannot do 10x the work. Time is limited, expertise won’t bring you more of it. Leading will help other do their work better and faster, so you will be more valuable with that.
Most technically minded peoole can study marketing or negotiating and become proficient at it.
Its not hard or complicated, compared to their technical skillset.
But it would be a waste of their time, because their minds can quite literally be put to better uses.
And, it would require them to be ok with lying and being deceptive as a job, so they might have moral objections.
Marketing is literally using psychology to gaslight people into buying things or believing dubious things.
Negotiating is half decorum and half lying, correctly.
Most technically minded people innately work that out very quickly… its not that they don’t appreciate these skills, its that they actively find them disdainful.
Doesn’t seem to bother MBAs or HR or Marketing though, I guess its all relative to them. By which I mean, its relative to them, as in, does this benefit me? If so, its good!
I’m retired from a technical field. I know lots of folks that hold this opinion.
I have also seen excellent technologies and fortunes wasted because technological experts thought that marketing and finance weren’t important. They thought that because their technology was better than anything else, people would want it.
People are busy. Marketing is required to give people a chance to understand what they might get if they spend their time and money on your product.
Finance and leadership are needed to build and fund the human machine that is the company producing the product.
This is a better question than it first seems, mostly because I think there’s two questions in there.
From a business perspective, you want well compensated managers so they don’t steal from you.
(Slightly) Less cynically: managers work with maximising business outputs, their job is to align, optimise and synergise production at lowest cost. They would argue that they enable more value than most individual contributors and that their slice of the added value thus becomes larger.
As for why that trajectory is pushed, I believe that is an emergent phenomenon, not designed, as a consequence of that compensation structure, and the transferability of management skills.
There is also the status aspect, in all groups, the leader has more status (=better), but the trajectory goes beyond acting leader (you don’t always have the same positive view of your bosses boss) so that will only push you to the next step, but that might be enough to create the ladder.
Philosophically, a business doesn’t actually need any particular expert or manager, it needs a competitive advantage. This could be through the best parts, but could just as well be through better design, marketing, sales, costs, or pricing.
If the pay scale was fair, you’d want to be someone who adds capability: can you produce 2x as the other technicians? Then you’d be capped at just under 2x base salary. Can you make the product sell where it otherwise couldn’t? You’re now capped only by the total profits.
That capability is probably easiest to get and sustain through management/organising skills, but a virtuoso technician, inspired designer, genius marketer or wizard salesman could also carry the business.
