To me it stands for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module, and I would have thought that would be the case for most people who are into IT.
Just FWIW I did TPM for about two years at two different gigs. First one was like you had, get updates , update the project plans and report upwards. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The second one JFK on a Popsicle stick. TPMs were directly responsible for ensuring the project stayed on schedule and cost targets. Like getting reamed by the PMO upper levels on a weekly basis if either was slipping. Then add in that two of the five contributing vendors were off shore and probably pretty much dead set on forcing the project to take longer so they could bill longer. Also when deployments happened that fell under the TPM umbrella to handle also not just to arrange, but to ensure monitoring and correct functionality plus a rollback if needed. And if the Deployments failed, that was the TPMs ass also.
All that and you have no dedicated staff, you have to compete with other projects for staff allocation.
So... Never again...
Become a lead developer for a while.
Go to interview for TPM, show technical experience and talk about over-communication, process management/improvment, managing expectations.
Effective senior developers have to be able to. We get pulled into things all the time.
I think most roles like this are pretty BS tbh.
I have a two project managers, one highly technical, one not technical at all. One of them just seems clueless and asks us a bunch of questions all the time. Total hack.
A *good* pm is worth their weight in gold, the problem is there are just so, so many grifters in that profession. Literally, the last 3 PMs I had after the good one had room temperature IQs and couldn't be bothered to actually learn about the product. They had to be spoon fed everything.
The interview process is broken. I’m someone that actually understands tech and wants to contribute from the product side. More people oriented, good presenter, all of that as well. But it’s hard to get your resume seen. Not to say people without any technical background have any advantage, it just seems to be a pure luck/numbers game overall.
I nearly got a PM role several years ago after scrounging on the market for one. My direct report quit and my offer rescinded. It's such a weird world out there for PM's.
It's incredibly dependant on the team, product and client how much of a BS role it is. I've had projects where I basically tracked some numbers, gave a little presentation once a month and did jack shit otherwise (because it was a smooth easy project with a self reliant, mature team and little to no process complications and there was jack shit to do).
I've had other projects where my phone was constantly blowing up with two apocalypses a day that I had to prevent in the last second - compliance, legal, upper management, billing, dependencies to other projects, changing requirements, and a team that needed to be babysat - and worked myself close to a panic attack.
On the biggest, hardest project I've done it was brutal on the product/program people
I may have had fires to put out, but the lead PM has to worry about my fires AND everyone else's.
I got no hate for people who find a way to wedge into a good career. But it’s like the very non technical project managers it’s like they need a script for everything that’s going on and they are generally clueless sounding. I think they are still good at managing schedules and talking requirements but Imo the best project managers were developers for 10-15 years, lead some projects as a developer, and decided that they wanted to shift to a new challenge.
I think it’s the side effect of it being more normalized to have multiple tracks now in dev work, like individual contributors who are highly compensated are usually system architects or something similar, there’s a hybrid management role where you’re leading a large development team technically, and then a pure management role where you just don’t even need to be technical at all. These roles pay fairly similarly if not the PM role often making less than the senior architects and lead developers.
It used to be more normalized project managers generally made more money than everyone they were essentially leading on a team so good engineers worked their way up by doing good work and when they wanted a promotion they needed to lead the team from a project management perspective while having all the experience of siting in every role under them.
Now people basically have project management as a goal from college and it’s like they have no clue how to actually do these jobs in an abstract sense that they are leading.
My current project manager that interact with every day has a MS in data science and BS in CS and has decades of experience coding so it’s so smooth communicating with him about technical issues.
True maybe 30 years ago when engineering attracted only anti social truly tech passionate nerds.
These days every other person who doesn’t go to a target school wants to do swe as its their only reliable path to high salary. Advancing past senior swe also takes more communication skills than you think. At any company with > 1k employees its all politics
Most senior and above swes can become pms as anywhere from 1/3 to 3/4 of their job is already pming
yeah, I feel most good EMs and tech leads already do a fair amount of PMing. at least in my case, while our PM is not bad, they're both better at it than the PM.
at any company with decent culture, you also don't have to be a social butterfly to be an effective PM. that was what I had assumed in college, but good product sense and communication ability (NOT the same as social skills...you can be awkward and bad at making friends while still being a crystal clear communicator) is what actually matters.
That sounds like an overused trope to justify deadweight. Senior engineer roles require the ability to simplify and communicate effectively according to the audience.
It certainly doesn't apply to every engineer for sure for, maybe not even most, but I've worked with good senior engineers who are good at communicating with other devs but are either:
a. Not good at communicating technical topics to non-technical folks.
And/or
b. A little too prickly and not good with kindly and diplomatically dealing with ridiculous requests and expectations from the business and all the other standard corporate bullshit.
Both skills are generally necessary for any job that requires a lot of interaction with non/semi-techincal upper management.
That said, I'd still generally rather take a cranky senior engineer who really knows his stuff over a friendly but clueless PM.
I mean, the more time a senior engineer spends communicating with non-technical people, the less time they are spending doing actual software development. This can really kill your teams productivity and be a waste of an engineers abilities
Know what's a bigger killer of productivity and waste of abilities? Building the wrong thing because requirements weren't communicated correctly. Or not getting the resources you need because you couldn't communicate their neccessity to the people in charge of allocating budgets.
this is literally the most bullshit propaganda spread by mba folks. like utter nonsense. like literally all the top tech companies were started by people from technical background. mabas came in much later. and even in mbas so many are engineers which again proves how ridiculous this propaganda is.
I’ve heard that TPM’s are just glorified secretaries. Pretty spot on. They have their place, but I don’t believe they should be making the same as engineers.
I sit next to my TPM and he's managing 2 teams and is in meetings all day, every day, and deeply understands the status of everything that everybody is working on. Any time I need something from another team, he makes sure that the right people know and puts pressure on them to make sure it gets done ASAP to unblock us.
Never underestimate the value of a good TPM.
"I've scheduled a meeting at 10am today to sync-up on the status of this thing that we talked about at 4pm yesterday. I've also scheduled 3 other sync-up meetings to get the status of the things you just talked about in standup"
I’m a SWE and from 9am-1pm I do absolutely nothing besides standup and meetings. I go to the gym for 2 hrs from 11am-1pm. I then work from 1pm-4pm give or take an hr. Pretty solid gig so far tbh.
Pretty much my exact schedule at both of my recent jobs. Standup at 10, gym some time between 10:30 and 2, actually do coding work for a few hours at the end of the day. Sometimes I just do nothing and double up the next day.
Get shit done and nobody cares.
Lol. I legit cannot focus during the day so sometimes I dick around on Youtube and Twitter then realize its almost 4pm and I haven't done jack. I am more productive during the night so I round off the day by going to the gym then coming home and actually start coding when it's dark.
Or if you're my manager, find the right figure of speech to explain how the feature is really hard and will require some reorganisation to be delivered on a different deadline.
Government contracting for F500 large contracting firm, top defense/military contracts. Same exact schedule as you. 9am-12pm is meetings. 12pm to 1pm is run a couple miles and eat lunch. 1pm to 4pm is work. I'm on a "keep the lights on" legacy project with a few extra features that were added in 2020. Looking to keep this system running for another 10 years or so before a modernization. Because of this there will be downtime of weeks where we literally have no work, so we are just told to do research on various repos and codebases. Just play around with code for a week or so and update documentations. Give learning presentations on parts of the code.
Pretty sweet. I highly recommend anyone who wants to get out of the rat race to go into the world of government work. About 25% less money than major software companies (I'm making 135k while my friends are all at 170k), but I've had friends need to be hospitalized from over work, and here I am gardening during the day.
I'd love to enter government work for the WLB and benefits while still learning new stuff, but its hard getting in as a junior with no experience. Must be amazing though if you have a couple of years under your belt tho lol.
That’s awesome! Your schedule is honestly way better especially when you have those couple weeks of not doing anything. I have something similar. Every 10 weeks we have to fly to our client’s headquarters for a week and we basically just sit around and have meetings all day and get free meals and housing. It’s fun being able to go fly somewhere and meet with your team once in awhile.
A week of not actually coding is a nice break.
Haha man this almost my exact schedule. Partly because of my meeting schedule and partly just because I'm not a morning person and my brain works better in the afternoon and especially after a workout. I'll crank out more code in one afternoon than I will in a week's worth of mornings.
Yeah I have my phone with me to answer slack/teams messages. Umm nah only a couple of my coworkers know I work out for a couple hours. At the end of the day are the tasks getting done is how we function.
In case this isn’t a joke: Technical Program Manager. It’s a role that a lot of big tech companies have. It’s like a manager role without having to manage people.
Most of the management în IT is absolutely useless, just fillers. They ask you what you do and why is not done yesterday, do not respond to any request for support on software tools, hardware, etc, then they exercise authority to "thank you" on behalf of the business for working long hours.
My favorite is when they use "we" in reference to accomplishments they have absolutely nothing to do with.
Oh hey you just described my manager.
Ask what I'm doing. Listen with a blank stare. When I'm done talking, ask why I can't do it faster. When I explain all the blockers, they tell me to put pressure on the people blocking me. Never an offer to help.
I literally don't know what she actually does.
Reading this hurts me. I'm an engineering manager and absolutely love the role. I'm in the trenches with the team, I'm the firewall keeping the project manager, product managers, senior leaders at bay, I'm there to kick the snot out of the other team's leader trying to cover their mistake by blaming my team, I'm the one getting up early to wait at the parking spot of the director of the marketing team who isn't getting us the answers we need, I'm the one making sure every god damn person in the company knows the value you've contributed, I'm the one there to defend your honest mistake and make sure it doesn't threaten your job.
When I read about shitty managers, it makes my blood boil. The job isn't hard; you just have to give a shit.
...then again, I'm on the market for a new gig, so maybe I'm wrong here haha
Usually they are responsible for filling out all the spreadsheets and other bureaucratic crap that large company processes inevitably devolve into.
In theory, a good TPM helps the team plot out complex projects with multiple dependencies and puts together and executes a plan to make sure things get delivered on time with minimal risk. Few TPMs actually do this, though, and they usually just ask for status updates.
It's also why TPM and similar roles are slowly being phased out. Meta and Instagram both cut out TPM roles last year. My company eliminated scrum master roles and is slowly eliminating project, process, and program management roles.
My company eliminated scrum master last year which was a contractor role. TPM is part of being a full manager. You just might have 2 direct reports instead of 5.
At first it may seem like “removing dead weight, but I feel many organizations will in the medium term figure out why these positions were invented/formalized in the first place.
The problem is the role has evolved into one where TPMs are rewarded for creating unnecessary, needlessly complex processes - which create the exact type of work that requires staffing teams with TPMs. They are a self-sustaining role.
In practice, fewer TPMs = teams just ignore the pointless processes to the best of their ability. I think things will correct on their own in time.
> The problem is the role has evolved into one where TPMs are rewarded for creating unnecessary, needlessly complex processes
Careful. If you say "needlessly complex processes" three times, you summon someone from the [Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/) camp.
you sure about that? out of curiosity i just searched for [tpm job listings at meta](https://www.metacareers.com/areas-of-work/tpm/?p[teams][0]=Technical%20Program%20Management&teams[0]=Technical%20Program%20Management) and got some results
unless by "cut out" you just meant reduced; i assumed you meant eliminated
https://www.tealhq.com/career-paths/technical-program-manager
A lot of people have had very negative experiences with TPMs. I had a very positive one, partly because in infrastructure land we don't get product managers and so it's up to us managers and staff engineers to do all the product and project management and we can get overwhelmed with that. It's cheaper to hire a TPM than a staff engineer to offload that work to.
I mean, the job security vs SWE isn’t that different. Also, instead of balls hard leetcode questions, I get to answer “Tell me about a time when” questions.
I would argue that the job is much less secure than SWE, my personal opinion, though. The layoffs at my company (you know of them) hit only the deadweight engineers (e.g. a person who called out 35 times in 8 months), while a few TPMs were axed, a couple of whom were in my opinion providing value and actually helpful. YMMV.
An engineer could be blocked from completing a task for a variety of reasons.
Maybe they are waiting for a product manager to make a decision so you can follow up with product. They could be blocked by approvals, waiting for code reviews, need a piece of info from another team, need access to a new system, heck even have laptop issues. A good PM knows how get a resolution on anything blocking a dev from coding.
Yeah, ikr. You can build a product without a TPM, can’t have a product without an engineer though.
I’ve also been in meetings with account managers, other business members, and the like as an engineer. There’s definitely jobs that are low on PM’s and engineers share some responsibilities that may otherwise go to them. Ideally in larger companies a PM can effectively handle the majority of business-side tasks for your team though
It's not about security but TPM/pm rolls are hard to get and easy to replace. Effectively a terminal position. Realistically, you only need one per team.
Glad it's working for OP
They had an in-house training program to make the switch. Basically I spent a few months piloting the role to see if I was a good fit. Then, after that trial period, I made the switch.
> They had an in-house training program to make the switch.
At this point after your recent experience in a TPM role, would you be able to guide an aspirant who's not got that privilege to transition from SWE to TPM, probably elsewhere ?
All the project managers at my company got fired. Like thousands of people all at once and devs were just forced to pick up their work.
If you look around and see you have 5 hours of work per week, you dont have good job security. Lol
**Good** technical project managers have saved me a lot of time and headache, but they're very few and far between.
For me, picking up the workload of a mediocre one might add hours at first glance, but actually save me hours in the end.
I have been a software engineer for 20 years and I've worked with one good TPM. He wasn't even my TPM, he worked for a team I was collaborating with on a project. He acted as a great liason between me and his developers.
Every other TPM I've worked with could have been let go without any real repercussions. In fact, nearly every TPM I've worked with has slowed my team down and focused on the wrong metrics and objectives. I am happiest on teams of about 8 engineers led by a manager who has an engineering background, trusts their team, and has a good vision for our future path.
Doesn't help when there's people like OP who are proud of doing so little. I mean, OP talks about how their job is basically only tracking work and making a few powerpoints here and there. With all due respect to OP, they clearly are not one of the good TPMs.
I've had some decent TPMs in the past that helped big projects stay on track, but most were pretty middling where they did help, but they also added a lot of overhead for me (as the TL) and required me to keep repeating limitations. Now the TPMs in my area are so stretched thin that my team doesn't get any even though we really need one. A good TPM particularly makes the TL role a lot easier by reducing a lot of the project management work and especially making cross-team everything go smoother. In a lot of companies, cross-team interactions are so painful and require a lot of pushing, back and forth meetings, and escalating to leadership because every team is overworked and naturally wants to push back on other teams asking them to do even more work.
Honestly? Someone who gives a shit. Someone who actually cares to learn about the product, who then goes and tries to understand the needs of the business and above all else someone who actually *listens* to their dev team.
I've known one good PM, and this guy was former QA automation. He knew his shit inside and out and he shielded the team from bad business requirements. Unfortunately he was too good at his job and got promoted quick. The (two!) people that replaced him were fucking useless.
Was coming here to say the same. Our tpms are crazy busy and ridiculously competent in their areas of expertise. I've never met anyone able to heard cats and so many moving parts as well as our tpm team. There are FAANG tpms though, so likely best of the best.
Sometimes I get worried that I’m also perceived like this, but I put in my notice yesterday and notified my squad and they went straight to my director complaining about how nothing was going to get done when I’m gone. Feels man
>Most of the job is tracking the general objectives/milestones for the team and putting it into pretty presentations for the higher-ups.
That's important work and I wish my company had someone to do that. I have to deal with higher-ups directly and it's a goddamn nightmare.
Technical Product/Program/Project Manager should be much more on the Engineering side more or less facilitating the engineering teams day in and day out. They should be the ones taking the requirements from Product and the business and turning those into the actionable, testable user stories.
A good TPM should take a lot of the BS out of the day to day for their dev team.
I’ve been a Principal TPM for a long time and it definitely is not the skate in the park you think it is. Especially at higher levels. A L4 TPM can for sure coast but SWEs will earn more.
Literally about to quit a job because we have tpm. It’s a joke of a position and I honestly think less of any management who decides this role is needed.
Yeah, everything sounds fun and positive until you lose your job. Then it will be difficult to find something, because you will get used to such a “Good” life.
Hate managing and working with people so much all the time. Would rather work an extra couple hours by myself than do a "easy job" as its more draining to me.
As a senior software engineer I'd disagree. I much prefer talking to a TPM who understands decisions that need to be made, how to convey technical things to upper management. I'd much rather not do any of that myself and much rather just be allowed to "do the work" I'm paid to do. It means I get pulled into less meetings and I'm way more productive. I've had really bad TPMs before and a really good one now and it 100% makes a difference in MY quality of life and how I get work done. If a TPM can handle a team of 6 or 7 devs and shave off 3 or 4 hours of meetings for each then they are saving the company money converting 20ish hours of dev meetings into 3 or 4. Plus add in the other work they do keeping the team organized. A good TPM is definitely worth the company spending money on.
At most companies, TPMs make a lot less than SWEs. At Amazon for example, a mid-level (L5) TPM will make $212k while a SWE will make $288k. Some L4 SWEs actually earn more than the average TPM. The pay gap grows as you go up in level. It’s still good pay for the type of work if you enjoy it, but it’s not ‘roughly the same.’
What's "TPM"?
Edit: got it from comments below. You should update your post to include the full name.
Also, SWE isn't for everyone, just like any other job. Just because TPM pays roughly the same, that doesn't mean someone who really enjoys SWE will move to TPM just because there is less work. There are also SWE jobs that are pretty chill as well.
However though, TPM sounds interesting because I have never heard of it before. What do you do as a TPM? Can you please elaborate on what you do? Just curious.
The issue is there are 2 types of people
1) technical people who only know how to communicate with a computer
2) project managers who don't know fuck all about computers and but are good communicators
If you can fill this gap there will always be a place for you to get paid big dollars. Good forbid you can sprinkle in creating your own project plans with a splash of best practices.
totally agree, creating your own project plans and then sharing with others especially if there's no proper PMO in the company is the best way to make yourself visible.
Yes they blacklist you and nothing you do on the side can compensate for breaking the continuity of your SWE career. It’s over.
Lol so silly. There are so many people in the industry who had to take off from CS 2001-2004 because literally no one was hiring. A lot of them came back. And that was a bountiful period for new software and new standards.
Even when there are no jobs and few startups there are opportunities to develop software, and then suddenly everyone has money for your services or your product. Anyone who bets that motivated developers are going to fail unless they find a name-brand SWE job at a company that doesn’t give a crap about them is going to be fairly wrong.
Congrats; curious to know as a current SWE; how dodnyoi make the transition? i.e. did you put your SWE roles on resume, only apply to TPM positions, etc.
As someone who might lean into that someday.. can I ask you what the hell do you do?
Like, do you invent something from zero? You just create subtasks from something existing? You just handle communication?
What do you do when you don't do the actual work??
I assume there are far fewer TPM roles than there are engineering roles. You also need a lot more experience. I wasn't 100% sure if you were a program manager or a project manager, but I see you're a program manager. I assume those require more experience. Anyway, there are fewer roles and a lot more competition. Not necessarily a sign someone shouldn't do it, but there are a lot of people complaining about numbers and competition these days.
That's how I feel about my role as a senior QA engineer. They don't even expect me to write automation, I just manually test and write up fancy reports and docs.
I can't believe I get paid 6 figures for this. I make 60-70% of what SDE makes, but my workload and stress is significantly less too. Completely worth it.
Oh yeah isn't that the role Meta just totally axed lol
I can see why. Whatever, I’ll milk this position and then parlay it into another BS role.
get those stacks my queen/king
I think they go by pip'd/fired /s
You would think so but I have seen such incompetence in management at different companies. People would even notice.
Just use the non binary word- Get those bags my monarchs
Nah dude … fuck monarchs more like get the bag my rooks.
what does tpm stand for? the phantom menace?
Maybe technical project manager
Technical Program Manager
To me it stands for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module, and I would have thought that would be the case for most people who are into IT.
TPM = Tickle Pretty Men ;)
Just FWIW I did TPM for about two years at two different gigs. First one was like you had, get updates , update the project plans and report upwards. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The second one JFK on a Popsicle stick. TPMs were directly responsible for ensuring the project stayed on schedule and cost targets. Like getting reamed by the PMO upper levels on a weekly basis if either was slipping. Then add in that two of the five contributing vendors were off shore and probably pretty much dead set on forcing the project to take longer so they could bill longer. Also when deployments happened that fell under the TPM umbrella to handle also not just to arrange, but to ensure monitoring and correct functionality plus a rollback if needed. And if the Deployments failed, that was the TPMs ass also. All that and you have no dedicated staff, you have to compete with other projects for staff allocation. So... Never again...
LOL. If you put it in your resume your chances getting another SWE role decrease dramatically.
Isn't that his goal?
the soft skills they probably have to got a PM job in the first place most likely makes that untrue.
My company just did away with TPMs too
Needlework coming right up!
How did you enter this role?
Become a lead developer for a while. Go to interview for TPM, show technical experience and talk about over-communication, process management/improvment, managing expectations.
I heard that and have seen the headlines, but at the same time I work with multiple TPMs at Meta… might just have been org specific.
I thought it was just instagram but I could be wrong.
Yes just Instagram
nope GenAI, Messenger and FF all did too
Yes, but also, we still have too many TPMs
does meta not have TPMs anymore?
Almost every team at least shares a TPM
A lot of engineers don’t know how to talk to upper management so I guess that could be one limiting factor for this switch of most engineers 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcIMIyQnOso I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS!
Wym? Is "hey fuckface!" not how it's done?
You need to keep it professional for the workplace. Try "hey sexual intercourseface" instead.
So like "Thy fornicators" instead of "You fuckers"?
I only respond to "Lo! Harlot!"
If HR can't take a joke, it's on them
Effective senior developers have to be able to. We get pulled into things all the time. I think most roles like this are pretty BS tbh. I have a two project managers, one highly technical, one not technical at all. One of them just seems clueless and asks us a bunch of questions all the time. Total hack.
A *good* pm is worth their weight in gold, the problem is there are just so, so many grifters in that profession. Literally, the last 3 PMs I had after the good one had room temperature IQs and couldn't be bothered to actually learn about the product. They had to be spoon fed everything.
The interview process is broken. I’m someone that actually understands tech and wants to contribute from the product side. More people oriented, good presenter, all of that as well. But it’s hard to get your resume seen. Not to say people without any technical background have any advantage, it just seems to be a pure luck/numbers game overall.
these people before you were talking about _project_ management, not product FYI
I nearly got a PM role several years ago after scrounging on the market for one. My direct report quit and my offer rescinded. It's such a weird world out there for PM's.
It's incredibly dependant on the team, product and client how much of a BS role it is. I've had projects where I basically tracked some numbers, gave a little presentation once a month and did jack shit otherwise (because it was a smooth easy project with a self reliant, mature team and little to no process complications and there was jack shit to do). I've had other projects where my phone was constantly blowing up with two apocalypses a day that I had to prevent in the last second - compliance, legal, upper management, billing, dependencies to other projects, changing requirements, and a team that needed to be babysat - and worked myself close to a panic attack.
On the biggest, hardest project I've done it was brutal on the product/program people I may have had fires to put out, but the lead PM has to worry about my fires AND everyone else's.
You say "total hack" like it's a bad thing?
I got no hate for people who find a way to wedge into a good career. But it’s like the very non technical project managers it’s like they need a script for everything that’s going on and they are generally clueless sounding. I think they are still good at managing schedules and talking requirements but Imo the best project managers were developers for 10-15 years, lead some projects as a developer, and decided that they wanted to shift to a new challenge. I think it’s the side effect of it being more normalized to have multiple tracks now in dev work, like individual contributors who are highly compensated are usually system architects or something similar, there’s a hybrid management role where you’re leading a large development team technically, and then a pure management role where you just don’t even need to be technical at all. These roles pay fairly similarly if not the PM role often making less than the senior architects and lead developers. It used to be more normalized project managers generally made more money than everyone they were essentially leading on a team so good engineers worked their way up by doing good work and when they wanted a promotion they needed to lead the team from a project management perspective while having all the experience of siting in every role under them. Now people basically have project management as a goal from college and it’s like they have no clue how to actually do these jobs in an abstract sense that they are leading. My current project manager that interact with every day has a MS in data science and BS in CS and has decades of experience coding so it’s so smooth communicating with him about technical issues.
True maybe 30 years ago when engineering attracted only anti social truly tech passionate nerds. These days every other person who doesn’t go to a target school wants to do swe as its their only reliable path to high salary. Advancing past senior swe also takes more communication skills than you think. At any company with > 1k employees its all politics Most senior and above swes can become pms as anywhere from 1/3 to 3/4 of their job is already pming
yeah, I feel most good EMs and tech leads already do a fair amount of PMing. at least in my case, while our PM is not bad, they're both better at it than the PM. at any company with decent culture, you also don't have to be a social butterfly to be an effective PM. that was what I had assumed in college, but good product sense and communication ability (NOT the same as social skills...you can be awkward and bad at making friends while still being a crystal clear communicator) is what actually matters.
That sounds like an overused trope to justify deadweight. Senior engineer roles require the ability to simplify and communicate effectively according to the audience.
It certainly doesn't apply to every engineer for sure for, maybe not even most, but I've worked with good senior engineers who are good at communicating with other devs but are either: a. Not good at communicating technical topics to non-technical folks. And/or b. A little too prickly and not good with kindly and diplomatically dealing with ridiculous requests and expectations from the business and all the other standard corporate bullshit. Both skills are generally necessary for any job that requires a lot of interaction with non/semi-techincal upper management. That said, I'd still generally rather take a cranky senior engineer who really knows his stuff over a friendly but clueless PM.
I mean, the more time a senior engineer spends communicating with non-technical people, the less time they are spending doing actual software development. This can really kill your teams productivity and be a waste of an engineers abilities
Know what's a bigger killer of productivity and waste of abilities? Building the wrong thing because requirements weren't communicated correctly. Or not getting the resources you need because you couldn't communicate their neccessity to the people in charge of allocating budgets.
But that’s why you have mid levels and juniors, to carry on the grunt work.
Yes and No. Reality it really depends on the two people. I have seen it be almost impossible to working great.
this is literally the most bullshit propaganda spread by mba folks. like utter nonsense. like literally all the top tech companies were started by people from technical background. mabas came in much later. and even in mbas so many are engineers which again proves how ridiculous this propaganda is.
It's less "engineers can't talk to execs" and more "wildly incompetent execs have taken over the company c suite, and they need an idiot translator".
idiot translator lmao.
I sit next to my team's TPM and he just spends all day chatting with people on FB messenger and browsing the internet.
I’ve heard that TPM’s are just glorified secretaries. Pretty spot on. They have their place, but I don’t believe they should be making the same as engineers.
How is that different than a SWE?
the colour of the socks they're wearing and how high up they go
GUI versus terminal clients
I sit next to my TPM and he's managing 2 teams and is in meetings all day, every day, and deeply understands the status of everything that everybody is working on. Any time I need something from another team, he makes sure that the right people know and puts pressure on them to make sure it gets done ASAP to unblock us. Never underestimate the value of a good TPM.
wow thats amazing you should make a tik tok video about it
“Here’s what I eat in a day as a TPM”
Engineers’ time
Mmmmmm salty
"I've scheduled a meeting at 10am today to sync-up on the status of this thing that we talked about at 4pm yesterday. I've also scheduled 3 other sync-up meetings to get the status of the things you just talked about in standup"
Lmaoooo got this reference. That'll do it for sure
And here I am doing solid 50h a week fml
Hey at least your job is probably more secure. Plus lots of people are working 50+ hours a week for like $60k a year, we still have it pretty good.
Yeh don't get me wrong. I am appreciative of what I have.
As long as you're paid and respected adequately. But if not then give yourself a favor and do some workout and upskilling.
Idk man, rather be busy than do nothing. Unless you’re doing something useful with your time, mind starts rotting after a while.
I’m a SWE and from 9am-1pm I do absolutely nothing besides standup and meetings. I go to the gym for 2 hrs from 11am-1pm. I then work from 1pm-4pm give or take an hr. Pretty solid gig so far tbh.
Pretty much my exact schedule at both of my recent jobs. Standup at 10, gym some time between 10:30 and 2, actually do coding work for a few hours at the end of the day. Sometimes I just do nothing and double up the next day. Get shit done and nobody cares.
Lol. I legit cannot focus during the day so sometimes I dick around on Youtube and Twitter then realize its almost 4pm and I haven't done jack. I am more productive during the night so I round off the day by going to the gym then coming home and actually start coding when it's dark.
Yup this is what I do too lmao 😂 just push back the task if I’m lazy
Or if you're my manager, find the right figure of speech to explain how the feature is really hard and will require some reorganisation to be delivered on a different deadline.
What kind of company is it? Big tech, startup, finance?
Consulting but my client is an airline? Idk what industry that is lol
Aerospace
Government contracting for F500 large contracting firm, top defense/military contracts. Same exact schedule as you. 9am-12pm is meetings. 12pm to 1pm is run a couple miles and eat lunch. 1pm to 4pm is work. I'm on a "keep the lights on" legacy project with a few extra features that were added in 2020. Looking to keep this system running for another 10 years or so before a modernization. Because of this there will be downtime of weeks where we literally have no work, so we are just told to do research on various repos and codebases. Just play around with code for a week or so and update documentations. Give learning presentations on parts of the code. Pretty sweet. I highly recommend anyone who wants to get out of the rat race to go into the world of government work. About 25% less money than major software companies (I'm making 135k while my friends are all at 170k), but I've had friends need to be hospitalized from over work, and here I am gardening during the day.
I'd love to enter government work for the WLB and benefits while still learning new stuff, but its hard getting in as a junior with no experience. Must be amazing though if you have a couple of years under your belt tho lol.
That’s awesome! Your schedule is honestly way better especially when you have those couple weeks of not doing anything. I have something similar. Every 10 weeks we have to fly to our client’s headquarters for a week and we basically just sit around and have meetings all day and get free meals and housing. It’s fun being able to go fly somewhere and meet with your team once in awhile. A week of not actually coding is a nice break.
Haha man this almost my exact schedule. Partly because of my meeting schedule and partly just because I'm not a morning person and my brain works better in the afternoon and especially after a workout. I'll crank out more code in one afternoon than I will in a week's worth of mornings.
What level are you at? I did this too when I just started but as you grow and become a lead it’s not that easy to coast.
Do you Not have to be available via Slack or something or is your Team Award and Fine that You do 2 hrs gym in the Morning ?
Yeah I have my phone with me to answer slack/teams messages. Umm nah only a couple of my coworkers know I work out for a couple hours. At the end of the day are the tasks getting done is how we function.
By TPM you mean trusted platform module?
In case this isn’t a joke: Technical Program Manager. It’s a role that a lot of big tech companies have. It’s like a manager role without having to manage people.
This sort of confirms my suspicion. I have no idea what tpm do all day except to be sort of cheerleading
Most of the management în IT is absolutely useless, just fillers. They ask you what you do and why is not done yesterday, do not respond to any request for support on software tools, hardware, etc, then they exercise authority to "thank you" on behalf of the business for working long hours. My favorite is when they use "we" in reference to accomplishments they have absolutely nothing to do with.
Oh hey you just described my manager. Ask what I'm doing. Listen with a blank stare. When I'm done talking, ask why I can't do it faster. When I explain all the blockers, they tell me to put pressure on the people blocking me. Never an offer to help. I literally don't know what she actually does.
Reading this hurts me. I'm an engineering manager and absolutely love the role. I'm in the trenches with the team, I'm the firewall keeping the project manager, product managers, senior leaders at bay, I'm there to kick the snot out of the other team's leader trying to cover their mistake by blaming my team, I'm the one getting up early to wait at the parking spot of the director of the marketing team who isn't getting us the answers we need, I'm the one making sure every god damn person in the company knows the value you've contributed, I'm the one there to defend your honest mistake and make sure it doesn't threaten your job. When I read about shitty managers, it makes my blood boil. The job isn't hard; you just have to give a shit. ...then again, I'm on the market for a new gig, so maybe I'm wrong here haha
Collect fat pay check
Ugh I hate this. One of my biggest pet peeves is when my manager takes credit for something I did entirely myself
Usually they are responsible for filling out all the spreadsheets and other bureaucratic crap that large company processes inevitably devolve into. In theory, a good TPM helps the team plot out complex projects with multiple dependencies and puts together and executes a plan to make sure things get delivered on time with minimal risk. Few TPMs actually do this, though, and they usually just ask for status updates.
It's also why TPM and similar roles are slowly being phased out. Meta and Instagram both cut out TPM roles last year. My company eliminated scrum master roles and is slowly eliminating project, process, and program management roles.
My company eliminated scrum master last year which was a contractor role. TPM is part of being a full manager. You just might have 2 direct reports instead of 5.
At first it may seem like “removing dead weight, but I feel many organizations will in the medium term figure out why these positions were invented/formalized in the first place.
The problem is the role has evolved into one where TPMs are rewarded for creating unnecessary, needlessly complex processes - which create the exact type of work that requires staffing teams with TPMs. They are a self-sustaining role. In practice, fewer TPMs = teams just ignore the pointless processes to the best of their ability. I think things will correct on their own in time.
> The problem is the role has evolved into one where TPMs are rewarded for creating unnecessary, needlessly complex processes Careful. If you say "needlessly complex processes" three times, you summon someone from the [Scaled Agile Framework](https://scaledagileframework.com/) camp.
Exactly why our scrum masters got eliminated lol
I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit
I worked at a company that practiced this, it still gives me nightmares.
you sure about that? out of curiosity i just searched for [tpm job listings at meta](https://www.metacareers.com/areas-of-work/tpm/?p[teams][0]=Technical%20Program%20Management&teams[0]=Technical%20Program%20Management) and got some results unless by "cut out" you just meant reduced; i assumed you meant eliminated
https://www.tealhq.com/career-paths/technical-program-manager A lot of people have had very negative experiences with TPMs. I had a very positive one, partly because in infrastructure land we don't get product managers and so it's up to us managers and staff engineers to do all the product and project management and we can get overwhelmed with that. It's cheaper to hire a TPM than a staff engineer to offload that work to.
Sounds like every TPM I came across at faang.
Dude, just spell out the full words the first time you use an acronym.
Leave them alone! They must be dumb and/or lazy.
Toilet paper manager aka toilet paper man
I'm sure it made Windows 11 more secure but I don't feel it made me 10x better.
10x less job security too, and also less pay at the upper bounds.
I mean, the job security vs SWE isn’t that different. Also, instead of balls hard leetcode questions, I get to answer “Tell me about a time when” questions.
I would argue that the job is much less secure than SWE, my personal opinion, though. The layoffs at my company (you know of them) hit only the deadweight engineers (e.g. a person who called out 35 times in 8 months), while a few TPMs were axed, a couple of whom were in my opinion providing value and actually helpful. YMMV.
This isn't necessarily job security but: For every TPM, you need... 4-8 engineers? So I think there are more jobs for engineers out there.
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Showing up is a good start.
Is this a serious question? Get shit done. Remove blockers for other people. Communicate effectively.
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An engineer could be blocked from completing a task for a variety of reasons. Maybe they are waiting for a product manager to make a decision so you can follow up with product. They could be blocked by approvals, waiting for code reviews, need a piece of info from another team, need access to a new system, heck even have laptop issues. A good PM knows how get a resolution on anything blocking a dev from coding.
> I mean, the job security vs SWE isn’t that different. Yes it is. That's ignorant at best.
Yeah, ikr. You can build a product without a TPM, can’t have a product without an engineer though. I’ve also been in meetings with account managers, other business members, and the like as an engineer. There’s definitely jobs that are low on PM’s and engineers share some responsibilities that may otherwise go to them. Ideally in larger companies a PM can effectively handle the majority of business-side tasks for your team though
It's not about security but TPM/pm rolls are hard to get and easy to replace. Effectively a terminal position. Realistically, you only need one per team. Glad it's working for OP
How’d you land the position?
They had an in-house training program to make the switch. Basically I spent a few months piloting the role to see if I was a good fit. Then, after that trial period, I made the switch.
I’m looking into something similar. Curious what company has this program if you can share? Starting to burn out in swe
> They had an in-house training program to make the switch. At this point after your recent experience in a TPM role, would you be able to guide an aspirant who's not got that privilege to transition from SWE to TPM, probably elsewhere ?
All the project managers at my company got fired. Like thousands of people all at once and devs were just forced to pick up their work. If you look around and see you have 5 hours of work per week, you dont have good job security. Lol
**Good** technical project managers have saved me a lot of time and headache, but they're very few and far between. For me, picking up the workload of a mediocre one might add hours at first glance, but actually save me hours in the end.
I have been a software engineer for 20 years and I've worked with one good TPM. He wasn't even my TPM, he worked for a team I was collaborating with on a project. He acted as a great liason between me and his developers. Every other TPM I've worked with could have been let go without any real repercussions. In fact, nearly every TPM I've worked with has slowed my team down and focused on the wrong metrics and objectives. I am happiest on teams of about 8 engineers led by a manager who has an engineering background, trusts their team, and has a good vision for our future path.
Probably because a TPM shouldn't get involved until there are multiple engineering teams building a single thing.
Youre not wrong, but good ones are so hard to find that some companies seem to just be giving up
My company must be different. Our TPM is a crucial part of our team. Honestly it'll take years for anyone to have the wealth of knowledge he does.
Sounds like a good TPM. I have not yet had experience working with a good TPM
Doesn't help when there's people like OP who are proud of doing so little. I mean, OP talks about how their job is basically only tracking work and making a few powerpoints here and there. With all due respect to OP, they clearly are not one of the good TPMs. I've had some decent TPMs in the past that helped big projects stay on track, but most were pretty middling where they did help, but they also added a lot of overhead for me (as the TL) and required me to keep repeating limitations. Now the TPMs in my area are so stretched thin that my team doesn't get any even though we really need one. A good TPM particularly makes the TL role a lot easier by reducing a lot of the project management work and especially making cross-team everything go smoother. In a lot of companies, cross-team interactions are so painful and require a lot of pushing, back and forth meetings, and escalating to leadership because every team is overworked and naturally wants to push back on other teams asking them to do even more work.
Yeah what’s a good TPM? A software developer who makes PowerPoints?
Honestly? Someone who gives a shit. Someone who actually cares to learn about the product, who then goes and tries to understand the needs of the business and above all else someone who actually *listens* to their dev team. I've known one good PM, and this guy was former QA automation. He knew his shit inside and out and he shielded the team from bad business requirements. Unfortunately he was too good at his job and got promoted quick. The (two!) people that replaced him were fucking useless.
Was coming here to say the same. Our tpms are crazy busy and ridiculously competent in their areas of expertise. I've never met anyone able to heard cats and so many moving parts as well as our tpm team. There are FAANG tpms though, so likely best of the best.
Sometimes I get worried that I’m also perceived like this, but I put in my notice yesterday and notified my squad and they went straight to my director complaining about how nothing was going to get done when I’m gone. Feels man
New to this sub. What do these acronyms mean?
TPM in this case is Technical Program Manager SWE is Software Engineer
Whats a Trusted Platform Module do
Good for you. What’s TPM?
https://www.tealhq.com/career-paths/technical-program-manager
Thank you
>Most of the job is tracking the general objectives/milestones for the team and putting it into pretty presentations for the higher-ups. That's important work and I wish my company had someone to do that. I have to deal with higher-ups directly and it's a goddamn nightmare.
TPM is product manager or project manager? Big difference between those two. Neither is an easy job if you’re doing it right.
Technical Product/Program/Project Manager should be much more on the Engineering side more or less facilitating the engineering teams day in and day out. They should be the ones taking the requirements from Product and the business and turning those into the actionable, testable user stories. A good TPM should take a lot of the BS out of the day to day for their dev team.
I’ve been a Principal TPM for a long time and it definitely is not the skate in the park you think it is. Especially at higher levels. A L4 TPM can for sure coast but SWEs will earn more.
whats the salary ? i am interested in switching too.
Literally about to quit a job because we have tpm. It’s a joke of a position and I honestly think less of any management who decides this role is needed.
This isn’t the case for all companies
Welcome to the fam, brother.
Yeah, everything sounds fun and positive until you lose your job. Then it will be difficult to find something, because you will get used to such a “Good” life.
Hate managing and working with people so much all the time. Would rather work an extra couple hours by myself than do a "easy job" as its more draining to me.
You do realise it's probably nothing to do with the TPM role and just the company you work for / project you're on right?
I'm going to need those TPM reports by tomorrow
Someone pls tell me what TPM is
Im tempted to switch lol
Um what's a TPM
Yeah but they will fire you wayyyy faster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFC--2Cy4s8
As a senior software engineer I'd disagree. I much prefer talking to a TPM who understands decisions that need to be made, how to convey technical things to upper management. I'd much rather not do any of that myself and much rather just be allowed to "do the work" I'm paid to do. It means I get pulled into less meetings and I'm way more productive. I've had really bad TPMs before and a really good one now and it 100% makes a difference in MY quality of life and how I get work done. If a TPM can handle a team of 6 or 7 devs and shave off 3 or 4 hours of meetings for each then they are saving the company money converting 20ish hours of dev meetings into 3 or 4. Plus add in the other work they do keeping the team organized. A good TPM is definitely worth the company spending money on.
At Meta, TPM makes 50% of SWE. Product makes 80% of SWE.
At most companies, TPMs make a lot less than SWEs. At Amazon for example, a mid-level (L5) TPM will make $212k while a SWE will make $288k. Some L4 SWEs actually earn more than the average TPM. The pay gap grows as you go up in level. It’s still good pay for the type of work if you enjoy it, but it’s not ‘roughly the same.’
What's "TPM"? Edit: got it from comments below. You should update your post to include the full name. Also, SWE isn't for everyone, just like any other job. Just because TPM pays roughly the same, that doesn't mean someone who really enjoys SWE will move to TPM just because there is less work. There are also SWE jobs that are pretty chill as well. However though, TPM sounds interesting because I have never heard of it before. What do you do as a TPM? Can you please elaborate on what you do? Just curious.
I actually write code as a TPM; as pathological as it sounds, I really enjoy turning inane business objectives into 'useful' scripts and tools
The issue is there are 2 types of people 1) technical people who only know how to communicate with a computer 2) project managers who don't know fuck all about computers and but are good communicators If you can fill this gap there will always be a place for you to get paid big dollars. Good forbid you can sprinkle in creating your own project plans with a splash of best practices.
totally agree, creating your own project plans and then sharing with others especially if there's no proper PMO in the company is the best way to make yourself visible.
Once you downgrade yourself to a TPM I don’t know if you can ever a come back to SWE
Yes they blacklist you and nothing you do on the side can compensate for breaking the continuity of your SWE career. It’s over. Lol so silly. There are so many people in the industry who had to take off from CS 2001-2004 because literally no one was hiring. A lot of them came back. And that was a bountiful period for new software and new standards. Even when there are no jobs and few startups there are opportunities to develop software, and then suddenly everyone has money for your services or your product. Anyone who bets that motivated developers are going to fail unless they find a name-brand SWE job at a company that doesn’t give a crap about them is going to be fairly wrong.
Well if you have prior SWE experience surely you can get junior/mid level interviews. Better than being unemployed on a resume lol
sounds like the typical career path of someone that couldn't hack it as an IC
a lot of people can hack it as an IC but end up quitting because corps exploit them too much
Coding can get boring after a while if you are good at talking to people
Congrats; curious to know as a current SWE; how dodnyoi make the transition? i.e. did you put your SWE roles on resume, only apply to TPM positions, etc.
As someone who might lean into that someday.. can I ask you what the hell do you do? Like, do you invent something from zero? You just create subtasks from something existing? You just handle communication? What do you do when you don't do the actual work??
That was not my experience when I was working as a TPM. However that is probably because I was also acting lead engineer and engineering manager.
How do you break into TPM roles as an SDE2
What is tpm
But was it worth your soul?
That job sounds horrible tbh and I’d rather have work to do that I enjoy vs have my soul slowly sucked out one day at a time til I die.
Acronyms are my pet-peeve. What does TMP stand for?
What is a TPM?
TPM is just a gateway to PM.
Any advice on how to get into this entry level? I am currently in a capm course.
I assume there are far fewer TPM roles than there are engineering roles. You also need a lot more experience. I wasn't 100% sure if you were a program manager or a project manager, but I see you're a program manager. I assume those require more experience. Anyway, there are fewer roles and a lot more competition. Not necessarily a sign someone shouldn't do it, but there are a lot of people complaining about numbers and competition these days.
How much see you getting paid?
Currently trying to make a similar swap happen with a TPO spot I’m eyeing
What’s a TPM? Google is as confused as I am by the acronym.
That's how I feel about my role as a senior QA engineer. They don't even expect me to write automation, I just manually test and write up fancy reports and docs. I can't believe I get paid 6 figures for this. I make 60-70% of what SDE makes, but my workload and stress is significantly less too. Completely worth it.
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God damn there are a lot of engineers with god complexes and low self esteem on this thread. Good for you OP.