Engineering management in disarray
Pros
Good quality engineering team. Potential to work on interesting problems (but highly dependent on political support of management). HR has decent respect for work-life balance, although one of my managers did not. Stable and growing business provides decent job security.
Cons
In a little over three years, my team went through five managers. The first one had a decent road map but apparently had trouble selling it to mid to upper management. He eventually left in frustration and got a better job in another company. His replacement was managing several other teams at the same time. He discarded our entire road map and made the team focus on peripheral issues. When I explained my career goal to him, he replied asking why I wanted to do that. The team requested a replacement for him, but that was denied and most of the team quit. He was eventually promoted and we got a transitional manager, who introduced scrum and selected a developer from another team to manage us. The fourth manager had a focused road map and led the team well for a while. He tried to practice a technique of making the whole team work on the same single project at the same time, which is apparently a pet idea of some higher ranking manager in the company. That failed miserably for reasons that are well-known to anyone who has read *The Mythical Man-Month*. After a while, he mysteriously stopped having one-on-ones with us, and a few erratic decisions were made, it's not clear whether by him or by someone higher up in management. He too left in frustration and got a better job in another company. And his replacement too was managing other teams at the same time and scrapped most of the team's road map. The new manager said he would not support the concept of individualized areas of focus and the whole team would have the same career goals. Nevertheless, one team member, who apparently had political support from above, was still allowed to keep working on his own pet project separately. In short, a train wreck.
