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?

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[–] 10 points 3 months ago (12 children)

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.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    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 decisions

    A good manager points the org in a direction and let's those hired for roles do their job in working to that objective.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    2 things come to my mind

    1. Social pressure - There's a need to be "seen". Being a technical expert on ground doesn't make you " seen".
    2. Money - The higher you go, the more money you make.
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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)
    1. 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.

    1. Money - The higher you go, the more money you make.

    I'm questioning why this is the case ;)

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    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.

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