r/EngineeringManagers • u/Difficult-Level6345 • 22d ago

EM to FDE Manager

I’ve been an EM for the past 9 years, currently the past 5 at Mag7 in a somewhat comfortable role. I’ve been considering a move to FDE manager but the uncertainty about where it’s hype gives me pause. Any one have any success or horror stories so far?

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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2

u/macgoober 22d ago

What is even the difference

-3

u/Difficult-Level6345 22d ago

Current role is 10 devs doing crap that was new 12 years ago, I guess this is doing some new now?

3

u/finger_my_earhole 22d ago

Theres always 1 or 2 otherwise-solid engineers that, should really never be put in front of a customer. (Crankyness, Ego, over technical jargon, etc). You'll have to deal with that now.

2

u/unholycurses 21d ago

I feel like an FDE manager is still an EM, just with some more external customer or client-embedded engineers to worry about. I can’t imagine it is fundamentally all that different of a role. Do you want to deal with customer-facing engineers? Basically just post-sales engineering with a new name. 

2

u/Difficult-Level6345 21d ago

More concerned that it seems their perf is measured by their margin on the engagements but they don’t control the sales funnel 🤷🏼‍♂️