Some organizations don’t know whether they want an engineering manager or a lead engineer.

I’ve seen this manifest as:

• Interviewing a would-be manager for their ability to code like a lead engineer
• Asking inwardly-focused, process-disinterested, high-output engineers to sprout the capacity to direct, nurture, and manage other humans

And, perhaps more pathologically, I interviewed at organizations where they knew they needed both, but interviewed aggressively in hopes of landing one and getting the other “for free” (with pay to match).

Doing any of these behaviors hurts the organization, the currently-staffed employees, and wastes enormous amounts of time.

Consider:

Why?

Given this simple matrix, it becomes very clear that miscasting the role, in either case, is catastrophic. Executives or upper-middle management should be aware of these pathologies. So, why do so many organizations get it wrong?