If you're coming into engineering management from engineering (the most common path) you're moving from managing computers, which always do exactly what you tell them to do, to managing people - a very, very different kind of thing!
I have enormous respect for the skill of people who do this job really well.
You’re right - it is not the job for everybody. Perhaps the perverse incentives pushing folks into management for career growth have contributed to lot of human-job misalignment and to this narrative of almost superhuman effort. In what I’ve seen, EM culture tends to keep building that myth up.
Any job is sometimes frustrating, taxing, etc, no argument there either. Big plus one to computers
winning on predictability, but humans get the point on autonomy (EM just needs to let go of the idea of telling anyone what they must do). But fundamentally, assuming the personality traits match (a lot is learnable), it is no rocket science, just people.
PS i reread earlier comment and see how it can come off. Not speaking as a engineer who doesn’t understand their manager’s job, but as someone who has been doing it for a decade and managed/mentored/coached number of newer EMs on the way :)
Very much disagree on that point.
If you're coming into engineering management from engineering (the most common path) you're moving from managing computers, which always do exactly what you tell them to do, to managing people - a very, very different kind of thing!
I have enormous respect for the skill of people who do this job really well.