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Tech Careers

Engineering Managers in 2024: Burnout and More Duties

Two out of three of participants in Jellyfish's new survey said they experienced burnout in the last 12 months. One of three managers in a LeadDev report are working longer hours now.
Jun 17th, 2024 10:00am by and
Featued image for: Engineering Managers in 2024: Burnout and More Duties
Image by Lucas Santos from Unsplash.

If you’re a middle or line manager and you’ve taken on more work and are enjoying it less these days, you’ve got a lot of company.

Two reports released this week indicated that a substantial share of engineering managers are taking on increased responsibilities.

Several data points in particular indicate that engineering managers are being spread thin. While 75% of engineers who responded to a survey by Jellyfish released Wednesday said their work is rewarding, only approximately 37% of engineering managers reported that they feel the same.

Nearly two of every three participants in the Jellyfish survey — 65% — reported experiencing burnout in the previous 12 months.

And 35% of survey participants in a new engineering leadership report released by LeadDev this week said they are working longer hours than they did in 2023.

Among the other findings in the LeadDev report:

  • Seventy-one percent of survey participants said they have taken on increased responsibilities at work or have more direct reports and/or teams reporting to them as compared to two years ago.
  • Nearly half — 48% — of engineering managers have taken on more direct reports over the past 12 months.
  • More experienced engineers who are not officially managers — with titles such as “staff” or “principal”— were most likely (73%) to say they have more responsibilities than last year.

LeadDev’s report drew results from more than 1,100 engineering leaders in March and April. Fifty-three percent of respondents were from Europe (including the U.K.), 32% from the U.S., and the rest from elsewhere.

Jellyfish’s report summarized results from 604 full-time professionals in engineering, including individual contributors, managers, and executives. Nearly half — 46% — of participants work for organizations with at least $50 million in annual recurring revenue. The survey was conducted between February and April by Kickstand Research.

Hiring and Layoff Picture: It's Complicated

The reasons for the increased burdens on engineering managers cannot be easily blamed on tech layoffs, as the two surveys painted contrasting pictures of organizations’ headcounts.

In the LeadDev survey, 44% of respondents said their company has had layoffs in the last two years. However, 29% said they have also seen some hiring increases in that time period.

By comparison, 57% of participants in the Jellyfish survey of engineering leaders said their engineering team has increased in size over the past 12 months, as compared to 14% who reported declines.

Furthermore, 55% expect the headcount of their department to increase over the next 12 months, and 67% saw increased budgets for their engineering organizations this year.

A difference in metrics helps explain the divergence of findings between the two reports. Jellyfish looked at a one-year period and evaluated the net change in total headcount. LeadDev focused on a two-year period of time and didn’t quantify the size of the hiring/firing.

Regardless of individual company hiring plans, fears about job security are real. According to LeadDev, 39% are more concerned about job security than they were last year, while 11% are less concerned.

Middle Management: Bearing the Burdens

LeadDev also asked about headcount but only focused on people holding manager roles over the last year. Almost as many organizations experienced a net increase (18%) as a decrease (20%) in their managerial ranks. However, digging deeper into the data, we find that the middle management tier appears to have suffered the heaviest losses:

  • Among the companies that have had layoffs, 66% say that there has been a net reduction in middle management roles, 64% reported a decline in line management and only a 20% decline in upper management.
  • Organizations that saw either a positive or negative change in the number of managerial roles/titles were 67% more likely to have cut middle managers instead of making an increase at that level.
  • Larger organizations were more likely to have lost middle managers in the past 12 months. At 1,000-plus employee companies that reported layoffs, 80% reduced middle management, and 72% line management. Only 4% reported reductions in upper management.
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TNS owner Insight Partners is an investor in: Jellyfish.
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