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Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

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Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#131

Post by alexbanks »

tgittos wrote: post #48

I made the jump from developer to team lead, and all the advice here is great. One thing that I wasn't prepared for and that I don't see other people mentioning (on a cursory glance at the replies) is that your reward function for job satisfaction changes, and the feedback loop length changes. By that, I mean that for me personally I derived most of my job satisfaction from solving tricky problems, fixing bugs and im…

I want to go back. I'm not enjoying the change (or at least my company's implementation of management). It's not even that the feedback loop's length is different, it's just that there isn't any. If my team performs better, the expectations are just upped and we're still "needing improvement". Other managers here have said the same thing.

I feel like I am not a leader; I am not positively impacting people's careers or lives. I feel like I'm asking people to update their tickets and telling PMs we "can't just" add something else.

I'm not happy, and I'm getting to the point at the job where when I wake up, I linger in bed for a bit, thinking/negotiating on whether I should go in.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#132

Post by paulgrimes1 »

alexbanks wrote: post #131
tgittos wrote: post #48

I made the jump from developer to team lead, and all the advice here is great. One thing that I wasn't prepared for and that I don't see other people mentioning (on a cursory glance at the replies) is that your reward function for job satisfaction changes, and the feedback loop length changes. By that, I mean that for me personally I derived most of my job satisfaction from solving tricky problems, fixing bugs and im…

I want to go back. I'm not enjoying the change (or at least my company's implementation of management). It's not even that the feedback loop's length is different, it's just that there isn't any. If my team performs better, the expectations are just upped and we're still "needing improvement". Other managers here have said the same thing. I feel like I am not a leader; I am not positively impacting people's careers o…

You don’t happen to work for a digital agency by any chance? I’ve seen multiple agencies botch implementing “management” after growing and needing to shift from a flat structure

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#133

Post by snarfy »

davismwfl wrote: post #5

Most important thing to me, learn the difference between leadership and management. A long time ago I was mentored by some great leaders who taught me the difference, and also taught me when to manage situations or specific people. Management isn't a bad word, but applied the way it is most places it should be. My goal with teams is to inspire them to make good choices, show them the right paths and help them succeed…

One metric I've found true about recognizing leadership is that a leader is someone you would follow. It seems trite but the thing to recognize is it's a property not defined by some quality of the leader but by all of the followers.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#135

Post by jalada »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #130
mathattack wrote: post #126

A basic podcast that I’ve found useful is Manager Tooks. It contains a lot of good habits and tools. Listen to it on your commute for a month or two and you’ll get the gist of it. The Effective Executive by Drucker is a great intro to leadership. He puts the role in the context of getting results. A couple other thoughts: 1 - Communicate the same message over and over. Do it verbally and in writing. 2 - Have weekly 1…

Weekly 1 on 1s with all reports is not useful or feasible. If you have 8 reports that's 10% of your work week swallowed.

Welcome to managing a team of eight people.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#136

Post by halbritt »

I started in tech as a network engineer. Eventually I ended up in a management position and thought I was doing pretty well simply because I was the most talented and knowledgeable person on the team, the team liked me, and I was able to mentor each of them. In truth, I wasn't doing much of a job at all, acting little more than a technical lead.

The second management role I took, I inherited a team of low performers. I had no idea what to do other than to demand better work from them eventually doing most of it myself and causing them to feel that they were incapable of being successful. I was a failure as a manager.

Following that I tucked my tail and moved into an IC role for a while. I read every management book I could find and eventually made my way back into management once I came to the conclusion that management, in and of itself, is a job that must be one's first priority. Getting work done becomes secondary.

I know I'm really echoing other comments already in this thread but it's worth repeating. Management is a skill that must be learned. It is entirely about doing what's necessary to make other people successful and often has very little to do with the practice of actually doing work.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#137

Post by khendron »

I attempted to make this change a few years back, and failed miserably.

What went wrong? For me, personally, the problem was still having too many developer duties. I had a full schedule of management duties to attend to, and a full schedule of development duties to attend to. I quickly began to burn out, and did a poor job on both. Although I excelled at some of my management duties, others were critically neglected due to lack of time. Specifically, at the manager level inter-team communication is important and I did a shitty job of it.

In hindsight, I should have dropped my developer duties completely. I didn't because my team didn't have the employee resources to meet its objectives. But attempting to take on critical-path development duties in order to fix the problem was the wrong thing to do. I did me no favours, nor did it help the company. Maybe I did it because I was more comfortable doing development than with the inter-team communications duties I was neglecting. In any case, we would all have been better off if I had spent more time paying attention to my team's place in the rest of the company, and simply pushed back on schedule and resources.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#138

Post by evadne »

The most important thing in my opinion is to thoroughly understand people, those who report to you, and who you are responsible for: their biases, fears, motivations, habits, and strengths. Upon this basis you can form a cohesive strategy for any task at hand, while at the same time ensuring that the team grows with you during the temporary alliance they have formed with the firm.

At the end of the day, code has to work, and it might be easy to lose sight of this in a myopic and cacophonous world.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#139

Post by ummonk »

davismwfl wrote: post #5

Most important thing to me, learn the difference between leadership and management. A long time ago I was mentored by some great leaders who taught me the difference, and also taught me when to manage situations or specific people. Management isn't a bad word, but applied the way it is most places it should be. My goal with teams is to inspire them to make good choices, show them the right paths and help them succeed…

At first I thought that you were talking about the people management track vs technical leadership track. I guess "management" and "leadership" are overloaded terms.

Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?

#140

Post by shadowwolf007 »

mikekchar wrote: post #119
shadowwolf007 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest a lot of your suggestions are probably very solid but come off like the "Find a mechanic you can trust" solution. By that I mean the advice of "find a mechanic you can trust" only is applicable to someone already familiar enough to know how to determine if a mechanic is trustworthy. A lot of your advice is probably 100% valuable, but as someone working through a lot of these same concerns I'm stuck wonde…

Our mechanic was ripping us off. There's this scam where they overtighten the screws on the oil pan and crack the gasket. Oil leaks out very slowly and in some cars ends up on the leads to the battery. This corrodes the leads. They then charge you for a new battery and tell you that there is a electrical problem in your car that will cost thousands of dollars, etc, etc. Luckily I knew about this scam and when our car…

I'm really glad you were able to avoid that scam. That's super scummy.

I built this premise because I do read a lot of car forums and, quite frequently, people would ask "Hey my car is doing XYZ" and a lot of responses would be "Take your car to a mechanic you can trust." To me this is basically telling them "Already know the answer to your question."

One time a guy answered basically saying "Hey, go find a guy who has a car in his driveway he works on every weekend, bring a 6 pack, and ask him for an opinion." It totally opened my eyes to how different types of advice really change people's perspective.

I believe that the value is in explaining what a person who loves what they do actually looks like.

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