Here is the main thing you need to know:
You are at the service of your team, not the other way around.
Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
81–90 of 186 posts
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#82Couple recommendations that are popular with people who've been managing for a while: - Managing Humans by Michael Lopp - The Managers Path by Camille Fournier - Radical Candor by Kim Scott I think the netflix culture deck is also helpful: https://igormroz.com/documents/netflix_culture.pdf And if you want to peak at how other managers manage check this out: https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valle…
Camille’s book is great.
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#83Developer: you go in with dreams of building new systems but you end up ... debugging code
Manager: instead of either of the above you end up... debugging people
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#84In the past 13 years have gone from dev -> tech lead -> manager -> director -> VP/CTO at startups (50-250 people). Here are my tips: - Your job is to provide effective technical solutions to business problems via managing a team(s) of engineers, everything else is an extension to that. - Managing is nothing like coding and requires a completely different mindset and skill set. - Authority comes through respect and un…
Great answer. I transitioned to a lead role recently, on a small but growing engineering team.
Agree about being conservative on estimates, trading off code quality. I did jump in and code during a stressful situation, not ideal.
Any tips about how to report to higher management? And how to tell if things are going well/bad on the team, esp in a startup?
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#85Assuming you're in the software space, management is still writing software, but your language is people, not machines.
People are not machines. They're extremely heterogeneous, they have emotions, they wear out, they burn out, life happens and they can't dedicate themselves to the tasks you care about as much as you might want them to. But the advantage is they have all the creativity and brilliance of a human mind, and can make things machines can't. Often times, I find the task of a manager looks less like scripting and a lot more like environment creation: build a space where your best and brightest can be happy and motivated, and you can trust them to fill that space.
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#86Does becoming a manager usually mean more recruiting/interviews also? Any tips about how to recruit, internally or externally? How to add to or complement the current team?
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#87It might sound odd, but you can save yourself a whole lot of trouble by learning to keep your facial expression neutral no matter what you hear or see. Communication occurs in a variety of ways and not communicating the wrong thing is important. Its hard to communicate confidence to your team when your immediate reaction to some news is a facial expressions that tells your team something else. Your a manager now, eve…
Is this some management 101 "best practice"? My manager does this and it is annoying. Facial expressions are an important part of communication and acting like an emotionless robot does not help in times of need.
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#88I 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…
The most effective days of management seem to involve so much compromise that everyone is frustrated with me. It’s got not no real hit for solving problems. Also it is all fuzzy and human. A lot of devs that are pure engineers find management maddening. Something that helps me is writing daily. Keeping personal strike lists and logs. This is private and in a journal, NOT jira or whatever. I track my daily emotional s…
This is super interesting. Something I've started doing on a smaller level. I've already made good progress on managing my emotional state (thus productivity) and want to improve the habit. When do you schedule to write or log? Specific times in a day? If you had a template I'd assume it would include mood tracking and todo list, anything else? Thanks for sharing this.
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#89It might sound odd, but you can save yourself a whole lot of trouble by learning to keep your facial expression neutral no matter what you hear or see. Communication occurs in a variety of ways and not communicating the wrong thing is important. Its hard to communicate confidence to your team when your immediate reaction to some news is a facial expressions that tells your team something else. Your a manager now, eve…
Is this some management 101 "best practice"? My manager does this and it is annoying. Facial expressions are an important part of communication and acting like an emotionless robot does not help in times of need.
Not to be an emotionless robot, that is bad, and I really hate that too. I mean more in the communicate what you want not what you don't want. Friendly, confident, happy are good; angry, surprised, despair are not so good.
You are correct that its communication, just don't say stupid things with your face.
Re: Ask HN: Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
#90Most 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…
You manage systems, you lead people.
Steven Covey