Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?

I'll focus on your question of how to move into a management. Or at least, my perspective.

To get into management, you generally need experience in management. I know that sounds silly but it's true. If I'm interviewing for a management position and I have two candidates, one who has experience and one who doesn't, I'll take the person with experience.

So your question becomes how do I get the experience. I would start with finding a work place that values the concept of promoting from within.

From there you need to advertise your intentions of wanting to move into a leadership role, without being annoying. You need to socialize and relationship build. Gently broadcast your intentions.

You need to be able to tell people why you want this role. It needs to be clear reason. This is more or less your sales pitch.

If you do these things listen to people's feedback. It should be enthusiastic and positive. If it's not it means that people don't see your potential yet. Figure out why.

This is your feedback loop. Take training, work on your presentation skills. Find another mentor. Keep building your network. Ask your manager if you can take over a meeting or take over a small responsibility for them. Gently reshape your role into a lead role. Do this until you get some positive feedback.

From there start to interview. Your first couple of interviews are likely going to be terrible. Don't lose heart. Ideally these are internal interviews. If you don't get the job reach out to the hiring manager to get open and honest feedback.

Keep interviewing and keep working on all of the above. With a little luck one of your connections will pay off and someone will take a chance.

I agree with this. As you're working in a small startup why not ask if you can just change your title? Unless there is some obvious hierarchy it couldn't hurt to ask to change it to say 'Digital Project Manager'. If you show willingness (and not ask for an immediate pay rise) there's no harm in them 'promoting' you. I know from working at quite a few agencies they generally love to show off their 'X Manager' to their clients. And the fact they got you on the cheap makes them warm and fuzzy inside. Once you have had a fair crack at the whip you can ask for the salary commensurate with your experience. And if they so no. You can go elsewhere and start your new journey.

Have a good long think about why you want a management role. It is very different, despite the fact that if you become good at a contributor role you often just get promoted into management (I did).

If you like mentoring people, sharing knowledge, delegating tasks (yes, even the tech work you love) and dealing with things blocking the team like politics with other departments then go for it.

It can be rewarding but it can also be very draining and stressful, and isn’t for everyone, and I wish someone would have prepared me better the first time.

I built a game about being a manager at FAANG - https://devmanager.carrd.co/

I'm working as a manager and transitioned to this role for the same reason you mentioned. However, I had been talking to my LM for some time, and he found an opportunity for me.

Simplest way for you to get one more mentee and form a team of 3. The next step is to add one more person to the team. Once your current team lead receives a promotion, you will be next in line for their role. That's the path I'd follow.

For reading, I'd recommend everything from Will Larson ( https://lethain.com ).

As for attitude and behaviours for making the jump, it's a combination of actively looking for opportunities (that's the easy part), and positioning yourself as someone who is an obvious choice for such a position, which is basically when you consistently have an attitude and reputation of total ownership, supporting others, never complaining or taking it easy and instead always thinking and delivering at a wider scope, being the person people come to for making a decision on what and how to do, rather than a person who is being told what and how to do.

Some people do all of that naturally. Lucky them. Others don't, and it's a journey to adjust. You don't need to be a "natural", but if you aren't you need to learn to behave like one before you can credibly go into a leadership position.