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Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#32Get a new job. Join a large multinational company with known reputation for developing management skills. Management skills can be learned, and not all companies are created equal - some value good management, some only focus on short term results.
I did this when I was 4 years into my engineering career. After 20 years I ended up a CTO at a large (~40bn) company. There are good things about it, but I am still the happiest when I have time to code and build stuff. Managing others is nearly entirely about emotional intelligence, empathy, and it's better to be an extrovert as your days will mostly be all meetings. Money is fine, but I am not sure I'd do it again if I were to start from scratch. With all the hindsight I think I'd advise myself to join a startup instead.
In any case, don't neglect the company culture. If you want to learn management, don't do it in places with zero strategy and short term focus - you will only learn to never attempt it again, most likely.
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#33Start a company and hire people
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#34Have 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 i…
This. It’s likely not worth it for most folks considering management. There’s no pay incentive. Significantly more people politics (managing up, down, side-ways), you’re in meetings all day AND expected to do other administrative stuff which will naturally fall outside your 9-5. The worst part: once you experience the power trip, it’s also hard to go back. Even after knowing fully well that you’re getting the wrong e…
disagree on the pay incentive, my salary went up A LOT, with additional benefits like company car, more holidays, bigger pension plan contributions and stock options.
But yeah, it is a different job. I mainly do it because I value the team where I was at, and believe that I can bring them next level and work on better and cooler projects in the company (instead of them always being delivered by crappy cheap consultants). Its satisfying to build the atmosphere and facilitate people becoming high performing at their job. And yes I dabble too much on the technical details and should stop messing with source code after hours oh well
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#35Get a new job. Join a large multinational company with known reputation for developing management skills. Management skills can be learned, and not all companies are created equal - some value good management, some only focus on short term results. I did this when I was 4 years into my engineering career. After 20 years I ended up a CTO at a large (~40bn) company. There are good things about it, but I am still the ha…
After a handful of years into my dev career, i moved to management, and i have regretted it especially the last few years. I have been in either been a team manager or prod. manager (indiovidual contrib.) role the last 15 or so years...and now wish i could go back to some sort of dev. role...but the concern i have is rusty coding joints (even though i do fun scripting on the side on the weekends) and likely a non-trivial salary cut.
@aenis While i did not reach CTO level at a 40bn company, i did play a similar role once at a small non-profit, and some parts were fulfilling but others were def. not - at lewast for me. However, you said it best when you stated, "I am still the happiest when I have time to code and build stuff". I dislike so many meetings, hate work politics, but the 2 areas where i shine and/or am fulfilled are coaching team members, and building stuff (coding, etc.)! Man, i miss more directly building stuff!
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#36Have 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 i…
The problem is that there isn't really a well-defined or stable career path upwards from IC that isn't some variation of role handling politics/delegation/process improvement, and because you're expected to "age out" of being an IC you really have no choice.
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#37Have 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 i…
“I’m sorry” - Most managers I know when finding out I was promoted from IC to manager
Obviously delivered tongue in cheek, but it’s a hard job and it’s not for everyone. I second everything the parent says and also add that your timescales are different. If you think waiting for a build is long, try waiting for your efforts to improve a directs’ communication skills to take hold. generally the most important, and the most fun, work of being manager takes years for feedback instead of hours.
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#38Read: The Mythical Man Month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
Even though the book is old, the concepts in it haven't changed: Developers need to work with minimal interruption, management needs to serve development.
Here's the thing: "Team lead" and "manager" are very, very different roles. "Team lead" is very hands on, because you need to be able to jump into the code base to help team members understand the bits; and you need to be able to speak to management with detailed technical knowledge.
(As you can probably infer, I've been a team lead and really, really enjoyed it.)
In my case, "team lead" was about a 50/50 split between hands-on coding and leadership. At times, it was basically me doing the hardest parts of development with assistants who I would directly assign tasks. Other times, I worked with other developers and directly mentored them in tasks because I had the most experience in the code they were working with. Other times, I was merely a peer making sure that process was followed.
At one point I had to "manage up" and explain what the boundaries are between QA and development. This was mostly to avoid situations where other developers were spending a week scratching their heads trying to reproduce a bug. It turned my reputation from being "difficult" to being a leader overnight; because (surprise surprise) sometimes you need to tell QA that their responsibility is to clearly communicate bugs.
As far as management, part of it is making sure there is just enough process that people can hand off work from one person to the next. The processes need to be flexible so they don't get in the way, and they don't exist for the sake of existing. It comes down to things like making sure bugs are documented so that someone doesn't spend a week trying to figure out how to reproduce it; and that the actual steps to reproduce aren't buried in a chain of 100 comments in a ticket. (But that's just part.)
The other part of management, and any leadership role, is realizing that you're not a boss. You merely have a more powerful role in a team, and you need to use your power wisely. Everyone should feel like they are doing what they believe is right.
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#39The quickest way up the management ladder for a coder is to be enthusiastic, productive, and incompetent. Your teammates will move heaven and earth to promote you into leadership as a way to reduce your blast radius.
Re: Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
#40For 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 complai…
> 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. Nicely put, but can be also considered as a warning. If it doesn't come "naturally" to you, do you really want a leadership role? You will need to learn, fake and struggle to achie…
I hate this sort of logic. Sounds far too much like social darwinism.
Sometimes things that are worth doing are hard.