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The truth about being a manager

sofiakodar.github.io

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Re: The truth about being a manager

#31

Post by smcg »

jawns wrote: post #12

I think this might scare some people off from management unnecessarily. A lot of what's being described here is important for new managers to understand, but eventually, once you find your footing, you can start to determine where the rules can bend. For instance, a lot of new managers struggle because they want to keep a foot in the IC world. I think most new managers would benefit from stepping away from the code f…

It confirmed that management would be a bad choice for me. If anything I think that the article is going to give people the ability to say "no" if they are on the fence. I don't want to sell. I don't want to politic. I don't want to know about re-orgs before the employees whom it actually affects. I don't want to lay off someone because my team's profits are being siphoned by others. I don't want to carry upper management's BS and tell it to my coworkers with a straight face. And if you do, I hope it keeps you up a little bit at night.

Re: The truth about being a manager

#33

Post by joshmarlow »

One of the more counter-intuitive parts of management that I've found is that your focus shifts from delivering a technical outcome to care-taking a team that delivers technical outcomes. It's a meta-function.

A related physics metaphor - in general as you move from IC to SR to management, your focus shifts from changing the position to changing the velocity and acceleration of those around you.

Re: The truth about being a manager

#34

Post by MarceliusK »

jkingsbery wrote: post #25

Mostly agree with this article. When I mentor people about managing, some other bits I also usually mention: 1. 'You’re not “part of the team” anymore.' - You're not part of the software dev team, but if you're doing things right, you're part of a team, just a new one. I encourage manager mentees of mine to read a book "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" which talks about figuring out who your "first team" is. Even in envi…

In a way management should be treated more like a role change than a one-way promotion

Re: The truth about being a manager

#35

Post by hypfer »

> You will encounter business decisions you think are terrible but you still have to sell to your team.

This is incorrect. You don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't.

There can be situation in which stuff will need to happen regardless, yes, but that does not require lying and probably works even better when one does not lie.

The post then continues with more such falsehoods and incorrect learnings one could deconstruct, but the spirit of all of them is mostly the same, making that mostly redundant.

Managing is hard and it's easy to fall into these tropes. But they are just that. Easy tropes. They are not the way.

Re: The truth about being a manager

#36

Post by MarceliusK »

juancn wrote: post #28

All leadership is like that. Even if you're not a people manager. I'm an IC in a technical leadership position, all of these hold true with the added constraint that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I hold no carrot or stick. I have to persuade, convince and influence, I have no reports (nor I want them) so to get anything done I need to get people to align and understand the value on its merits.

If people follow your direction, it is usually because the argument made sense, the trust was already there or you did the unglamorous work of aligning everyone beforehand

Re: The truth about being a manager

#37

Post by skybrian »

rav wrote: post #4

There's a note at the end: > As always, this blog post is written by me, without any AI, so all errors are my own. However, the illustrations in the post are clearly made by generative AI, are they not?

Yes, but I don’t read blog posts for the art. As placeholders they’re not terrible.

Re: The truth about being a manager

#38

Post by bluGill »

bironran wrote: post #7

Similar when you climb up the technical path as well, beyond staff engineer. It gets lonely, not many peers, not part of a team, you have to be careful about what you say and to whom as your words carry a lot of significance.

At staff you are still spending a lot of your time working with people. You are working on technical problems but you should be teaching them how to do it.

If you want to be heads down working on code all day stick to senior engineer.

Re: The truth about being a manager

#39

Post by sivalus »

I agree with this, but the social dynamic just sucks. I would much rather the manager be part of the team, not feel lonely, be able to joke around about safe things (so, not politics, religion, or identity), and even complain a bit.

>You will not get the training you need

This is just plain unacceptable. It is likely due to companies thinking everyone is replaceable and not investing in their employees though. I don't know how companies can simultaneously want managers to practice the sanitized humanity detailed here while also not providing training to do what they want.

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