If you're starting to do technical management after only 2 or 3 years working as a coder, I would say that's a bad move. Project management, people management - all fine, but it's extremely unlikely you have the depth of experience required to be providing technical direction for any kind of a large project
Programmer to Manager
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Programmer to Manager
#12Is it because someone has identified you as having leadership potential or because no one else wants to be the manager?
If the former, thank them for the assessment and leave to start your own company, even a tiny one. You will learn more about management and less about impedance matching the (dys)functions of existing organizations.
If the latter, leave to work elsewhere in a technical role, preferably under a good leader.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#13I've never been a manager, so I might well be completely wrong about this.
Anyway, I think that, even as a manager, you have the option of being involved in the design aspect of things, even though that heavily depends on the kind of developer you are. If you're anything like me, you love designing new features and writing specs that are as detailed as needed. That's something I've been doing quite frequently, to the point where, for the project I've been assigned to, I do most of the design of new features besides helping turning them into working code. I sit down and think through the problem at hand, jotting down ideas in plain text files and commit them to a dedicated folder in our project's source code repo, iterating over them as I think of more efficient/elegant/fast/simple ways to implement the feature and taking into account inputs from the other guys in the team. Again, I've never been a manager, but I think one could retain at least part of this role, provided she can cut through all the bullshit that working for a company entails (meetings where you decide nothing, chiefly).
OTOH, if management is not your thing it's not your thing, I guess. Then again, why not give it a try? Give it some time and see how that works out for you. If you like it, great. If you don't, you can always quit and the best that can happen is that your resume will look more interesting.
If I had to hire someone, I would give bonus points to someone who knows about managing and communicating with people, not only machines.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#14It really depends on your medium/long term career goals. If you want to become a manager it's better sooner than later. At least you'll have the time to learn the job properly.
The managers I liked the most so far were the least technical, but also the least opinated about how techs do their job, trusting our time estimates and other things that should be the developers/architects to decide.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#15From my experience every developer I know who ended up early as a manager, where not really happy with that. Most of them had the impression of being taken apart of technical challenges, and wasting their time in endless meetings.
Yes, I have been promised a promotion, and seem to be doing half of the management style stuff for it already. (Though to be fair I have 11 years experience).
Meetings, meetings, interruptions, absolutely no time for coding anything but simple one or two line changes. I am thinking of asking if I can have my old job back, and forget the promotion.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#16I usually don't get these types of questions. I you like engineering you stay as engineer, if you don't you try to find something else. If you just want more money try to find another engineering role.
If it's good or bad it depends on what you enjoy doing, nothing more nothing less.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#17Every manager of programmers I've known who was not themselves a competent programmer caused more harm than good. Take that for what you will.
I was sitting nodding me head with that, but I did have a manager who was a trained engineer. He was good. Knew enough to know what to ask you, but didn't assume that he knew enough to implement something - so left the fine details to the developers.
Now I have a team leader and group leader on top of that, who are in my opinion junior to intermediate level programmers who have gone for the management option early. They are annoying because they think they know how to solve a problem. Their requests come in the form of half though out solutions. "We need a new table in the database with these fields" as opposed to "I want to track this information and see it here". I have to translate these to higher level requirements, then work out the implementation details myself, as often their "solution" has flaws - we actually need two related table, or an additional field in an existing table - not the new table they have suggested.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#18I am actually in the same spot as you are - 2,5 years into programming and there is this opportunity to switch to another role. All the good managers I ever met or had the pleasure of working with were form a technical background - but they were working as the programmer for over 6-8 years each. It does stand for something.
It really boils down into one point: how happy would you be doing whatever you choose to do - there is nothing worse than a manager that hates his job or a programmer that doesn't feel the "drive" and passion to work.
Personally, I do not feel equipped to switch into management just yet - I am not confident enough I would make the best decisions, and I am leaning towards staying in my role a while longer, just to be totally sure I acquired all the necessary skills.
Re: Programmer to Manager
#19I wouldn't do it. Just let me have fun with my code editor :)
Re: Programmer to Manager
#20From my experience every developer I know who ended up early as a manager, where not really happy with that. Most of them had the impression of being taken apart of technical challenges, and wasting their time in endless meetings.
To some extent I think this type of experience is almost a rite of passage as developers become increasingly senior. I've had experiences along these lines as have most of my more seasoned colleagues. Management sounds OK from a distance, but when devs realize the kind of petty idiocy that will now dictate their daily life, it's normal to start running back to the compiler.
This may not be true in companies where engineers make up the upper echelons, but it invariably seems to occur in other types of companies. Management is a fundamental game change, and it's not about programming, and it's not about organization or efficiency. It's not about how good a manager may or may not be at getting things done. It's about psychology, the psychology of the people higher or lateral in the structure more than the psychology of a manager's direct downline (though both require cultivation).
The number one rule of management, and employment in general if you want to rise through the ranks, is ABC: Always Be Campaigning. If this doesn't sound good to you, you don't want to go into management, and you probably don't want to be a normal employee for very long either, because if you aren't doing it, you're going to pay sooner or later.
Everyone tries to tell themselves that their employer is different for reasons X, Y, and Z, but it's very unlikely to be true, no matter how nice you think your company is. I've even experienced the ramifications of not adopting ABC just in the last few weeks at another company that I swore was different this time and is lead by an old-school computer engineer who has been working since the 80s, and I'm not even trying to do any management-type stuff there, as I'm still reeling from last time I tried my hand at that.
It's hard to come out of these experiences without a massively pessimistic view of everyone else. Any time I try to allow myself to become optimistic and think, "Nah, these guys aren't like that", and no matter how much evidence I think I have, it all comes back to people being people and heavily favoring typical pre-programmed people responses, even if those responses may not be well-considered or well-informed. Biology is hard to override.
It seems if you want a different employment experience, you must compromise such that you are always campaigning.