Programmer to Manager

I managed to negotiate about 25% of my time for development (some of it quite high-level architecture, but often still writing actual code); the rest was personnel management, planning and organisation, liaising with sales and project management, sometimes attending sales pitches, and training other teams. I actually had a great time, met people from all over the organisation, got some travel out of it, and learnt a hell of a lot, almost all of which has been beneficial to me later in my career.

Personnel management was definitely a real challenge - in ways I absolutely had not predicted (we had some, shall we say, "interesting" characters on the team, and I got to know the HR people very well by the end of it).

After 18 months, I moved to another company to take a role which ostensibly should have been similar but ended up migrating back into a more-or-less pure development role as a technical lead. The skills I learnt then - especially anything to do with personnel, sales, and planning - are still extremely useful to me as a software consultant / small business guy today.

I don't know if this route is for everyone - I was already naturally pretty confident and articulate, and for developers who aren't especially born that way, I think a lot of management tasks and managerial expectations are probably scary and unpleasant. But for me, at least, I enjoyed it and have few complaints.

I wouldn't make a jump into pure management that early. I would fear that it would do two things, both bad:

1. Prevent you from developing the necessary technical experience, instincts, and judgment that will serve you well later in your career.

2. Prevent you from "tasting management" and deciding whether or not you like it. Many don't, and that's perfectly OK. I am in the category of "initially reluctant managers" which makes me both good and bad. Good because I'm not in it for the power or title. (Managers who are can be incredibly corrosive.) Bad because there are some parts of managing that are necessary but distasteful to me and so I naturally deprioritize them or am less than good at them. Things like figuring out something personal about someone on your team and figuring out how to motivate them or how to help them break through what's blocking them. Those can be a struggle for me, as I'm a natural engineer, not a "people person". I see some of my peers who got into management out of desire, and while they're not nearly as strong technically, they appear effortless when dealing with people and their idiosyncrasies.

Being able to "try on" managing a team at your current role is possibly great. If you like it and are good at it, you learned something, but you still should proceed slowly with the transition.

If you don't like it and decide to stay technical, there's no harm whatsoever in giving that up (at your current or next job). I hear in interviews pretty regularly, "they were pushing me into management and I like to stay technical". When I have a technical role (which is always), that's music to my ears.

After having been a manager for a few years now, I realize my tech skills have degraded. So I do side projects programming things I want to do, the way I want to do it to keep my skills up to date.

The other thing I think I'm realizing is that being a manager is sort of generic role. Most career paths forward at this point look rather boring and mundane. Even if it is a new project - some sort of skunkworks effort - using some new tech and solving really cool problems - managing that isn't much different than managing a team maintaining a 10 year old system. Maybe morale is easier to manage.

Think about what your next position would be after taking a management role - your options become limited. Other companies may see you as "manager" and not as "developer" regardless of skills, perhaps thinking subconsciously that "if I hire this guy, he is going to want my job".

Management is much more of a service role (and much less of a directly creative role), but I've found it to be a good fit because you get to serve a bunch of wicked smart people, which is super fun.

Good management is all about reducing total cognitive load for your engineers: keeping stakeholders off their back, taking heat when things go awry, being a crap umbrella for the team so they can work, etc. Done right it's immensely rewarding, but definitely not in the way programming is.

Also - in my experience the number one thing you want to look for in vetting a 'good' management job is the quality of the executive you'll be reporting to. Are they a strong, fair leader? If yes, go for it. If no... you're gonna have a bad time.

He cared deeply for the team, set up growth paths for everyone that wanted them, acted as a crap umbrella when shit hit the fan, praised publicly and provided very constructive criticism in private.