For me, the hardest part of becoming a manager after being a senior dev for a long time, was to trust other people with development tasks that I know I could complete myself much faster and with higher quality - simply because I'm so familiar with the product and the codebase. Had to learn how to guide and mentor them as long as I still have the knowledge and expertise, before drifting away too far from the code.
That's so true, and so real. I've had a hard time over my career (and as a parent) letting people fail so they can learn. It's the old "give a man a fish" analogy.
I'm not interested in management at all. It's destroys your arm's-length commitment to your craft. You don't get to drive the car, you just get all the traffic tickets.
I agree not everyone is built for management but I think your analogy is a little skewed. I feel like driving the car vs. designing the car is a better analogy. And I think losing touch with your craft is entirely up to you. Good tech managers keep their skills up to date with POC projects and researching new technology. I find often times it is more enjoyable to not always be coding against strict deadlines when you are doing your own research or working out a proof of concept demo. It almost lends a more hobby like pace rather than working a scrum timeline and can be less stressful.
Only if that’s the sort of manager you choose to be. Many of us still dive in to the code, solve technical problems, and design solutions. Making as many engineers as effective as possible will improve overall output more than you ever could as an IC.
@@Sapphireleadershipadvisors, this right here. I know some folks say that you do two jobs poorly, but when you're also a good developer, you keep your saw sharpened. I made development my hobby. I love being an Engineering Manager, helping my team grow professionally, and trying to make work bearable or even enjoyable. But I stopped building my craft. I took it upon myself to keep developing and learning in my spare time. It's not my daily, but I still know and enjoy my craft.
@@Sapphireleadershipadvisors Our CEO likes to tell us how great he is at something that the engineers do for a living. He thinks that designing something simple is equivalent to being better than the engineers.
Thanks for sharing, best advice I can give for new managers is that when there is success, the credit goes to the team of people who did the work and unfortunately when there are failures, it's the managers/leaderships fault... you should have recognized and mitigated the risk sooner, trained people better, scheduled better, fought to prevent scope creep, or any one of a thousand other things that are normally beyond the control of the people doing the work.
@@Erik_The_Viking Sorry to hear that... companies need to realize that this kind of thing kills retention... usually this happens when a SuperStar programmer is promoted into a Manager and is not ready or wants the job.... and then team ends up with both a poor new manager and a gaping productivity hole left by the departure of the superstar from the team... the good news is that there are good managers out there and sometimes you may be able to help the new manager get better through open and honest conversation from the entire team... IMHO of course... the best managers for developers are the ones that do come from a development background.
The worst is the “Team/Tech Lead” role, which is nothing more than a cost cutting role. Forget what it’s supposed to be, in practice at most places, it’s a senior dev, mixed with software architect, team management, and project management duties. Every time I’ve seen it, you’re expected to do a full week of coding each week, have meetings that should be done by a full time manager (1 on 1s, performance reviews, higher level manager/director meetings, project manager meetings) on top of your team meetings, doing software architecture research and decisions, even dev ops depending on just how deep they’re trying to cut costs. You end up just being a dev who takes on the work of PMs and directors so that the company can get by with fewer PMs and directors. They can have a PM handling 5-6 projects, doing little more than gathering status reports and passing them up the chain, while the team/tech lead becomes the actual PM. Oh and it’s usually like a 10-15% pay increase for like 25-30% more work and stress.
Sadly, I agree completely. Have you seen my episode "Tech Lead is The WORST Job for Most Programmers?". It gets into that topic. I wonder if that's been the same experience you've had. ua-cam.com/video/0EvRSD1-jII/v-deo.html
@@HealthyDev I have. Great video and I totally agree. I’ve declined being “promoted” to team lead twice already. Hopefully they never make it an ultimatum as they have others where I’m at. As you mentioned in your video, it’s often a bad move for devs unless they really do want to become a full time manager and see this as a stepping stone. Even then, it’s not a fun middle-step and I’d advice any devs wanting to go full management to instead take courses/get certs for management then apply for a PM role and work up from there. It’s just too much context switching trying to do code, mentoring, admin work, all while spending 50%+ of the week in meetings.
During my over 25 years of being a developer, my experience of managers is unfortunately not that good. I have had probably 3 or so actually good managers and a lot of very bad ones.
Same. Luckily when I was a consultant for the latter 15 years of my career, most of my direct managers (consultants) were great. But often the client's managers had serious issues.
Management is a completely different job, and isn't necessarily a promotion from IC. It's a different path all together. What makes you a successful engineer doesn't always carry over into management. Sadly many try to do both and end up doing 2 jobs poorly. You need a different mindset and need to grow in other areas, especially EQ. Success goes to the team, failure is on the manager.
Thanks Jayme. I have worked as a QA manual / automation resource since 2003. In college, I studied business but I switched to IT after graduation when jobs were scare in the 1990's. I think for the next stage of my career, I would like to pursue management. You mentioned some very good topics. I agree that management requires a different skill set than an individual contributor. Managers should really be interested in helping their subordinates achieve their goals. If not, than they should be management consultants, not managers. Thanks again.
I am experienced non-technical manager, and totally agree with all your points on this, this is just confirmed with my practice. Maybe one more thing I would add that if you are project manager dealing with clients count yourself as you were half working on your client as part of his company, because satisfaction or dissatisfaction of client exactly on project manager can cost IT company loosing a project. It is a bit another as just delivering good working result with a team. It is way more.
I'm already sick of wanna-be-managrs who moved to management after a few years of being a relitively junior devs. They think that moving jira tickets is all what they required to do.
What you're describing (in my experience) is a project manager. Yes, unfortunately that position is more about managing the project - not people. But somehow they get the responsibility of doing both, without the training in both.
Every manager I have dealt with, I'd be clear to them about where I had great success and where I went down the wrong path. I found it was up to me to inform management where I'd shine, so I'd actually get the work I was good at. And it was nice when management actually knew this stuff, before I even spoke up. I use to code as one man, but as I got older, team work definitely gets you there faster.
I turned down management positions several times during my career. Once leaving a company because they said saying "no" wasn't an option. I think I could have been an above average manager (though that's a pretty low bar to clear) but my heart never would have been in it.
Hey that's great! It's important to know yourself and not get shoved into roles that don't make sense. I wish companies would stop doing this! It's counter to their goals, and they lose valuable people - like you!
Pushing good engineers into management was something that I saw as very wrong at IBM. An engineer couldn’t make more than a manager so every good engineer was promoted away to initially become a project leader and so on. As an external I told my manager that he should make a point that good engineers in his team can get management salaries. That way they didn’t need to rely on externals such as myself. He agreed with me but said: “this is the stupid American culture of this company, not something that we as IBM The Netherlands will change.”
I've been head of engineering for about five years. I still code for I guess 30% of my time, but almost EVERYTHING comes my way from remote training, customer meetings, cloud costs, holiday rotar etc. I really don't blame people for not wanting to do this
Currently my manager is working long long hours outside of the working hours, who wants to follow that path and take that responsibility? Is a very bad example to someone. Everyone in the department notice that is a structural fail and nobody wants to inherit that... By the way, for me is very hard to trust people too, I had really bad experience with people backstabing me, I don't want to take responsibility of anyone else... I'm happy learning new technologies and apply it to improve work, maybe teaching or mentoring, but not managing.
I would say working long hours outside of work is not necessary to be an effective manager. Your manager has some problems with work/life balance and setting boundaries.
Smaller teams can do well without a manager and can easily self organize. People often confuse admin duties of managers with leadership. A lot of managers don’t lead, they just do admin work.
@@Talk378Maybe. You’re not going to become CTO at most places unless you got a masters in business, which almost no devs get. Generally you get stuck in middle management, which is a go-to for job cutting if there’s a bad quarter or two, and any pay raises won’t carry over to your new job unless you were underpaid to begin with. It’s got more income potential on paper but that’s assuming you’re good at the job, better at playing office politics, and get lucky.
I've fought management everywhere I go. But somehow because I always act as a technology leader, they want me to manage. Man. I suck at managing humans. I love computers. Stop it!
@@HealthyDev I think it's important to rebuild trust and make sure that coworkers and employees feel appreciated. However, people also seem to value their personal time more than ever and are less willing to go above and beyond.
@@rraallvv if someone doesn't go above and beyond, is that quiet quitting? Where do you draw the line? What do you consider fair performance for an individual contributor with a salary?
Quiet quitting is one of the endless management buzzwords to vilify workers who don’t output like they’re getting top pay and benefits because they’re getting poor pay and benefits. In other words, it’s expecting something for nothing, then getting mad when you don’t get it. If someone is working under what’s fair for the role and compensation, that’s not quiet quitting, that’s either a lazy/apathetic employee, or they’re not being given the resources they need to do well.
Why would anyone ever want to move into management? You have valuable skills when you are a dev, why ruin that? Is that because companies are run by managers and therefore believe against all evidence that managers must be paid more than skilled staff members? Negotiate better!
Dev skills degrade in value as you approach your late 30s for most people. While there are exceptions, the game gets rigged against you because it's just not cost effective at some point. Most companies don't understand or value experience past a certain point. That's just one reason why you might pursue it - relevance and employability. But a bigger reason would be a desire to be a multiplier. No matter how good you are at writing code, you can only so so much as one person. I find many people get to a point in their career where they realize if they spent more time mentoring other people, it would have a bigger impact on the success of the project and the company. And they'd also get an opportunity to learn a ton of new skills. There's nothing wrong with deciding development skill is the end of the line for growth in your career. There are tons of new frameworks and technologies that will continue to emerge. For some people though, they get to a point they've proven to themselves they can learn multiple languages and frameworks, and they want a bigger challenge.
@@HealthyDev as a 55 yo that started coding for money at 37, I'm so glad I didn't turn to mgmt before; only so few make a career of it, and so much of that path is brown nosing, I would've failed
While I've seen managers who brown nose, I wouldn't say my experience is that effective managers have to do it. It's more a lazy way of building confidence with a person (at least temporarily). Much better to get to know a person really well and get them to let you challenge their thinking. That takes time though, and so many people choose the short and easy path - thought it's a bad strategy long term.
Unfortunately this is the game UA-cam forces us to all play since they promote sensationalist content to such a ridiculous degree, straightforward titles get no exposure. I wish it weren't this way, but they prioritize entertaining over educational content and so I'm competing with a lot of trash.
@@HealthyDev I completely understand man. I just found it ridiculous what this platform forces creators to put up with. Keep bringing on the good content!
If “holding people accountable” is something you need to so often with your engineers that’s it’s your #1 rule then you have likely failed at hiring and team building. The best way to solve a problem is by avoiding it. If you are hiring right, building a strong team culture, and leading by example accountability doesn’t have to be demanded or assigned, people take it willingly.
Sure but a lot of places you can’t easily fire people, if at all on your own, and you’re not often given a lot of opportunities to hire who you want. You’re on a budget, the job isn’t that interesting, so it’s not attracting top applicants, and you need to fill the role ASAP.
Are you considering management after being an individual contributor? What are you concerned about, and do these skills make sense?
For me, the hardest part of becoming a manager after being a senior dev for a long time, was to trust other people with development tasks that I know I could complete myself much faster and with higher quality - simply because I'm so familiar with the product and the codebase. Had to learn how to guide and mentor them as long as I still have the knowledge and expertise, before drifting away too far from the code.
That's so true, and so real. I've had a hard time over my career (and as a parent) letting people fail so they can learn. It's the old "give a man a fish" analogy.
I'm not interested in management at all. It's destroys your arm's-length commitment to your craft. You don't get to drive the car, you just get all the traffic tickets.
I agree not everyone is built for management but I think your analogy is a little skewed. I feel like driving the car vs. designing the car is a better analogy. And I think losing touch with your craft is entirely up to you. Good tech managers keep their skills up to date with POC projects and researching new technology. I find often times it is more enjoyable to not always be coding against strict deadlines when you are doing your own research or working out a proof of concept demo. It almost lends a more hobby like pace rather than working a scrum timeline and can be less stressful.
Only if that’s the sort of manager you choose to be. Many of us still dive in to the code, solve technical problems, and design solutions. Making as many engineers as effective as possible will improve overall output more than you ever could as an IC.
@@Sapphireleadershipadvisors, this right here. I know some folks say that you do two jobs poorly, but when you're also a good developer, you keep your saw sharpened. I made development my hobby. I love being an Engineering Manager, helping my team grow professionally, and trying to make work bearable or even enjoyable. But I stopped building my craft. I took it upon myself to keep developing and learning in my spare time. It's not my daily, but I still know and enjoy my craft.
@@Sapphireleadershipadvisors Our CEO likes to tell us how great he is at something that the engineers do for a living. He thinks that designing something simple is equivalent to being better than the engineers.
😊😊p0l😊 3:55 3:55 😅😊
Thanks for sharing, best advice I can give for new managers is that when there is success, the credit goes to the team of people who did the work and unfortunately when there are failures, it's the managers/leaderships fault... you should have recognized and mitigated the risk sooner, trained people better, scheduled better, fought to prevent scope creep, or any one of a thousand other things that are normally beyond the control of the people doing the work.
Well said! Sadly too may managers throw their team under the bus when they screw up. That's happened way too may times to me.
@@Erik_The_Viking Sorry to hear that... companies need to realize that this kind of thing kills retention... usually this happens when a SuperStar programmer is promoted into a Manager and is not ready or wants the job.... and then team ends up with both a poor new manager and a gaping productivity hole left by the departure of the superstar from the team... the good news is that there are good managers out there and sometimes you may be able to help the new manager get better through open and honest conversation from the entire team... IMHO of course... the best managers for developers are the ones that do come from a development background.
The worst is the “Team/Tech Lead” role, which is nothing more than a cost cutting role. Forget what it’s supposed to be, in practice at most places, it’s a senior dev, mixed with software architect, team management, and project management duties.
Every time I’ve seen it, you’re expected to do a full week of coding each week, have meetings that should be done by a full time manager (1 on 1s, performance reviews, higher level manager/director meetings, project manager meetings) on top of your team meetings, doing software architecture research and decisions, even dev ops depending on just how deep they’re trying to cut costs.
You end up just being a dev who takes on the work of PMs and directors so that the company can get by with fewer PMs and directors. They can have a PM handling 5-6 projects, doing little more than gathering status reports and passing them up the chain, while the team/tech lead becomes the actual PM.
Oh and it’s usually like a 10-15% pay increase for like 25-30% more work and stress.
Sadly, I agree completely. Have you seen my episode "Tech Lead is The WORST Job for Most Programmers?". It gets into that topic. I wonder if that's been the same experience you've had.
ua-cam.com/video/0EvRSD1-jII/v-deo.html
TIL I should be asking my employer for a title change and a 10-15% pay increase...
I'm always surprised how willing many ICs are to take worse ROI in exchange for an allegedly-fancier title.
@@HealthyDev I have. Great video and I totally agree. I’ve declined being “promoted” to team lead twice already.
Hopefully they never make it an ultimatum as they have others where I’m at.
As you mentioned in your video, it’s often a bad move for devs unless they really do want to become a full time manager and see this as a stepping stone.
Even then, it’s not a fun middle-step and I’d advice any devs wanting to go full management to instead take courses/get certs for management then apply for a PM role and work up from there.
It’s just too much context switching trying to do code, mentoring, admin work, all while spending 50%+ of the week in meetings.
@@badluckprophet9103 Man that sucks, they’re paying you the same as a Sr Dev while in a Team/Tech Lead role?
During my over 25 years of being a developer, my experience of managers is unfortunately not that good. I have had probably 3 or so actually good managers and a lot of very bad ones.
Same. Luckily when I was a consultant for the latter 15 years of my career, most of my direct managers (consultants) were great. But often the client's managers had serious issues.
@@HealthyDevFor the wrong reasons they became manager. Often they delivered poor work and got promoted to get them out of the way.
Fantastic explanation of the struggles of a good manager 👌🏻
Management is a completely different job, and isn't necessarily a promotion from IC. It's a different path all together. What makes you a successful engineer doesn't always carry over into management. Sadly many try to do both and end up doing 2 jobs poorly. You need a different mindset and need to grow in other areas, especially EQ. Success goes to the team, failure is on the manager.
Thanks Jayme.
I have worked as a QA manual / automation resource since 2003. In college, I studied business but I switched to IT after graduation when jobs were scare in the 1990's. I think for the next stage of my career, I would like to pursue management.
You mentioned some very good topics. I agree that management requires a different skill set than an individual contributor. Managers should really be interested in helping their subordinates achieve their goals. If not, than they should be management consultants, not managers.
Thanks again.
I am experienced non-technical manager, and totally agree with all your points on this, this is just confirmed with my practice. Maybe one more thing I would add that if you are project manager dealing with clients count yourself as you were half working on your client as part of his company, because satisfaction or dissatisfaction of client exactly on project manager can cost IT company loosing a project. It is a bit another as just delivering good working result with a team. It is way more.
Great point! Thanks for sharing this.
At 3:30 the 4th option is giving them the support they need to get the job done (helping them overcome obstacles).
I'm already sick of wanna-be-managrs who moved to management after a few years of being a relitively junior devs. They think that moving jira tickets is all what they required to do.
What you're describing (in my experience) is a project manager. Yes, unfortunately that position is more about managing the project - not people. But somehow they get the responsibility of doing both, without the training in both.
Every manager I have dealt with, I'd be clear to them about where I had great success and where I went down the wrong path. I found it was up to me to inform management where I'd shine, so I'd actually get the work I was good at. And it was nice when management actually knew this stuff, before I even spoke up. I use to code as one man, but as I got older, team work definitely gets you there faster.
I turned down management positions several times during my career. Once leaving a company because they said saying "no" wasn't an option. I think I could have been an above average manager (though that's a pretty low bar to clear) but my heart never would have been in it.
Hey that's great! It's important to know yourself and not get shoved into roles that don't make sense. I wish companies would stop doing this! It's counter to their goals, and they lose valuable people - like you!
Need more of this!
This is absolutely good advice
Great insights. Thanks!
Pushing good engineers into management was something that I saw as very wrong at IBM. An engineer couldn’t make more than a manager so every good engineer was promoted away to initially become a project leader and so on.
As an external I told my manager that he should make a point that good engineers in his team can get management salaries. That way they didn’t need to rely on externals such as myself.
He agreed with me but said: “this is the stupid American culture of this company, not something that we as IBM The Netherlands will change.”
Move from IC to manager isn't a promotion; it's just a different path / function.
I've been head of engineering for about five years. I still code for I guess 30% of my time, but almost EVERYTHING comes my way from remote training, customer meetings, cloud costs, holiday rotar etc. I really don't blame people for not wanting to do this
What led you down that path?
Currently my manager is working long long hours outside of the working hours, who wants to follow that path and take that responsibility? Is a very bad example to someone. Everyone in the department notice that is a structural fail and nobody wants to inherit that... By the way, for me is very hard to trust people too, I had really bad experience with people backstabing me, I don't want to take responsibility of anyone else... I'm happy learning new technologies and apply it to improve work, maybe teaching or mentoring, but not managing.
I would say working long hours outside of work is not necessary to be an effective manager. Your manager has some problems with work/life balance and setting boundaries.
A manager can make or break a project. But if you have none, it is like a chicken running without a head.
Smaller teams can do well without a manager and can easily self organize. People often confuse admin duties of managers with leadership. A lot of managers don’t lead, they just do admin work.
@@JohnSmith-op7lsagree, they keep thinking that operation execution is a form of leadership
lol don’t think so, a tech lead or architect is so much than a manager managing the project
maybe we should stop calling a lateral career change a 'promotion'. it would communicate much clearer in terms of expectations
It’s somewhat lateral, but it has a nice career path.
@@Talk378Maybe. You’re not going to become CTO at most places unless you got a masters in business, which almost no devs get. Generally you get stuck in middle management, which is a go-to for job cutting if there’s a bad quarter or two, and any pay raises won’t carry over to your new job unless you were underpaid to begin with.
It’s got more income potential on paper but that’s assuming you’re good at the job, better at playing office politics, and get lucky.
@@JohnSmith-op7ls with respect to becoming a CTO, in my experience this hasn’t been the case and the data I’ve seen says otherwise.
"Being half-smart is knowing what you're dumb at." --Solomon Short.
Yeah, management is ***NOT*** for me.
I've fought management everywhere I go. But somehow because I always act as a technology leader, they want me to manage.
Man. I suck at managing humans. I love computers. Stop it!
I'd love to get your thoughts on managing quiet quitting and passive-aggressive behavior in the workplace.
When you say managing quiet quitting, what are your current thoughts on what you can do about it?
@@HealthyDev I think it's important to rebuild trust and make sure that coworkers and employees feel appreciated. However, people also seem to value their personal time more than ever and are less willing to go above and beyond.
@@rraallvv if someone doesn't go above and beyond, is that quiet quitting? Where do you draw the line? What do you consider fair performance for an individual contributor with a salary?
@@HealthyDev Thanks, I need to carefully consider my answers to those questions 🙏
Quiet quitting is one of the endless management buzzwords to vilify workers who don’t output like they’re getting top pay and benefits because they’re getting poor pay and benefits.
In other words, it’s expecting something for nothing, then getting mad when you don’t get it.
If someone is working under what’s fair for the role and compensation, that’s not quiet quitting, that’s either a lazy/apathetic employee, or they’re not being given the resources they need to do well.
Why would anyone ever want to move into management? You have valuable skills when you are a dev, why ruin that? Is that because companies are run by managers and therefore believe against all evidence that managers must be paid more than skilled staff members? Negotiate better!
Dev skills degrade in value as you approach your late 30s for most people. While there are exceptions, the game gets rigged against you because it's just not cost effective at some point. Most companies don't understand or value experience past a certain point. That's just one reason why you might pursue it - relevance and employability.
But a bigger reason would be a desire to be a multiplier. No matter how good you are at writing code, you can only so so much as one person. I find many people get to a point in their career where they realize if they spent more time mentoring other people, it would have a bigger impact on the success of the project and the company. And they'd also get an opportunity to learn a ton of new skills.
There's nothing wrong with deciding development skill is the end of the line for growth in your career. There are tons of new frameworks and technologies that will continue to emerge. For some people though, they get to a point they've proven to themselves they can learn multiple languages and frameworks, and they want a bigger challenge.
@@HealthyDev as a 55 yo that started coding for money at 37, I'm so glad I didn't turn to mgmt before; only so few make a career of it, and so much of that path is brown nosing, I would've failed
While I've seen managers who brown nose, I wouldn't say my experience is that effective managers have to do it. It's more a lazy way of building confidence with a person (at least temporarily). Much better to get to know a person really well and get them to let you challenge their thinking. That takes time though, and so many people choose the short and easy path - thought it's a bad strategy long term.
If I decided to move to management, I'd be the kind that fight the upper level as hard as I can for my team and get fired in no time 😄.
Yeah, you'd want to work on that ;). Balance is actually possible but takes practice for sure.
Lmao the video title. You need a big all-caps "HATE" to get the attention of the algorithm, while the actual video is "How to be a good manager".
Unfortunately this is the game UA-cam forces us to all play since they promote sensationalist content to such a ridiculous degree, straightforward titles get no exposure. I wish it weren't this way, but they prioritize entertaining over educational content and so I'm competing with a lot of trash.
@@HealthyDev I completely understand man. I just found it ridiculous what this platform forces creators to put up with. Keep bringing on the good content!
@@DudeWatIsThistell me about it!!!
If “holding people accountable” is something you need to so often with your engineers that’s it’s your #1 rule then you have likely failed at hiring and team building. The best way to solve a problem is by avoiding it. If you are hiring right, building a strong team culture, and leading by example accountability doesn’t have to be demanded or assigned, people take it willingly.
Sure but a lot of places you can’t easily fire people, if at all on your own, and you’re not often given a lot of opportunities to hire who you want. You’re on a budget, the job isn’t that interesting, so it’s not attracting top applicants, and you need to fill the role ASAP.
@@JohnSmith-op7lsbad employers should be filtered out too
Holding people accountable is simply the first point out of 5 in the episode. There's no prioritization making it my "#1 rule".
Please don’t push for the use of the word “coder” it is just wrong.
We are engineers not coders
It's simply shorthand and fits in the UA-cam title limitations. I get what you're saying but I'm not pushing anything. Hope that makes sense.