Programmers HATE When Managers Won't Do This

Are you a programmer, or in any individual contributor tech role really? Considering switching into management? Be VERY careful. Most companies will not prepare you for what it takes to really be an effective manager. If you've ever been upset with a manager or felt like they weren't equipped to do their job, it's probably because they were promoted due to their success as an individual contributor - but weren't taught effective management techniques and strategies.

In this episode, I'd like to help you avoid being looked at as incompetent by other programmers or anyone in any software development role. You already know that programming and other tech jobs require intentional and ongoing study and improvement. Management is no different!

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CHAPTER MARKERS

0:00 Introduction
1:56 5 Skills To Become a Great Manager
2:06 1. Holding People Accountable
4:24 2. Taking Responsibility for Others
8:45 3. Making Yourself More Available
13:17 4. Studying and Practicing Management
15:56 5. Being an Incentives Translator

#programming #management

[HealthyDev]

Are you considering management after being an individual contributor? What are you concerned about, and do these skills make sense?

[YossiZinger]

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.

[monterreymxisfun]

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.

[RickFuschillo]

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.

[viophile]

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.

[Erik_The_Viking]

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.

[JohnSmith-opls]

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.

[mihkelpajunen]

Fantastic explanation of the struggles of a good manager 👌🏻

[Meritumas]

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.

[marksegall]

At 3:30 the 4th option is giving them the support they need to get the job done (helping them overcome obstacles).

[kenito]

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.

[xlerb]

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.

[sjfsr]

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.

[annavalentinovna]

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.

[WhiteHonky-mveu]

"Being half-smart is knowing what you're dumb at." --Solomon Short.

Yeah, management is ***NOT*** for me.

[halfsourlizard]

Move from IC to manager isn't a promotion; it's just a different path / function.

[judewestburner]

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

[jmmoyadev]

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.

[animanaut]

maybe we should stop calling a lateral career change a 'promotion'. it would communicate much clearer in terms of expectations

[omar]

Please don’t push for the use of the word “coder” it is just wrong.
We are engineers not coders