
Ask HN: How to become a manager - technological
Hi everyone. I am currently working as senior technical support engineer (L3) and have like 7 years of experience in various fields like Process development, Accessibility web developer, test engineer and support engineer. How do I take next step to become a manager ? is 7 years too short ? should I become team lead first
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CyberFonic
Start showing ever greater levels of incompetence !

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a troll magnet. When you are very good
technically your management will keep you down in the mines to keep doing
great work and preferably without too many pay rises. Working in support is
especially bad in the sense that it is not an area that attracts many good
engineers, thus you are probably indispensable.

If you are seriously keen on moving up into management you could study one of
the many DIY MBA courses around. If that still looks like where you want to
be, then depending on the size of your organisation you could start applying
for promotions into team leader roles and possibly low-level management roles.

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itronitron
the usual progression is team lead then manager, although every organization
is different. Generally you would need to express an interest to your manager
that you are interested in management (many people are not interested and for
good reason :) ) and then wait for someone up the chain to leave the company.
Before that happens you may be able to serve as delegate while your manager is
out of the office. If you want things to happen more quickly then you would
need to get hired in as a manager at another company which might rquire first
getting an MBA or MS degree.

~~~
technological
Thank you for the insight. Can you elaborate bit more why people are not
interested for good reason ?

I have an MS degree but all jobs outside need like 20years of experience for
manager

~~~
greenyoda
Managers spend a lot of time in meetings, and have to deal with personnel
matters such as performance reviews, hiring, layoffs, pay issues and
interpersonal conflicts. They bear the responsibility for the work of their
entire team. They try to shield their teams from all the nonsense that's
coming in from upper management so their teams can concentrate on their work.
Some people thrive in this kind of job, but others don't. After being a
manager for ten years, I got tired of the stress and went back to being a
developer.

One more thing: new managers rarely get the training they need to do their
jobs well. They have to learn by making mistakes (some of which can be very
costly and painful).

I definitely think you should become a team lead before becoming a manager,
since it gives you the opportunity to learn about leadership without having to
deal with many of the other issues that a higher-up manager needs to deal
with.

