
Ask HN: How do I deal with my engineering team and motivate myself? - illuminek
Well this may sound very familiar to most of HN but it also makes it the best place to ask this question.<p>Background: I am a project lead in a Digital Media company and I am taking care of the engineering aspect of our products. I only get a chance to pair code with my team and hardly get any alone coding time apart from few R&amp;D And POC work. I have some 7 years of core development experience and my past 2 roles were Team lead and tech lead handling a team of 8 to 12 member engineering team. I am mostly dealing with large scale complex projects. I consider my self fairly Okay when it comes to my Software engineering concepts. And I keep pushing my team to learn new stuff and educate them whatever I learn.<p>Problem: Instead of my best efforts in taking care of my team and teaching them engineering aspect, I FEEL THEY DON&#x27;T LIKE ME and think I am jerk. I felt like asking this now because this is not the situation in current company but it has been in my past 2 companies as well. So I am wondering if I am really that bad.<p>Just to let you know I constantly keep asking for feedback from my Reporting managers and my team and keep on improving. However I think that I am expecting too much from my team when it comes to engineering and they may not  like me because of that.<p>Any suggestions on the approach I can take? Let me know if you have any further questions.
======
mattgibson
> I FEEL THEY DON'T LIKE ME

Your post is almost entirely about you. Do you only talk about you at work? It
might explain a bit.

What are your team members actually like? Their personalities, interpersonal
conflicts, aspirations, successes, strengths, weaknesses?

I don't know either you or them, but the fact that you have asked us all for
help and told us almost nothing about them suggests (to me - I may well be
wrong or biased) that you are not spending enough time getting know them. I
expected you to tell us specific situations that would lead them to not like
you, but you seem not to know any. I doubt they would be short of reasons if
we asked them. It's rare to find anyone who dislikes people for no reason.

For me, a team lead's role is not coding. You are there to assemble, manage
and grow the team that will do the coding. Maybe that involves doing some of
the code (more likely the code reviews) yourself, but maybe not. Your real
role is the people management and that involves a deep understanding of who
these people are and what motivates them. If you are trying to stuff
engineering knowledge down their throats when what they really want is
autonomy (for example), then it's unlikely they will warm to you.

I would recommend approaching this as a completely new skill, which is as hard
to learn as coding was. Some people build their careers entirely on being able
to manage and grow teams. It's worth noting that these people tend to get paid
more than the developers they manage :)

Sorry I can offer much more insight, but there's not a lot to go on. I hope
things improve for you.

~~~
brazzledazzle
>For me, a team lead's role is not coding. You are there to assemble, manage
and grow the team that will do the coding.

I know it depends on the organization (and possibly the size of it) but I was
always given the impression that team leads are generally expected to provide
leadership (sometimes only technical) and do a fair portion of the work as
well. Usually a manager would deal with the people stuff and a PM would deal
with the project related things. But I've only worked with a few team leads so
my experience may not be the norm.

~~~
BurningFrog
Yeah, to me a Team Lead is the programmer that gets called to meetings. Not a
people manager. It varies between organizations, I'm sure.

~~~
benjiweber
This book [https://leanpub.com/talking-with-tech-
leads](https://leanpub.com/talking-with-tech-leads) shows the variety in the
team lead role in different organisations, and the different challenges that
go along with it.

------
frozenstorm
I'm surprised the feedback here has been primarily negative. It sounds like
your heart is in the right place, and that's a good start for being a good
manager in my eyes (I've never been a manager personally).

One of the best attributes I've found in good managers is _facilitating_
success, rather than participating in it. In one-on-one meetings with your
team, listen closely to them. Ask them what they'd like out of you, what their
goals are at the company, and how you can help them achieve those goals. You
are no longer writing the code, and while you should have final say on high-
level technical debates, let your team work out organically what the best
architecture / pattern / technologies are for the project at hand.

If learning is something you want to encourage (bravo for that, all teams
should be actively learning), use whatever power or influence you have to make
resources available to them. Paid time to read books, paid time to attend
conferences (and budgets to pay for conference entrance / travel), etc. And
instead of you dictating the points of learning, ask them what they think they
need to focus on learning for their own improvement.

Lastly, do everything you can to limit their distractions. Instruct coworkers
in non-technical disciplines to direct all questions to you, be the
development team's "shield" against pesky interruptions. Managers who have
done this for me have won my respect much quicker than those who have not.

~~~
yareally
> Lastly, do everything you can to limit their distractions. Instruct
> coworkers in non-technical disciplines to direct all questions to you, be
> the development team's "shield" against pesky interruptions. Managers who
> have done this for me have won my respect much quicker than those who have
> not.

Maybe the definition of tech/team lead is different from company to company,
but where I work, I still have an engineering manager that takes care of the
personnel issues and pesky questions from project managers and other non-
technicals for me. The role of a tech/team lead for us is a developer that
removes the technical roadblocks, spearheads new ideas/projects and acts as
developmental resource for the team. It's sort of a symbiotic relationship--I
keep the technical aspects of managing the team off the engineering manager
and he keeps the stuff I rather not deal with off of me and the team.

I agree about shielding your team though, but more on a technical aspect.
Taking on the tasks no one else wants to do and making the tasks everyone has
to do more efficient. Also, being the advocate for your team when the company
is making major changes that will affect them. I do write code, but it's not
as much as everyone else.

------
karmajunkie
> Instead of my best efforts in taking care of my team and teaching them
> engineering aspect, I FEEL THEY DON'T LIKE ME and think I am jerk. I felt
> like asking this now because this is not the situation in current company
> but it has been in my past 2 companies as well. So I am wondering if I am
> really that bad.

Chances are, your keen observational skills are better than your winning
personality.

Its a good bet that you're taking a paternalistic approach to managing your
team, based on your feeling that you're taking care of them and teaching them.
This never goes over well. Like, ever. Recognize that your team probably would
rather write some code than be taught by someone they may not respect all that
much. They're almost certainly capable of determining for themselves what they
need to learn in order to do their job. If they can't do their job, thats
where you get involved.

I had a manager once, this guy who was incredibly invested in this picture of
himself playing this this role as fearless leader, cool startup guy, and all
around genius. He went so far as to write down some speeches he later read to
us in what I presume were "leadership moments" in his head. He very nearly
killed the company, and every single member of the tech team left before it
was done. Don't be this guy.

There's a book by Dale Carnegie called "How to Win Friends and Influence
People". Recommended.

------
dahart
Man, there are some _harsh_ comments here. Remember that nobody knows you like
you do, and sometimes when you're self-deprecating people believe it and
amplify any negative image you project back at you.

Managing engineering teams is hard, and it can sometimes be very UN-fun,
especially if you want to code, or if you manager expects you to remain
technically productive.

You _feel_ like people don't like you, but didn't mention what they actually
say or how your performance reviews have gone. If you're being left in charge
of a team, and given adequate raises and/or promotions, chances are your
manager(s) feel you're doing a reasonably good job.

If you're getting negative feedback, then of course, listen to it carefully,
work hard to not get offended, and plan how to address it.

If you're not getting feedback, and assuming that means people don't like you,
keep in mind that it's natural for lack of information to turn into fear.
Remember that everyone is the protagonist in their own story, not you. Your
direct reports have their own fears and may simply not be worrying or thinking
about you. If your reports are worried about their jobs, or if they feel
continually unproductive, then they might not like anyone at your company.

You might want to think about how your team could be feeling the very same way
you are. You might need to considering doling out a lot of the kind of
positive feedback you're hoping to receive.

Tech managers, and all middle managers, have a hard problem with conflicting
forces. Your team wants more time to think, they wants to solve interesting
problems, and they probably do want to learn. Your managers want a
reproducible process that delivers bug free work and continuous improvement on
a tight schedule. You're stuck in the middle.

Good luck. There are _tons_ of great resources out there, so keep reading and
learning, keep your chin up and stay positive and hopeful, and remember you
have a people problem, not a code problem, and remember your performance is no
longer individual; you only succeed if your team succeeds, so you need to help
them succeed at the expense of your own interests.

------
oxryly1
> And I keep pushing my team to learn new stuff and educate them whatever I
> learn.

This is likely a big part of the issue. You can't _make_ them learn.

> Just to let you know I constantly keep asking for feedback from my Reporting
> managers and my team and keep on improving.

Wow. Chill out. No need to harangue people to get your job done.

I'd say to adopt the role of team "anthropologist" and spend some time with
them just observing. Take notes on how they behave, communicate, work
together, etc. After a few weeks (or months) of this you'll have a very
different view.

~~~
Consultant32452
>This is likely a big part of the issue. You can't make them learn.

This is one I struggle with a lot. I love learning and if someone shows me
something new I think they're awesome. Almost no one is like this. Most people
don't give a shit about learning and just want to do what they've been
comfortable doing for years before you came along and "messed everything up"
by trying to create some progress in the way stuff is done.

~~~
awinder
There's usually a big leap between "my team doesn't want to be taught by me,
the manager" and "my team doesn't want to learn". And "you can't make them
learn" leans more towards the former. If you want your team to learn new
things, there's a number of ways to do that which don't involve coming across
as "I'm going to teach you all the things you're not doing right", which
oftentimes is a pretty destructive way that this gets communicated.

------
moonpompey
I'm going to take a different tact here, because while the top-voted posts
("don't be a jerk then") are probably good advice, it's not the easiest
message for anyone to receive.

Consider this: most people will like working for a lead who gives them a lot
of value. This isn't necessarily an "education" \-- that's not a really
tangible thing that directly improves their situation, and it feels bad.

What a team lead can do, that does improve their situation, is allocate work
that gives people the opportunity to grow. Work allocation is one of best ways
to mentor a junior engineer, if you give them the right work. Andy Grove
touches on this a little, when he describes "task-relevant maturity." Beyond
that, engineers need projects they can point to, that show off the upper
ranges of their abilities, in order to experience career growth.

Beyond that, the usual team-lead skillset applies: providing cover to do good
work (redirecting bullshit), long-range vision and planning, and reducing
uncertainty. Hope this helps.

------
blatherard
It sounds to me like you may see your role as something like "being the best
engineer on the team, and making the rest of the team as good as me" and that
your approach is to keep learning engineering methods and then "educate them."

Might I suggest that what your role now is not to be the best engineer, but to
act as their manager, primarily. Put down the engineering books and pick up
some management ones (e.g. "Behind Closed Doors" or "Manage It!", both from
Prag Prog), because you are likely the one failing to learn or improve in ways
appropriate to your job.

------
techdragon
I've only skimmed the comments since I'm busy working on two startups. But
I'll give you some bluntly honest advice.

The real measure of any kind of manager regardless of their title, be it CTO,
CEO, Department Head, "Team Leader" or just "Lead Programmer", is just two
things.

Do you get the job done?

Do you make things better for those under you?

It really helps to get feedback from your team, learn how to do this well and
you'll be better at adapting to each new team you work with in order to be
able to answer "Yes" to those questions.

~~~
sphildreth
My only regret is that I only have one point to give.

------
kleer001
> I keep pushing my team to learn new stuff

That doesn't sound like a pleasant work environment.

>teaching them engineering aspect

Did they willingly sign up for the teacher-student relationship with you?

> I FEEL THEY DON'T LIKE ME and think I am jerk.

You're probably correct.

> wondering if I am really that bad.

Not bad, but improperly initialized. Or there's a syntax error somewhere, an
improperly synched function. There are piles of soft skills to be had.

Engineer, debug thyself. It is the golden age of self help books. As a triage
measure you want to stop this behaviour cold and instead listen for a few
weeks as you absorb the wisdom in whatever self-help-soft-skill-communication-
management book you find speaks to you.

------
johngalt
I've worked with a number of highly motivated managers trying to carry the
entire team on their backs. Pushing everywhere they see a weakspot, or trying
to drag the entire team in a certain direction. Just hammer on everyone until
you make diamonds. The Steve Jobs approach. Certainly that method can work,
but it is not my preferred approach. It's a huge time commitment, and you have
to count on yourself _always_ knowing what's best for the entire team.

Personally my philosophy towards management is all about humility and
logistics. Get the right people in the right roles, and supply them with the
right tools. Combine that with the humble approach towards things like credit
for accomplishments and project ownership. Then suddenly you don't have to
push any more. You don't run around telling everyone what they need to learn,
instead they all teach you in their area of expertise. You give them the cover
they need to go out and learn more in their own way. Instead of running around
teaching, let them ask you (or each other).

------
twunde
It sounds like you haven't given up your ownership of the code. If you're
leading a team of 8-12 people and don't have time to do any coding by
yourself, you no longer own the code, your team does. You are going to have to
let go of your personal coding responsibilities and understand that there are
always multiple solutions to problems. The solution members of your team use
may differ from the solutions you would have chosen AND THAT'S OK. The most
you should be doing is architecting a general solution for projects but
leaving the actual implementation to your team. Depending on the complexity of
these projects, your time may be better spent documenting/diagramming
processes, improving specs/requirements.

------
new_hackers
Here is some sage advice: don't worry about it.

A good leader doesn't have to be best friends with the workers. Do your best
work for your team, and hopefully they will respect you.

Make friends outside of work. Are you married? Somehow it didn't sound like
it? Are your workers married? I used to be the most gung ho person in my
office, and didn't relate well with my married coworker that had children. Now
I am married and I see how priorities change.

Bottom line, chin up. You are obviously good at what you do, so just keep
crushing it. And don't believe everything you read on HN

------
_s
A side note - it's difficult to earn the trust and respect of a team,
especially if you come in as an outsider to a manage a close-knit group that's
been together for a while, and likely has seen a few managers come and go.

There's also a certain amount of displeasure from purely technical folks on
reporting to or being managed by trained managers; those with MBA's and
whatnot - irrespective of your previous experience as a developer yourself.
Obviously not by all, but a few here and there. Agile / Scrum etc fare much
better with devs, not tradional PMO etc.

Both these things count against you, and the worst thing you can do then is to
enforce the things you've learnt from your management training - as there will
always be a certain amount of pushback, especially if you try and make them
aware of the business case behind it - some devs like to know the bigger
picture, others don't care; they don't want that pressure.

It comes down to paying attention to each person, not the collective, and
figuring out their needs. Software or core skills make up very little of how
they would see you; some of the most talented Scrum masters I've met have
never touched a line of code, and I respect them more so for it.

As a manager / leader, some of the best ones I worked with and now try to
emulate are the ones that trusted me to get the job done, and made it possible
for me to do so. They sheltered the team from the flack coming from higher up,
fought for various privileges, always took the fall for any shortcomings and
essentially made an excellent environment for us to work and communicate, not
to mention they never let you feel the pressure and allowed you to
continuously fail and learn from it.

Instead of thinking of your role as trying to educate and lead, try thinking
more in terms of "what can I do to help my team succeed?" and then ask them
that exact question - every day, every week. You're not their teacher, nor are
you their guardian. You are there primarily to make sure that your team can go
about its business unhindered from all the bureaucracy and whatnot that gets
thrown at them.

Once a team knows you'll go out on a limb for them, they'll trust you and then
reciprocate with their work and actions.

------
asolove
I don't know you. But I know lots of people who have been through this. I
would guess you are doing some things a bit wrong, getting a bit better,
having some people problems for the first time, etc. But I bet the biggest
problem you have is fear of the unknown, shame of not doing a great job
helping others, and burnout at trying really hard at something new and not
seeing progress.

That emotional filter is going to make it really hard to get your head on
straight about both how you're really doing and what you can do to improve.

The most important thing you can do is try to improve your own self-
understanding and get yourself mentally prepared for doing a really hard job.
Unless you have a strong ethical/religious/psychological/mindfulness type
thing in your life, you also are probably somewhat out of touch with the
unintended but real impact that your words and actions have on other people.
The worst managers I've ever had were well intentioned and smart but
completely lacked self-awareness of their social impact.

I would start with trying to take stock and get your own feelings and
perceptions under control. Once you can look straight at the situation,
without fear or shame, but also with a critical eye, you can orient yourself
and get better.

So how do you do that? Well, it depends on your background and what kind of
thing is going to call you out of yourself and into a different way of
thinking.

\- Belong to a Western religion? Go look for something about contemplative
prayer or discernment in your tradition. (Catholic or open to it? "The
Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living" is great)

\- Into new age, yoga, or Buddhism? The book "Mindfulness in Plain English" is
really helpful.

\- Like agile, or at least the idea of self-directed teams that are coached
rather than managed? Lyssa Adkin's "Coaching Agile Teams" has a lot of great
content on removing your emotion from a situation, helping people succeed on
their own, etc.

\- Do you find yourself in difficult conversations, where you either are too
harsh and people don't listen to you or too soft and you can't make your
point? The books "Difficult conversations" and "Non-violent communication"
have awesome advice on thinking about the way you talk with people and
reframing issues in a productive way.

There are tons of other places to start, but I hope you embrace my core point.
Start with yourself, get to where you understand your own bias, emotion,
impact. Then worry about helping other people and getting better in your day
to day.

~~~
JSeymourATL
UpVote for the courage to introduce the power and influence of faith on our
professional lives into this dialogue. Only at the end of the business day--
do we tend to focus on what truly is important.

------
advice_giver
Agree with all of this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10898689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10898689)

It sounds like you are forcing your individual habits and preferences as an
engineer on your team. I'm sure if you think back to being an IC, you would
say that's not a fun quality to have in a team lead.

For example, how are you "pushing" them to learn/"educate them"? Are you
supporting and encouraging them, or are you just telling them what to do and
trying to show off? Consider that some people may prefer to learn by reading
physical books, some may prefer an online Safari sub, some may want to give a
lunch and learn, some may like going to a conference, some may appreciate
unscheduled time to try new things.

IMO stop worrying about being liked and start working on being a good leader
to your team.

------
JSeymourATL
> I constantly keep asking for feedback from my Reporting managers and my team
> and keep on improving...

Is the feedback facilitated anonymously 360 degree style? What do you do with
the feedback you receive? Do you discount or dismiss your reports input?

You're clearly smart and successful. But if you devalue the contribution of
your team, they will return the favor.

Suggest you go on an aggressive reading program for self-development.
Greenleaf's book on Servant Leadearship is an excellent place to start >
[http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Leadership-Legitimate-
Greatnes...](http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Leadership-Legitimate-Greatness-
Anniversary/dp/0809105543/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51efAlaviXL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR98%2C160_&refRID=187PP8B3G54BX34355N1)

------
muzani
It's very important for them to learn and to get feedback from them. But very
often the flaw is in _how_ you do this.

One on one feedback is good. But make sure this is about them, and is not some
performance review. Make it a safe place for them to bring up problems with
the company.

Learning is good. But only learn things that help them. This can be one of the
most hated things in an organization, when a manager sends them for training
if there's work to be done. A lot of people like Google's 20% time, but I find
it a distraction.

Bottom line: help them be productive. Productive engineers = happy engineers

------
ruraljuror
I would suggest two books, if you haven't already read them: _Peopleware_ and
_Mindset._ The relevance of _Peopleware_ is obvious.

Statements like these make me think you would benefit from reading _Mindset._

    
    
      And I keep pushing my team to learn new stuff and educate them whatever I learn.
    
      Problem: Instead of my best efforts in taking care of my team and teaching them engineering aspect, 
    
    

It sounds like you're trying to teach people all the time. Why? Is your job to
be a teacher? Do you know how to be a teacher?

------
onion2k
_And I keep pushing my team to learn new stuff and educate them whatever I
learn._

So they have to learn their own stuff PLUS what you learn? That doesn't seem
very fair. Why do you get to do less?

~~~
illuminek
"educate them what ever I learn" here I meant just making them aware about
what is latest going on I am not pushing for that, instead I push them to
learn about stuff which will be useful in near future.

------
rukittenme
It might not even be about you. You could be a nice, sincere, and super-
intelligent person. Sometimes its just hard to be friends with your boss. They
control your livelihood and it makes you feel like you have to act a certain
way around them. You can't be your honest self for fear of reprisal.

By all means be friendly with your team but don't compel them into a one-sided
conversation for the sake of improving them (or yourself). I'm sure they can
manage their lives just fine.

------
montbonnot
Engineer = expert

Architect = lead engineer

Manager = career/growth + interface with upper management

What are you?

------
jonque
I think the fact that you are reaching out for help means you are on the right
track in rectifying whatever situation you may be dealing with. Without
sufficient background knowledge I can't necessarily say what exactly you can
do to fix everything, but I think its a positive reflection of your character
to reach out for help.

A book that really helped me was "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by
Dale Carnegie

Best of luck to you!

------
bliti
Technical lead here: This is a tough position to have. I can't comment on the
post but feel free to email me if you want to rant, vent, or talk. :)

------
mikekchar
I'm just going to have to call out the elephant in the room. If your team
members think you are a jerk, it is just possible it's because you are a jerk.
It might have absolutely nothing to do with what you are expecting them to
achieve.

This is slightly embarrassing to talk about, but when I was younger I was not
actually hugely popular with the opposite sex. I always prided myself on being
a "nice guy" and I was incredulous as girls went out with "jerks", ignoring
me. I convinced myself it was because I wasn't good looking enough, so I got
into body building and got into great shape. Strangely this did not help.

I won't bore you with the details of my self-discovery, but eventually I _did_
figure out the reason for my lack of popularity: I was self absorbed,
arrogant, oblivious to the needs of others, etc, etc, etc. From the
perspective of others, _I_ was the jerk. My evaluation of the "jerks" was
based on _my_ set of values, which other people did not share. I eventually
discovered that I needed to understand what _other people_ valued and give it
to them (if I wanted to be a "nice guy").

It's hard to know exactly what problems you are running into without meeting
you. It is very common, however, to have the same kind of problem that I had
-- you are judging everything through your own criteria and ignoring the
criteria of others. Rather than trying to further your own goals, forcing
others to fit your mould, you may have to spend considerable effort trying to
understand what your team mates value and try to help them achieve it.

The tricky bit is that sometimes what your team mates want appears to be at
odds with what the company needs. Often you will have to make the hard choice
-- do I help someone get what they want individually, or do I help the team
achieve the goals as stated by the company? To make it even worse, very often
your idea of how to achieve the company's goals may be incorrect. My
experience is that at 7 years of experience you are _just_ starting to
discover ways that will work, but there is still quite a lot to learn. You are
likely to make many mistakes along the way.

You can imagine that if you chose to help the company against the desires of
your team mates, if you fail (in their eyes) they will be extremely upset with
you.

One last piece of advice. There is nothing wrong with choosing the side of
team success, even at the cost of pissing off your team mates. The personal
cost can be high, though -- especially if you make mistakes (as you
undoubtedly will). I would favour a mixed approach where you help your team
mates meet their own personal goals and only stray from that path when you are
absolutely sure that you will be successful. YMMV.

------
andrewchambers
My feeling is if you haven't proven yourself as someone who deserves respect,
people won't want to learn from you. They will just think you are arrogant and
don't actually know better than them.

If you deliver great results, people will naturally want to emulate you.

------
bankim
Engineers like to see that their contribution has real impact on the company.
If team does well, delivers project with good quality in reasonable time-frame
and despite such efforts if the company languishes then employees will not
feel motivated.

~~~
friedrich
"What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner
necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere
automaton of duty?"

------
cvanvliet
> However I think that I am expecting too much from my team when it comes to
> engineering and they may not like me because of that.

This will only be an issue in the way you relate to them when they fail.
Failure must be treated as a learning experience.

------
adolfoabegg
Read/Learn about Situational Leadership(1)

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theor...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory)

------
BurningFrog
The might not like you, OR you might be predisposed to think that of people.

Do you perceive yourself as liked in general, and these latest jobs are the
exception? What's the concrete evidence, if any, of this attitude?

------
snarfy
When's the last time you had a 'team event'? Everyone leaves early and heads
to the bar, bowling alley, pool hall, etc.

------
tobz
I've never been a manager, but one of my managers really sticks out in my
mind. I'll tell you what I thought they did really well, and why, as an
individual contributor, I respected and trusted them.

#1 - He bridged the personal/professional gap well.

I've worked at good places and shitty places, but the thing all my previous
managers always lacked was being able to talk with me at the level of... how
my behavior might not only affect me at my current job, but at future jobs.
Call it sort of the.. "one man's opinion" approach. Nothing ever felt like I
was walking into a room to be fired, but if I was doing something stupid, he
explained how choosing to stick to that approach might limit my growth there,
how it might limit me elsewhere if I wanted to switch tracks. Every problem
felt like it was getting advice from a mentor, not a manager.

#2 - He looked out for my career.

This sort of follows from #1, but he was always receptive to my input about
where I wanted my career to go, how to help me get there, and what steps I
could take within the confines of that job.

It was a PHP shop with limited upward mobility - it wasn't ever going to be
Google-scale problems, and he knew that. He worked with me to try and help me
find interesting avenues of work to pursue to keep me interested and to fit
with the way I worked. You'll have people that prefer working by themselves,
others who mesh with teams, people who enjoy both, and other sorts of
combinations. He gave me choices. He asked me what I wanted. That mattered, to
me, a lot.

#3 - He never tried to be an individual contributor.

This is probably the reason why I don't see myself being a manager in the
future: I enjoy actually _doing_ things too much. From chatting with him at a
personal level, I know he liked to have input and do things as well. Despite
that, he stuck to being a manager. If there was spare time, or something he
wanted done that maybe would take a hour... he'd do it. He had the technical
chops to come up with ideas, and debug things with the rest of the team while
shit was on fire... but he was never trying to be an architect, or refactor
large swathes of code. He was our manager; he had the background to understand
exactly what we were doing.. but it was _us_ doing it, not him.

Maybe the concepts/terminology are weird where you work, but it sounds like
you're in a managerial position when you really want to be an individual
contributor. As others have mentioned, you focused a lot on yourself in your
post, and reading between the lines, it sounds like you'd rather be writing
code than managing people.

Just food for thought. I hope you get some good feedback and can get your
current situation pointed in the right direction.

------
eecks
Wait.. what new concepts are you trying to teach your engineering team?

------
whack
Knowing how to lead and give feedback is a very hard skill, and takes time to
master. Kudos to you for trying. You're on the right path. Some things you
said that I like:

\- You want to help your colleagues improve and get better. That's great, both
for your team, and for their own development.

\- You're asking for feedback, and retrospecting, in order to be a better
leader. This will surely help you improve in the long run.

\- You care about the fact that they (potentially) dislike you. This shows
that you have a genuine interest in being a good leader/colleague, which will
go a long way.

Some suggestions and things to consider:

\- How do your interactions with your colleagues generally go? Do you make
efforts to interact with them on a social level, or is it purely professional?
Do you ask them how things their weekends went, what they did over the
holidays, how their families are doing? Such topics can indeed be woefully
cliched, but at least they will know that you're making an effort to connect
with them as people, and not just as code monkeys.

\- When you're "educating" them on various topics, do you allow for the
possibility that your advice may actually be wrong? Do you encourage them to
push back if they disagree with you, or do you expect them to follow your
advice without question? When someone does disagree with your advice, do you
encourage discussion and get into the merits of the arguments, or do you
(subconsciously) pull rank and close off the discussion? If someone does
present you with better arguments as to why they are right and you're wrong,
do you compliment them and admit that they are right? Do you pout about the
fact that you just "lost", or the fact that they questioned you? Do you pull
rank and demand that they do what you say, despite them having better
arguments?

\- What percentage of your feedback to them is compliments, as opposed to
constructive criticism? Do you only give feedback when you want them to do
something differently? Or do you also regularly give them feedback about the
things that they are doing well? Notice how at the top of this post, I
included a couple of things I liked about what you posted. People are much
more open to suggestions for improvement, if you also give them genuine
compliments about the things they are doing well.

\- No matter how hard you try, you will never be one of the guys. Because you
hold power over others, some of them will try to suck up to you, some of them
will be intimidated by you, some of them will resent you, and some will do a
mix of all 3. Being "liked" is a reasonable metric to look at, but also look
at broader metrics beyond that. Do people enjoy the work environment in your
team? Is your retention rate better or worse than comparable teams/companies?
Are people improving in their skills as engineers? Are people coming up with
ideas of their own, and having earnest discussions about the best way to do
things, or are they sitting back and just passively following orders? These
are all far more important than you being liked. In fact, if you try too hard
to be liked, and people pick up on that, they will even respect you less for
it. It's better to be a firm, fair and friendly leader, than to be someone who
bends backwards to be liked.

