
Ask HN: Tech Managers, how do you keep up with the latest tech? - somtum
You&#x27;re busy managing&#x2F;leading your team during work hours. How do you find the time to keep up with the latest tech? Do you code in your spare time?
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cookiecaper
I question the premise. What does it mean to "keep up with the latest tech"?
People trying to "keep up" and get the latest buzzword as a feather in their
cap has caused a roaring avalanche of stupidity in this industry over the last
decade.

Ultimately the corporate entities hiring these buzzword-happy pretenders end
up paying the price. If a manager cares about using reliable tools to do a
good job for his employer, how does "keeping up with the latest tech" serve
that end?

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xstartup
My managers use Hype to figure out what's latest. That's the only thing they
know, chasing the hype is what they call it.

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muzani
It's actually a lot easier to keep up with tech as a leader than developer.
Devs are deep in tech and usually only have time to improve on what they know
instead of picking up a new framework.

Managers don't have the space to focus on something, but their job is to
simply be available to communicate and handle the overhead. They can even
justify experimenting with new tech as part of the job.

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matt_s
Simple trick: you are a manager and probably spend > 50% of your time in
meetings. Schedule yourself some meetings to spend time keeping up with tech.

I also found when I was a manager that there are some natural downtimes that
occur when a lot of PM's or your peers are out, take advantage of those
intervals since you'll have less meetings.

Also also, tech doesn't change that quickly. You can probably get to a level
of understanding of some new tech by just reading up on it. This is just to
understand if it is applicable to your area w/o having to go through the
download/config/install/frustration loop.

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dbish
I still try to spend some time coding during the week on work related items
(small tasks with time set aside once a week) and code in my spare time on my
own projects. I don't know if I'm able to "keep up" with the latest, but I am
able to dive into areas of interest.

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bsvalley
You mean busy going to meetings? Yeah it takes most of my time. Leading the
team is an on-demand thing... Though I don’t code anymore, I simply keep up
with the latest technologies without coding. Simply read tech forums, news,
etc. I think architects can teach us a lot more on that. They keep up with the
latest tech and they don’t code anything.

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bryan11
Prioritize time carefully, read, and stay in tech. Use agendas to control and
limit meeting time. Work with tech at a high level involving architecture and
directions, then hand off sub-projects to your direct reports.

