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Ask HN: How to move from dev role to management/team lead role?
125 points by deliriumchn on May 22, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 71 comments
I feel like I achieved almost everything I wanted as a frontend developer (even moved from just working with UI/react/etc to pure R&D, researching and working with browser api for innovarive/obscure tasks) and while backend looks interesting for me, I know that I will have to take a paycut if I would move there. Becoming a team leader or moving to other management position looks more promising from salary and work enjoyment (for me) purposes, so what are my next steps are?

Is there any good reads, courses, videos, lectures etc I should know of? I work in small startup for the past year so I don't have anything to take example of nor I have any opportunity to lead a team (except one guy I'm mentoring)




I've been working in this field for about 15 years, mostly full stack but focus on frontend. In the past couple of years I've been making this transition from individual contributor/senior developer to a team lead and manager role.

For me, what has worked CONSISTENTLY are 3 things:

1. Take initiative: I can't stress this enough. If you act like a team lead, people will recognize you. And if they don't, you should consider whether this is somewhere you want to be. An organization that doesn't help build its talent, is not one where you will accomplish your personal growth objectives.

2. Speak to your Manager: Assuming you are doing #1, make sure that your manager(s) are aware of your career goals. You need to get "buyin" from others in the organization that are able to carve out this kind of role for you. They will also have good advice for you. Not every manager/team lead role is the same, so YMMV in this regard. It may be that there's a bigger need for a people manager vs a technical manager.

3. Stay at a company for 3+ years: The number might be different, but in my experience this is the point, after which you have been around enough time to have been involved in many different projects. Not only will you know a lot of the tech stack and it's limitations, you will also understand MUCH of the business itself. You'll have positioned yourself at the intersection of the business and the technology, and become an indispensable part of the organization.

One of the companies I worked at was a personal finance startup, and over the years I learned so much about saving, spending, credit, loans, income and investing IN ADDITION TO the technology we were building and everything that was powering it, that I was asked to be a part of nearly every discussion.


+1 to all of these, especially #1.

A lot of companies will have a career doc that lists expectations for each role. Take a look at the manager version and make sure it is actually something you want to do and then start doing some of those things. For example - lead a small group on a project, mentor someone who needs help, implement a change that will improve team health, reduce chaos on a project, align stakeholders, etc.

Tell your manager you’d like to explore that career path and frequently ask them what they need help with. If you don’t have a good relationship with your current manager, you may consider finding a new one who will help you grow. Look for a manager that is ambitious and looking to develop someone they can delegate to and you can ride their wave.

Everywhere I’ve worked in the last 20 years has needed strong managers, including startups and FAANGS. If you’re slightly patient and show some signal of readiness an opportunity will arise.


This generally aligns with my perspective.

I have seen another path for #3. Switch to a smaller company that's growing.

If you're already at the top of your IC skill set, you can likely come in at a relatively senior role with direct lines of communication with senior leadership. As they need more teams, it's easy to throw your hat into the conversation.


This pretty much hits the nail on the head. (3) is necessary for companies with engineering orgs that are most than a 50 or so people, but if you join when it's smaller then it takes less than 3 years. Especially since (1) is kind of a necessity at a smaller company to be successful in general and you most likely won't even have a team lead type manager if the company is smaller so you need to kind of take on that kind of role anyway.


For reading, I'd recommend everything from Will Larson ( https://lethain.com ).

As for attitude and behaviours for making the jump, it's a combination of actively looking for opportunities (that's the easy part), and positioning yourself as someone who is an obvious choice for such a position, which is basically when you consistently have an attitude and reputation of total ownership, supporting others, never complaining or taking it easy and instead always thinking and delivering at a wider scope, being the person people come to for making a decision on what and how to do, rather than a person who is being told what and how to do.

Some people do all of that naturally. Lucky them. Others don't, and it's a journey to adjust. You don't need to be a "natural", but if you aren't you need to learn to behave like one before you can credibly go into a leadership position.


> Some people do all of that naturally. Lucky them. Others don't, and it's a journey to adjust. You don't need to be a "natural", but if you aren't you need to learn to behave like one before you can credibly go into a leadership position.

Nicely put, but can be also considered as a warning.

If it doesn't come "naturally" to you, do you really want a leadership role? You will need to learn, fake and struggle to achieve something that others do without any effort. Are you ready for it? Do you want to do it? Is it worth it for you? And although faking can get you to the first line management role, the effort to go a step further would be exponentially harder if you are not a natural talent.

Or, to use a fake sport parallel, if you are not a natural talent, with a lot of effort you can make it to the high school team, with even more effort you may even become a starter, but you'll never be a lead player, or be able to play in a college team, and you'll enter a NBA stadium only if you pay a ticket.

EDIT: this applies to every job, not only management. If you are not a natural talent, there's a limit to what you can do, regardless of the effort.


> this applies to every job, not only management. If you are not a natural talent, there's a limit to what you can do, regardless of the effort.

I'd say that's not true for most jobs. For jobs which are an extension of a hobby such as sports and programming, there's truth in that. If you've been living and breathing the hobby since elementary school because it's what you love then yes, you have a big advantage over someone who starts doing it in the university as part of formal education.

But most jobs aren't like that.

For instance nobody is a natural at something as unnatural as cutting open someone's heart and stiching it back together succesfully. And nobody is doing that in elementary or high school. It's an unnatural skill you can learn only by applying yourself in medical school and if you work and study hard at it, become a heart surgeon.


I actually think it's absolutely fine to not be a natural and still want it, and that the comparison to a physical talent isn't perfect, because in something as complex as engineering management you can really get very good even if you don't have the natural aptitude, whereas if you are too short to play on the NBA, you won't play on the NBA no matter how hard you practice. You're right though that it's worth thinking if it's really what you want, or it just looks good on others. And then sometimes the only way to find out is by giving it a try.


> if you are too short to play on the NBA, you won't play on the NBA no matter how hard you practice

Tyrone Bogues played 14 years in the NBA despite being by all pundits way too short to play basketball at any level.


Got news for you. Being a good leader or manager doesn’t come natural to anyone out of the gate. Sure some people have certain advantageous traits, but they probably aren’t what you think they are. For instance, you might assume charisma and confidence are important, but they can backfire and leave your reputation in tatters if you don’t have a high level of foundational knowledge and experience-honed judgement. The actual ingredients to a leadership personality are more subtle and something a young person is often ill-equipped to judge in themselves. Don’t box people in.


I hate this sort of logic. Sounds far too much like social darwinism.

Sometimes things that are worth doing are hard.


> Sometimes things that are worth doing are hard.

I said that in my comment already, if for you, it's not worth doing it, don't do it. The unwritten assumption is that you should do it if it's worth it to you, even if it's hard.


> you'll never be a lead player, or be able to play in a college team, and you'll enter a NBA stadium only if you pay a ticket

Sounds like you're saying "If you aren't a prodigy from the start you're not going to amount to anything"

FAANG middle managers don't grow on trees. It's way easier to get into that space than the NBA IMO


My number one book recommendation on the topic is "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp (Rands in Repose). If you want to get some of the content for free [and see if the author's style works for you], check out the blog first perhaps: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/category/management/

In terms of advice, don't overlook or look down on yourself in regards to just mentoring this one guy. It's a perfect starting point and maybe check in with the founder or your direct boss to express that you'd like to progressively get more involved here.

My (and many people's) first leadership role was a team of two, which I later grew to a third dev and we shipped an entire Playstation game after I made and overcame many mistakes as a team lead. I'm glad to have had the chance to make those mistakes in a small team; the same mistakes on a team of eight may have been impossible to recover from as my first experience.

In that type of a role, you are still hands-on coding 70+% of the time, which in many ways, I found to be an incredibly enjoyable mix, and gives you a taste of leadership to help you decide whether you want more or that or not. I enjoyed that journey and, when it comes time to retire, I'm somewhat likely to take that level of 3/4-IC and 1/4-team lead role again.


Have a good long think about why you want a management role. It is very different, despite the fact that if you become good at a contributor role you often just get promoted into management (I did).

If you like mentoring people, sharing knowledge, delegating tasks (yes, even the tech work you love) and dealing with things blocking the team like politics with other departments then go for it.

It can be rewarding but it can also be very draining and stressful, and isn’t for everyone, and I wish someone would have prepared me better the first time.


This. It’s likely not worth it for most folks considering management. There’s no pay incentive. Significantly more people politics (managing up, down, side-ways), you’re in meetings all day AND expected to do other administrative stuff which will naturally fall outside your 9-5.

The worst part: once you experience the power trip, it’s also hard to go back. Even after knowing fully well that you’re getting the wrong end of the bargain. Truth is, for better or for worse, a good manager can have significant influence over many things (from roadmap, to people’s future, to their own future career prospects).

I find that it’s a tad bit easier to write my own destiny as a manager, without having to resort to changing jobs/roles.

Another big negative often not talked about: unlike software development, where your skills are transferable when you change companies - management = people and relationships. You lose them every time you change ships and have to rebuild from scratch.


disagree on the pay incentive, my salary went up A LOT, with additional benefits like company car, more holidays, bigger pension plan contributions and stock options.

But yeah, it is a different job. I mainly do it because I value the team where I was at, and believe that I can bring them next level and work on better and cooler projects in the company (instead of them always being delivered by crappy cheap consultants). Its satisfying to build the atmosphere and facilitate people becoming high performing at their job. And yes I dabble too much on the technical details and should stop messing with source code after hours oh well


> additional benefits like company car, more holidays, bigger pension plan contributions and stock options.

Are you in Europe? I've never heard of management benefits like a corporate car or additional holidays for management (both middle and upper) at both startups and massive publicly listed tech companies in the US.

In fact, benefits seemed largely in line between Management and peer ICs (eg. Tech Lead had similar perks+comp as EngMgr, DirEng had similar perks to Distinguished Eng, etc) with the added downside that Management roles included a massive amount of stress due internal politics surrounding roadmap, budget, and a lack of exit opportunities (a Dir of Eng with a background at Infra companies would be pigeonholed into other Infra companies)


“I’m sorry” - Most managers I know when finding out I was promoted from IC to manager

Obviously delivered tongue in cheek, but it’s a hard job and it’s not for everyone. I second everything the parent says and also add that your timescales are different. If you think waiting for a build is long, try waiting for your efforts to improve a directs’ communication skills to take hold. generally the most important, and the most fun, work of being manager takes years for feedback instead of hours.


The problem is that there isn't really a well-defined or stable career path upwards from IC that isn't some variation of role handling politics/delegation/process improvement, and because you're expected to "age out" of being an IC you really have no choice.


Recently I was asking a former Amazon business manager I know about thoughts on leadership vs. IC roles, and the advice about a leadership role was:

"You have to wake up in the morning excited about solving people problems with 'problem' people..."

Examples were then given about how sometimes you drop hints with people, sometimes you tell them outright, and sometimes despite all that they still don't/won't get it, and you try yet another approach (echoing other's posts here about the same). And so it's stressful unless you like these human issues. i.e., Don't consider leadership unless you derive some degree of "happiness" from "working with people on people."


Don’t forget ALL the meetings


I question your motives.

From the way you describe your experiences, it sounds like you’re a young adventurer on the journey.

These things come in their own due time, and if they are appropriate, they will mature and flourish from within you.

You will be chosen when there is a need, and you are able.

In the meantime a few thoughts to prepare yourself.

- be superbly well organized. Take written notes. Compose your thoughts carefully (self edit.) provide written accounts to your overhead as well as peers/delegates.

- know your stuff. Go the distance to prepare and know that the best answer is never the most exciting, it is the most EFFECTIVE.

- A leadership position is not one of vanity or even “self development”, it is one for getting the job done in the most stable, reliable, measured, and complete way for those who pay you to solve their problems.

I would choose someone boring and methodical to lead over a hotshot any day.


>A leadership position is not one of vanity or even “self development”,

No, it is a position where you have to implement the vision of your boss. It's a position where you're a slave. If your boss is a good one (who listens, helps and defend), you'll be a happy slave. If your boss is not, you'll have to do things against your own will and convince your team that it's good for them. Many people can do that but a lot more can not.

So the first time you'll have a proposal to be a manager, be sure to be able to recognize if your boss will be good or not. That kind of information is best gathered by participating to extra-work activities where you can get "off the record" information. And that prepares you to be a boss: much of your work happens outside of your team, in informal contacts.


I went from a being a manager with a good boss, to a manager with a bad one. It is such a different experience, and is making me change back to an IC role for my own sanity.


1. Mature leaders do not work under bosses (unless their greed meets really good salary). There are plenty of places to work at without top-down culture.

2. Mature leaders have values and personal agenda.

3. Mature leaders have manage-up skill and use it to align their manager expectations with their values.


> 1. Mature leaders do not work under bosses

True Scotsman, Mature Leaders. LOL

Even the most powerful CEOs answer to the Board (which are essentially their boss), with few exceptions. And for those exceptions (Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk etc.) probably aren't what most people call "mature".


I think you misunderstood that point. There’s a difference between a leader and a boss in the style of management. In old school command hierarchies managers are bosses and give orders. In modern people-oriented structure managers act as an oil in the engine, enabling their direct reports to achieve their goals with their knowledge and skill. They may not know better, but they know how to delegate and trust.


>These things come in their own due time,

Yeah, well, sure... but also don't be shy to ask for what you want (you know... "in due time"), because many managers will maintain the status quo if they can, and definitely not volunteer to promote you out of being a great individual contributor at their own expense of having to replace you.


> it sounds like you’re a young adventurer on the journey

Not exactly, but not very far either (6 years in including 20k+ empl companies and small startups)

Thanks for good advice. I agree with you.


Read: The Mythical Man Month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

Even though the book is old, the concepts in it haven't changed: Developers need to work with minimal interruption, management needs to serve development.

Here's the thing: "Team lead" and "manager" are very, very different roles. "Team lead" is very hands on, because you need to be able to jump into the code base to help team members understand the bits; and you need to be able to speak to management with detailed technical knowledge.

(As you can probably infer, I've been a team lead and really, really enjoyed it.)

In my case, "team lead" was about a 50/50 split between hands-on coding and leadership. At times, it was basically me doing the hardest parts of development with assistants who I would directly assign tasks. Other times, I worked with other developers and directly mentored them in tasks because I had the most experience in the code they were working with. Other times, I was merely a peer making sure that process was followed.

At one point I had to "manage up" and explain what the boundaries are between QA and development. This was mostly to avoid situations where other developers were spending a week scratching their heads trying to reproduce a bug. It turned my reputation from being "difficult" to being a leader overnight; because (surprise surprise) sometimes you need to tell QA that their responsibility is to clearly communicate bugs.

As far as management, part of it is making sure there is just enough process that people can hand off work from one person to the next. The processes need to be flexible so they don't get in the way, and they don't exist for the sake of existing. It comes down to things like making sure bugs are documented so that someone doesn't spend a week trying to figure out how to reproduce it; and that the actual steps to reproduce aren't buried in a chain of 100 comments in a ticket. (But that's just part.)

The other part of management, and any leadership role, is realizing that you're not a boss. You merely have a more powerful role in a team, and you need to use your power wisely. Everyone should feel like they are doing what they believe is right.


I'll focus on your question of how to move into a management. Or at least, my perspective.

To get into management, you generally need experience in management. I know that sounds silly but it's true. If I'm interviewing for a management position and I have two candidates, one who has experience and one who doesn't, I'll take the person with experience.

So your question becomes how do I get the experience. I would start with finding a work place that values the concept of promoting from within.

From there you need to advertise your intentions of wanting to move into a leadership role, without being annoying. You need to socialize and relationship build. Gently broadcast your intentions.

You need to be able to tell people why you want this role. It needs to be clear reason. This is more or less your sales pitch.

If you do these things listen to people's feedback. It should be enthusiastic and positive. If it's not it means that people don't see your potential yet. Figure out why.

This is your feedback loop. Take training, work on your presentation skills. Find another mentor. Keep building your network. Ask your manager if you can take over a meeting or take over a small responsibility for them. Gently reshape your role into a lead role. Do this until you get some positive feedback.

From there start to interview. Your first couple of interviews are likely going to be terrible. Don't lose heart. Ideally these are internal interviews. If you don't get the job reach out to the hiring manager to get open and honest feedback.

Keep interviewing and keep working on all of the above. With a little luck one of your connections will pay off and someone will take a chance.


If you like heads down IC work, the peak is somewhere around Senior approaching Staff level. But this is not the salary peak for frontend ICs, so you will have to choose how to proceed.

From that point forward, as you progress thru your company's advanced IC track, the ranks parallel eng management ranks; and soft skills will take up more and more of your time. Eventually you're responsible for mentoring and steering an entire frontend team and you will not even get half your time to do heads down IC stuff. The rest of your time will be spent mentoring via pairing or reviews, jockeying for resources for your initiatives, interviewing, and spiking big unknown tasks. Not to implement them mind you, just to size them for someone else to implement.

The way forward then, is to practice all those not-programming things that are programming adjacent.


I went your road. Sort of, and came back to development at the end of it. What I did was take MBA courses at university level, this is sort of what happens when you either want to or move into management roles in Denmark. At least the part of Enterprise organisations that I’ve mainly worked in. You can certainly transition into becoming a good manager without taking courses, but they were immensely helpful for me.

I was, and am, a good leader in terms of decision making, being assertive and having a general focus on the well being of the people around me. A lot of the MBA and management literature is focused on this, as well as how you communicate. It was nice to pick up some extra tools in those areas, but I wouldn’t say that it would have been necessary for me to do throes courses. What I am not a natural at is planning. It was during my stint in management I was diagnosed with ADHD, so that sort of stood in the way (and still does), and I had to spend a lot of time on “resource management”. This is where you have delivery targets and employees (resources) that you need to juggle to meet your targets, and it’s going to be a constant chaos. I wasn’t apt at this, I likely never will be, and as a result I got an immense amount of value out of the MBA courses targeting this area. Then there was the part I hadn’t really known about before, the budgeting and value realisation. I mean, I obviously knew what budgeting is, and how it’s nice to deliver value, but I never knew just how much finance and “bookkeeping” you’re going to do as a manager. Again, the MBA courses dealing with learning how we are all cogs in the machine were irreplaceable for me in teaching me how much of a different mindset you’re going to need as a manager compared to being an employee.

What ultimately led me to abandon management was that I didn’t actually like to manage people. I like people, I like working with people, but I don’t like managing people. I think you need to ask yourself if you would want to become a manager at Walmart, or a nursery home or something completely not-related to SWE and if the answer is no, then I think you really need to consider what exactly you want. Because management is a discipline in its own right, and it’s almost nothing like mentoring or being a technical lead.

If it’s really what you want, then get into networks with other managers. Look up where you can find MBA courses, edx.org has some cool intro CS courses, maybe they have something similar for MBAs to help you sip your toes in it.


The quickest way up the management ladder for a coder is to be enthusiastic, productive, and incompetent. Your teammates will move heaven and earth to promote you into leadership as a way to reduce your blast radius.


I hear this kind of response some times, but I don't agree with it. If you're being tongue in cheek, then I'm missing it, but if you're serious, then this is precisely why many managers are bad.

It also runs counter to my experience. I don't think people deliberately promote people who are incompetent in order to "get them out of the way". People are smarter than that, as it only pushes bad people into management.

If we want better managers, then we should move heaven and earth to get the best people who understand the needs of both technical and organizational constraints and who can communicate and coordinate effectively.


It's 30 minutes later. I'm still rofl'ing! I first thought, bro, you obviously meant "competent". This story didn't end the way I thought it would.


Why do you say that moving to backend would come with a pay cut? This has not been the case anywhere I have worked, and if anything backend has always seemed to have more headroom technical career-wise, with more high level ICs compared to front end.


The steps to stepping into a leadership role are largely two-fold:

- Express to your manager your interest in stepping into a leadership role over the next 6-12 months.

- Write down a list of responsibilities / behaviours a good leader has in your company. Take on one of these responsibilities one at a time to show that you both interested and serious about a leadership role. Advertise to your manager how you are progressing with these extra responsibilities each month via email so they had a written record.

A leadership role has much higher responsibilities and so your manager (if they are a good manager) will not promote you into the role without knowing you can do the job first. Leaders lead by action, not be theory. I know some great leaders who have a very poor theoretical understanding. And I know some horrible leaders who know the theory inside out.

Focus on action.


I agree with this. As you're working in a small startup why not ask if you can just change your title? Unless there is some obvious hierarchy it couldn't hurt to ask to change it to say 'Digital Project Manager'. If you show willingness (and not ask for an immediate pay rise) there's no harm in them 'promoting' you. I know from working at quite a few agencies they generally love to show off their 'X Manager' to their clients. And the fact they got you on the cheap makes them warm and fuzzy inside. Once you have had a fair crack at the whip you can ask for the salary commensurate with your experience. And if they so no. You can go elsewhere and start your new journey.


I built a game about being a manager at FAANG - https://devmanager.carrd.co/

I'm working as a manager and transitioned to this role for the same reason you mentioned. However, I had been talking to my LM for some time, and he found an opportunity for me.

Simplest way for you to get one more mentee and form a team of 3. The next step is to add one more person to the team. Once your current team lead receives a promotion, you will be next in line for their role. That's the path I'd follow.


A number of people have recommended good books. So i'll maybe drop a few pieces of advice that I've learned while managing a diverse group of ~35 people.

* Listen to the people who report to you. They aren't always right, but they often are, and if they are pushing back then there is a good chance that they might be seeing something you don't.

* Much of leadership is about communication. And much of communication is about planning. And much of planning is about knowing and understanding all the components of the problem you're trying to solve. So cultivate a deep understanding of your people, their talents, your business, your boss, and spend time thinking about how to best optimize all those things.

* Its hard to lead in an area where you don't some expertise. You don't have to be the best, but you shouldn't be a slouch in the subject matter either. In order to earn respect you'll need to be able to understand what you're being told by your team, and you'll need to be able to articulate why you are making certain decisions, and that is seriously difficult if you don't have a good understanding of the domain.

* Good task management and organization is remarkably similar to good distributed systems architecture. Teams should be organized so that communication and integration dependencies are minimized, because communication overhead grows logarithmically as the number of people who need to be informed increases.

not nearly a complete list... but a start maybe. good luck! good leaders/managers are a scarce resource.


As someone who moved from individual contributor to senior manager I'd offer the following humble suggestions:

1) Engage with your manager. Explain your interest in the position you want and ask for their support. If you can't get their support; learn why and either outgrow it or find another manager that will support you. (Not all managers want to develop their team)

2) Ask about and seek to understand the challenges your manager is working against.

3) Internalize those challenges, the broader company goals and create your own personal plan to help achieve those things.

4) Do that plan; gain the support of your team members through influence. Recognize and celebrate their support.

4a) Become comfortable using influence and vision to influence others. Even as a manager, senior manager, or director, you rarely have the pure authority to achieve what you want. Even if you do, the team will chafe under that style. Success is influence; inspiring others to jump in and pull with you.

5) Measure your progress and get feedback. Even unfair or invalid feedback is valuable because its a perception that you can manage against and overcome.

6) Celebrate success. Evangelize and learn from your failures.

7) Ask for the job.


Management is a lot more about relationships - try to get 1:1s with your manager, their manager, and their manager. Show up to the 1:1s with good questions, ask to audit leadership meetings/summits, start to send out proposals to improve how the team works rather than what to work on.

What I didn't really realize is that 9/10 if you ask people for their help, they'll usually give it. So if you just ask, "hey can I goto the leadership summit?" They'll say no. But if you ask, "Hey I'm trying to understand what a management direction for my role might like and I think I would learn a lot from the discussions at the leadership summit, do you think I could tag along - maybe virtually- for a day or two?" - They'll probably say yes and throw out an invite. Now you're in the room and can build relationships with the leaders that decide the next manager. (or wisely learn attending these types of meetings isn't what you want to be doing)


You might have a look at "The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change" by Tanya Reilly.

Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63079576-the-staff-engin...


Get a new job. Join a large multinational company with known reputation for developing management skills. Management skills can be learned, and not all companies are created equal - some value good management, some only focus on short term results.

I did this when I was 4 years into my engineering career. After 20 years I ended up a CTO at a large (~40bn) company. There are good things about it, but I am still the happiest when I have time to code and build stuff. Managing others is nearly entirely about emotional intelligence, empathy, and it's better to be an extrovert as your days will mostly be all meetings. Money is fine, but I am not sure I'd do it again if I were to start from scratch. With all the hindsight I think I'd advise myself to join a startup instead.

In any case, don't neglect the company culture. If you want to learn management, don't do it in places with zero strategy and short term focus - you will only learn to never attempt it again, most likely.


After a handful of years into my dev career, i moved to management, and i have regretted it especially the last few years. I have been in either been a team manager or prod. manager (indiovidual contrib.) role the last 15 or so years...and now wish i could go back to some sort of dev. role...but the concern i have is rusty coding joints (even though i do fun scripting on the side on the weekends) and likely a non-trivial salary cut.

@aenis While i did not reach CTO level at a 40bn company, i did play a similar role once at a small non-profit, and some parts were fulfilling but others were def. not - at lewast for me. However, you said it best when you stated, "I am still the happiest when I have time to code and build stuff". I dislike so many meetings, hate work politics, but the 2 areas where i shine and/or am fulfilled are coaching team members, and building stuff (coding, etc.)! Man, i miss more directly building stuff!


You also might find if you go to a “big tech” -esque company, the career paths and challenging projects available as an individual contributor might satisfy your desire for growth, without having to go into management. Depends what your motivations are but bigger tech focussed companies will often have parallel IC and manager career paths that are equivalent, so you can become a very senior engineer without transitioning into management.


Whenever I see people asking about technical tasks we see a ton of links and references, management is surprisingly poor in that sense, everyone just seems to be winging it.

There's no structure, there are no guidelines and that's because it's mostly dealing with people and people are almost always completely different from each other.

If you want to learn how to be a good/better management, focus on being a better person and helping the people around you get better.


I got my start in engineering management by supervising interns and then moved on to leading a team of 7. It was a great way to learn how to help other people do the work instead of just doing it, and I recommend it if it’s available.

There’s a lot of day-to-day stuff that I had read about but only really understood when I did it: how to agree as a team on a technical roadmap, how to give feedback, and how to hire. Probably the most difficult thing which took years was learning how to control my emotions; when you’re a manager and things are breaking, you can’t just jump in and debug, you’ve gotta figure out how to help the team perform at their best. Sometimes this is getting people the right tools, other times it’s giving them time to work things out, in extreme cases it’s changing the team members. I found making these decisions stressful until I had a lot of practice.


Easiest way to become a manager is to work somewhere that is growing rapidly. If you do a good job and lead projects, as well as work with your manager closely on it as a goal and please key stakeholders, then you should be able to take a new EM role when it opens up. It’s even easier if the team you’re working on as an IC grows enough to split (usually ~8 eng).

Just make sure you’re very explicit about this goal when interviewing / in your 1:1s. The reality is that the ratio of eng to manager means there are just less positions available. So you want to make sure you’re not wasting your time interviewing / working somewhere that just isn’t going to have the opportunity for you.


What I find so strange about modern management is it mostly is an error correction function: clearing roadblocks for the team, fighting for recognition, performance management, etc.

I think we should go back to coupling technical leadership, product management, project management and dev manager functions. This is exactly what you would see in a cash strapped startup and it seems to scale to ~50 people. This of course requires very strong leaders who would have full responsibility for the bottom line but I think it could be much more efficient that today’s ensemble of overlapping hierarchies.


Do you currently have a manager? Trying discussing this with your manager; perhaps you can work out a plan which can get you the experience needed to transition into a new management role. Your company may have a definition and data that they use when hiring a new manager; which would mean you have resources to understand what is expected of a manager and then determine what areas you have covered and what areas you need to develop.

Do/have you lead a tech team already (officially or not) at least as technical leader? Do/have you lead large architectural projects with many devs?


cauliflower99 shares similar ideas too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029345


I enjoy reading career advice from Firstround's Review, esp. this collection of articles for "making the leap from IC to manager." (1) Then I'd go to ADPList (2) to find a mentor that'd help transition.

1 - https://review.firstround.com/collections/advice-for-making-... 2 - https://adplist.org/


You move towards becoming a manager, when you can't handle the work yourself despite working at a high capacity, and your ambition and your aspiration is much higher than what you alone can manage.

So, it is best to setup a vision, start taking on extra work, and aim for larger targets. In the process, you'll get more done, and you'll need people to help you with getting even more done.


>while backend looks interesting for me, I know that I will have to take a paycut if I would move there.

When did this become a thing? Throughout my career, backend tended to pay more.


My partner went from being a full time researcher to became a manager about 6m ago, and I do have one advice that is extremely important;

You need the full and unyielding support from _your_ supervisor.

My partner had the most unfortunate luck, the company joined recently had a reorganization and the team consisted of... well, let's say "less motivated" characters that were not picked by other managers during reorg.

Without a good supervisor, they would have left long ago.


If you have an interest in the managerial career track, talk to you manager. In engineering it’s relatively rare for people who are good developers to be interested in management.

There are two books I highly recommend to anyone considering this move. The Manager’s Path is one. The Making of a Manager is the other.

If you have any concrete questions, I’d be happy to answer them. Contact info is in the profile.


Interesting I'm going thru a similar situation.

I have 11 years of code experience, but I have little to no desire to be a senior developer. The crazy thing is I have 20 years and combat experience in leadership. So being on a software management team would easily be a walk in the park.

I have had a few interviews, with a re-polished resume.


You become a lead by being employed as an IC in an organization large enough to have leads (so, not where you are now). Having made that move, just exhibit behavior that leads to your bosses deciding that you'd make a good (or at least...the least worst) lead. Then wait a bit.


Start with this article: https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/02/23/what-you-give-up-when-...


My advice:

1/ Find a company with EMs are also expected code. These companies have more EM's, smaller teams, and thus more opportunities for the EM title and less "competition".

2/ Find a company with high churn due to worklife balance and grind it for at least 2 years, but preferably 4.


Behind Closed Doors by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby.


I would recommend reading “Tribal Leadership”. Also, I just started but I would look at “Primal Leadership” too.


Take ownership of your projects and also suck up to upper mgmt. You'll be the next director.


I'd say this is something you learn by doing to a large degree. Just jump in there. Good luck!


You’re usually pushed into this role if you have what they’re looking for.


Some books that helped me: Peopleware and The Manager's Path


Start a company and hire people


It's an entirely different world, make sure you want to transition and it will be highly dependent on organization so talk to the org and work out a path, or talk to managers in other companies to see about it.

Always easier within the org though, your placement will depend on the opinion of one or two people ultimately.

It's much more difficult to change jobs as 'software manager' they tend not to hire like that, it's odd and good managers are not valued enough.

In many orgs they skip manager and just go to directors.




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