I really think we can all learn a ton by sharing our mistakes. I wanted to implement this in the office but nobody would share. I have no problem sharing now I've messed up but I'm also weird in a lot of social respects.
If you do sprints, schedule a 15 minutes meeting at the end of the sprint called Sprint Review. That's when everyone is able to say what went good and what went bad.
It's a good time to have everyone's voice heard. We write it all down in succinct phrases and compare to previous sprint review.
I'm a senior technical IC (have a phd in tech along with many years of exp) who moved to management about 2 years back. I am having very mixed feelings on being on the other side. Being a manager is a lot harder than I expected. It feels like wading in slush all day long and I don't really get a sense of accomplishment (as an IC, I could take credit for what I did; as a mgr, I definitely add value and am a force multiplier to the team .. be it in setting direction, utilizing learnings from all my old experiences .. it just doesn't feel the same in terms of pride in technical achievement .. i.e. my coding days are over). I am also completely clueless how to switch jobs as a manager. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
> I am also completely clueless how to switch jobs as a manager. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
I share my own (humble) insights right here, its a huge topic but I post regularly, you might find some of those posts helpful: https://techleader.pro/
> it just doesn't feel the same in terms of pride in technical achievement .. i.e. my coding days are over
Same for me, I had to learn to take pride in building successful teams and individuals, and not code anymore.
As an ex-engineer, the key "eureka!" moment I had was when I realized that management != leadership, and leadership > management. After that, I started to study "leadership" as a formal topic, everyone from Marcus Aurelius to Steve Jobs, as if I was learning a new programming language for example.
The combination of technical chops + great people leadership skills is very rare, if you nail that many opportunities will open up for you during your career.
Is there a network of managers in your company you could sync with? If you consider switching companies or even career paths you might be at a point where learning might be more important than keeping (secret sauce type) leverage or saving face.
How much time do you spend on helping your team members grow? It takes a long time (years not weeks), but this can be very rewarding!
> All of your problems are people problems, the tech parts are much easier to manage.
This cannot be emphasized enough. I have seen lots of smart engineers attempting to "architect" the engineering manager role, while not being able to handle the people aspect at all.
I have an opportunity to apply (and be very competitive) for manager positions that just opened up and this is the part that scares me the most. I could (and likely will) be managing a team of 9 college hires with 1 senior dev. Not a great ratio but that's about what it is from the new teams that were created.
I can stay technical in my role as an individual contributor and be content. IMHO I'd be more valuable to the company in a leadership role...but also at the same time not sure if I want to have to deal with it for a 10% raise.
I'd always recommend you try it! The really brilliant part about engineering leadership is mentoring, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing one of your teams succeed, or growing your own leaders and watching them thrive autonomously.
If it does not suit you in the end, your technical skills will still be there as a fallback option.
A part of my does want to try it because rarely does my company opening up so many managerial spots (we are in a growth phase). I wonder if anyone has "falling back"? And how that experience was. Is there a stigma? I assume there was a paycut?
Funny thing is I'd feel less pressure as a senior dev with 9 other college hires, than a new manager w/ 1 senior dev and 9 college hires (even though technically the team would have 2 senior devs including me if the development parts get rough!).
Be careful about diving in and doing too much work yourself as a developer. If you do, sure, your team now has 11 engineers instead of 10. 10% bump!
What can you, as their manager, do to instead increase their productivity by 10%? Likely many things, and this is a lot more sustainable, because otherwise the team gets neglected from a manager support perspective while you're busy working with them.
Of course, find things to do technically to help the team if you want, that's a great idea. But don't assume that the best thing you can do for them is always to do what they are doing.
Re: going from management back to IC, yes I’ve done it, not within the same company though. It was a good experience for me. Later, I swung back to management.
> All of your problems are people problems, the tech parts are much easier to manage.
That's just ... management. Management is mostly about people, it is mostly about the HOW instead of the WHAT. I'd go one step ahead and make a statement that "Management is mostly about dealing with people's observable behaviours".
Curious about your mentoring program. How does it work? I always feel that who am I to really provide advice?
I was recently asked to attend a virtual mentoring session and I didn't due to scheduling conflicts but I had no idea what to say had I attended. I was going to kick it off if they had any questions about anything and then move into my career over the years. I didn't want to share too much because I feel it would be bragging.
Not the OP, but my advice is to tailor your advice / sharing of experiences to what your mentee(s) need. Always start by listening before sharing your experiences, and for each experience, distill the key learning so you can help your mentee see how they can apply it to their situation.
As far as I know, it only hides dead (-4 votes) or flagged comments. You can enable them with the "showdead" toggle in your profile, as the sister comment correctly pointed out (I'd recommend doing so, to see through biases a bit).
I have showdead enabled, there are no dead comments on this thread and the current comment count matches the number of visible comments. I suspect the GP comment's observation was due to a timing issue
Hmn I dunno what it was to be honest. I checked multiple times and refreshed, at least I thought I did. Shrug. My app that I'm using has no settings to showdead so I wouldn't be surprised if the refresh didn't work as it doesn't from time to time.
Mainly because I have and use 5 browsers and can never remember which one I logged into. There is not a chance that I'll remember my password. I wish. There's just way too many. Also don't use a pw manager on my phone due to security reasons.
You're free to do that. I have life insurance and disability insurance that are not linked to my employer. I haven't pulled the trigger on health insurance because I've heard it's super expensive but maybe I will someday.
The 3 separately controlled grids have been around a lot longer than 20 years. Blaming politicians doesn't really solve much. The regulatory boards are not Republicans or democrats, those representatives are in the US government.
If you're defining a couple houses as having power, sure. If you're talking about recovering the entire customer base? Not a chance. Power Distribution grids have been running on margin for years, if not lowering capacity. Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about but you still need to post. I don't understand why. Care to share why?
