Ask HN: How did you transition from an engineer to team lead/engineering manager

4 points by cblock811 8y ago ↗ HN

Some background on me: I used to be in management in my old career (hospitality). I burned out and taught myself software engineering. I've been an engineer for a few years now.

In that time I've realized that I definitely miss leading teams. To position myself for roles in the future I've started leading several initiatives at work as the engineering resource, am working more closely with different departments, and am continuing to build up my technical skills. I'm also hoping to brush up on my leadership skills along the way doing this. I'm curious what other people did to transition into leadership, but also want to hear what unique problems an engineering manager will have. Any good blogs, resources, etc are also appreciated!

4 comments

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byoung2 8y ago ↗

I'm like you, in that I started in management (center manager at Kaplan Test Prep) and then became an engineer. After 7 years programming my opportunity to become a manager again came at a small startup when the CTO left. I was already lead engineer so I made a case to the founders that it would ease the transition if I were promoted instead of bringing in someone from the outside.

The transition for the company was smooth but for me it sucked. More meetings, less coding, more BS. I spent so much time writing status reports and making spreadsheets. Management was so dysfunctional that they spent more time focusing on micromanaging teams than growing the business.

Overall it was worth it to get the bigger salary and title on my resume, but I never want to deal with that again.

cblock811 8y ago ↗

Sounds like it was less than ideal. I feel pretty good about my prospects where I work now. We have a great culture and are growing. Hopefully if I get into leadership here I wont have such an unpleasant experience. Thanks for sharing.

simpixelated 8y ago ↗

I'm fairly new to management myself and I've been reading a lot of articles recently to improve my abilities. Here are some of the blogs and websites I've read (hopefully you'll find them useful as well):

- https://www.gitprime.com/blog/newsletter/

- http://randsinrepose.com/archives/category/management/

- http://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/things-ive-learned-transit...

- http://firstround.com/review/making-engineering-team-communi...

- http://blog.lunarlogic.io/2017/effective-collaboration-super...

- http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-...

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14726130

cblock811 8y ago ↗

Thanks for sharing these. I'll give them a look.