The number of Engineers in denial about their serious mental health issues was my biggest challenge. Getting people help and convincing people, esp high performers that they need help was how I lost most of my hair.
Remember kiddos - being good at technical work and being good at life, both require the same levels of effort.
Wow, this is an interesting point! I can see how difficult it could be to convince people that they need help with a problem they might not even realize they have.
May I ask you, how did you find out about the mental health issues?
If you love writing code more than anything in the world, you will be a shitty manager. You must give up your love for writing code to be a great manager. You must learn to love dealing with people more. I have folks rolleyes sometimes when I say this, but I firmly believe it.
You must learn to communicate to people effectively in all forms. You must learn to inspire & motivate your team. It's not enough to tell them what needs to be done. Even when people understand, they might not be in the mood to do it. You must connect and paint a bigger picture between the code that has to be written and it's value be it how it's changing other people's lives or bringing in profit for the company. Yet after painting this picture and they buy it, you might be shocked to see no sense of urgency. You must learn to instill a sense of urgency and ask them to go the boring route to move quicker. When they want to use the new shinny framework or language but yet something as boring as plain PHP or Python will do. You must beg and plead. Based on where you find yourself, the culture might be working against you, and you might find yourself working really hard not just to delegate but to build a positive culture. The team might not like working together, too many egos, you have to figure out how to get them to work together. Perhaps instead of cooperating, they like to compete, and it shows in the way they slay each other's code reviews instead of pairing. You have to figure out how to tame the ego.
Your job is no longer to program computers, but to program humans. You must enter the right input to get the right reaction, except unlike computers humans are very fuzzy. What works with one person will completely fail with another. You will realize that any failure truly comes down to you. Even if someone failed to do their job. It's all you. Team of 10 people? 10 ways to possibly fail, including your personal short comings.
You are not in the business of managing people really, but yourself. You must be properly organized, get a great time of time management. Learn to trust and not redo what they have done. You are there to serve your team. Give the choice between exciting work and boring, you gotta do the boring work. You gotta go to the meetings. You can't read that new tech book or play with that new tech. You need to read more business books, things that will make your old tech friends question your friendship. :D Books like "High output management", "The Manager's path"
The biggest challenge is that you MUST become an entirely new person and be comfortable doing so without suffering from an cognitive dissonance. It's a whole different game and the things that made you a great developer/whatever will not make you a great manager.
Thanks for the insights! It rings very true, but scary at the same time.
I particularly like the point that we must give up our love for writing code to be great managers. It sounds like the biggest mistake managers make - when they keep doing the technical work, instead of focusing on people.
10 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 38.1 ms ] threadMay I ask you, how did you find out about the mental health issues?
Ask HN: Just made Director, now what? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937290
Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15463612
You must learn to communicate to people effectively in all forms. You must learn to inspire & motivate your team. It's not enough to tell them what needs to be done. Even when people understand, they might not be in the mood to do it. You must connect and paint a bigger picture between the code that has to be written and it's value be it how it's changing other people's lives or bringing in profit for the company. Yet after painting this picture and they buy it, you might be shocked to see no sense of urgency. You must learn to instill a sense of urgency and ask them to go the boring route to move quicker. When they want to use the new shinny framework or language but yet something as boring as plain PHP or Python will do. You must beg and plead. Based on where you find yourself, the culture might be working against you, and you might find yourself working really hard not just to delegate but to build a positive culture. The team might not like working together, too many egos, you have to figure out how to get them to work together. Perhaps instead of cooperating, they like to compete, and it shows in the way they slay each other's code reviews instead of pairing. You have to figure out how to tame the ego.
Your job is no longer to program computers, but to program humans. You must enter the right input to get the right reaction, except unlike computers humans are very fuzzy. What works with one person will completely fail with another. You will realize that any failure truly comes down to you. Even if someone failed to do their job. It's all you. Team of 10 people? 10 ways to possibly fail, including your personal short comings.
You are not in the business of managing people really, but yourself. You must be properly organized, get a great time of time management. Learn to trust and not redo what they have done. You are there to serve your team. Give the choice between exciting work and boring, you gotta do the boring work. You gotta go to the meetings. You can't read that new tech book or play with that new tech. You need to read more business books, things that will make your old tech friends question your friendship. :D Books like "High output management", "The Manager's path"
The biggest challenge is that you MUST become an entirely new person and be comfortable doing so without suffering from an cognitive dissonance. It's a whole different game and the things that made you a great developer/whatever will not make you a great manager.
I particularly like the point that we must give up our love for writing code to be great managers. It sounds like the biggest mistake managers make - when they keep doing the technical work, instead of focusing on people.