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Ask HN: How to become a manager

4 points by technological ↗ HN
Hi everyone. I am currently working as senior technical support engineer (L3) and have like 7 years of experience in various fields like Process development, Accessibility web developer, test engineer and support engineer. How do I take next step to become a manager ? is 7 years too short ? should I become team lead first

4 comments

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itronitron
the usual progression is team lead then manager, although every organization is different. Generally you would need to express an interest to your manager that you are interested in management (many people are not interested and for good reason :) ) and then wait for someone up the chain to leave the company. Before that happens you may be able to serve as delegate while your manager is out of the office. If you want things to happen more quickly then you would need to get hired in as a manager at another company which might rquire first getting an MBA or MS degree.
technological
Thank you for the insight. Can you elaborate bit more why people are not interested for good reason ?

I have an MS degree but all jobs outside need like 20years of experience for manager

greenyoda
Managers spend a lot of time in meetings, and have to deal with personnel matters such as performance reviews, hiring, layoffs, pay issues and interpersonal conflicts. They bear the responsibility for the work of their entire team. They try to shield their teams from all the nonsense that's coming in from upper management so their teams can concentrate on their work. Some people thrive in this kind of job, but others don't. After being a manager for ten years, I got tired of the stress and went back to being a developer.

One more thing: new managers rarely get the training they need to do their jobs well. They have to learn by making mistakes (some of which can be very costly and painful).

I definitely think you should become a team lead before becoming a manager, since it gives you the opportunity to learn about leadership without having to deal with many of the other issues that a higher-up manager needs to deal with.

CyberFonic
Start showing ever greater levels of incompetence !

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a troll magnet. When you are very good technically your management will keep you down in the mines to keep doing great work and preferably without too many pay rises. Working in support is especially bad in the sense that it is not an area that attracts many good engineers, thus you are probably indispensable.

If you are seriously keen on moving up into management you could study one of the many DIY MBA courses around. If that still looks like where you want to be, then depending on the size of your organisation you could start applying for promotions into team leader roles and possibly low-level management roles.