Good suggestions, but you should also have some formal training on how to manage people on that list - every employer should offer it, and if they don't that's an _enormous_ flag.
I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.
It is very sad to see that in many companies, great engineers are forced to take on management roles to keep progressing in their careers. It seems to be the only path forward in many big companies.
I find "engineer to manager" guides are fundamentally not possible to write. I've been a manager of a team 3-4 times now and each experience was entirely different from the previous.
But this post makes the biggest mistake, something I have struggled with in every management role: focusing on managing down.
Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril.
Managing up is, in practice, 100% of a manager's job. I've been on teams where this was so easy I didn't even realize it was something I had to do. Leadership liked me, I could do whatever I wanted and they were happy. I've been at places where this was an impossible task (and I saw multiple other managers/leadership hires get let go very fast if they didn't "fit in", despite being hired to "shake things up"). I've been at places where I started on the ground floor, management loved me, loved my work, my team consistently outperformed... but never in a billion years were going to allow me "into the fold" so to speak.
I used to admire strong technical managers that had a great vision for how to solve problems, but I also have admiration for great teaching professors. In practice the best managers care primarily about politics and growing their personal stake in the organization. I've found that the more clueless they are the better (just don't point that out).
> Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril.
To your earlier point - even this is contextual. Incredibly high performing teams tend to be really hard to retain. It's not that hard to make your bosses love you if you're posting wildly out of band results - so the struggle is making sure the people who are actually making that happen stay on and stay engaged.
(I'll note that some of the most successful managers I know built their career on creating playgrounds for a small number of high performing ICs)
You don't automatically get to call yourself leadership once you get into "management" (more like manglement) roles. And really, you have to choose. Are you a leader, of people? Or are you a manager... of resources? Your choice there will affect your mindset, and thus how you are seen to your "subordinates". God, I hate that term too.
How about just listening to your "direct reports" (vomit), and having that inform your "leadership"? Stop being a robot which is how this guide makes it sound. Be human. You'll get so much more out of people than by aping some management how-to.
Some of the worst managers I have had have been hired or promoted into the role, whereas the better ones were pushed toward that by the people that they would soon lead. The world is being taken over by bad managers, don't be one of them. Listen first.
Edit: The individual writing this guide appears to have only had barely two years in a hard 'management' role, according to their LinkedIn. How can they possibly be qualified to give advice on a subject that takes years and years and years of developing and refining soft skills, let alone consulting on the particulars of leading people in that time? Might as well run for President. What arrogance thinking they can go into an organization and infect it with the Tech-leadership-style-du-jour and think they've done some good.
One thing that's missing from this - your metric of success will change, and you'll have to navigate that.
As an IC you have a tangible representation of what you accomplished that day - the doohickey now spins, the bloop now boops when you tap it, the clicky thing now does the clickity click.
In your first weeks as a manager you're going to look at your little box of accomplishments, find it empty, and you're going to ask yourself, "I didn't ship anything, am I doing the right things?". You will have to change what you qualify as an accomplishment, otherwise you'll long for the simplicity of attributing your success to the number of PRs merged or bugs fixed that week.
Intangible tangibles will become your potent potables, and that's OK.
> Try simple, genuine questions you are interested in:
> “You mentioned going to the movies last weekend. How was it?”
This does not sound genuine. At all. It sounds like you are robotically adding a fact to your notes in one meeting, then reciting it in the next for points; like there’s a recipe you are mechanically following to ++relationship.
I understand that some people struggle with smalltalk and need literal scripts to follow to get them started. But do the examples have to make this so obvious? If you need to work on your smalltalk, maybe look somewhere else to improve those skills.
As a related aside, the best practical book on progressing through management ranks as an engineer that I've found is The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier. Highly recommended.
When I first started managing, I thought it was all about making decisions and setting direction. But over time, I realized the more important part is learning to listen, to let go, and to give others the space to grow. Building trust and psychological safety is easy to overlook, but it’s the thing most worth practicing again and again.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 36.7 ms ] threadBut this post makes the biggest mistake, something I have struggled with in every management role: focusing on managing down.
Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril.
Managing up is, in practice, 100% of a manager's job. I've been on teams where this was so easy I didn't even realize it was something I had to do. Leadership liked me, I could do whatever I wanted and they were happy. I've been at places where this was an impossible task (and I saw multiple other managers/leadership hires get let go very fast if they didn't "fit in", despite being hired to "shake things up"). I've been at places where I started on the ground floor, management loved me, loved my work, my team consistently outperformed... but never in a billion years were going to allow me "into the fold" so to speak.
I used to admire strong technical managers that had a great vision for how to solve problems, but I also have admiration for great teaching professors. In practice the best managers care primarily about politics and growing their personal stake in the organization. I've found that the more clueless they are the better (just don't point that out).
To your earlier point - even this is contextual. Incredibly high performing teams tend to be really hard to retain. It's not that hard to make your bosses love you if you're posting wildly out of band results - so the struggle is making sure the people who are actually making that happen stay on and stay engaged.
(I'll note that some of the most successful managers I know built their career on creating playgrounds for a small number of high performing ICs)
How about just listening to your "direct reports" (vomit), and having that inform your "leadership"? Stop being a robot which is how this guide makes it sound. Be human. You'll get so much more out of people than by aping some management how-to.
Some of the worst managers I have had have been hired or promoted into the role, whereas the better ones were pushed toward that by the people that they would soon lead. The world is being taken over by bad managers, don't be one of them. Listen first.
Edit: The individual writing this guide appears to have only had barely two years in a hard 'management' role, according to their LinkedIn. How can they possibly be qualified to give advice on a subject that takes years and years and years of developing and refining soft skills, let alone consulting on the particulars of leading people in that time? Might as well run for President. What arrogance thinking they can go into an organization and infect it with the Tech-leadership-style-du-jour and think they've done some good.
I wouldn’t put too much weight in these terms as form of identity.
As an IC you have a tangible representation of what you accomplished that day - the doohickey now spins, the bloop now boops when you tap it, the clicky thing now does the clickity click.
In your first weeks as a manager you're going to look at your little box of accomplishments, find it empty, and you're going to ask yourself, "I didn't ship anything, am I doing the right things?". You will have to change what you qualify as an accomplishment, otherwise you'll long for the simplicity of attributing your success to the number of PRs merged or bugs fixed that week.
Intangible tangibles will become your potent potables, and that's OK.
> “You mentioned going to the movies last weekend. How was it?”
This does not sound genuine. At all. It sounds like you are robotically adding a fact to your notes in one meeting, then reciting it in the next for points; like there’s a recipe you are mechanically following to ++relationship.
I understand that some people struggle with smalltalk and need literal scripts to follow to get them started. But do the examples have to make this so obvious? If you need to work on your smalltalk, maybe look somewhere else to improve those skills.
Ask that org for managerial training immediately.
It will save you so much headaches. IC and manager are totally different.