On Becoming a Manager

There are a lot of different paths to become a manager, but very rarely does it start straight out of school as a manager. So, what do you need to do to become a good manager? Who the heck knows, but I'll at least give my thoughts, from a very narrow band of experience. The particular lens I'm going to use, because it's the one I know the best and have the most experience with is, "How do you transition from being a good technologist to a good manager?"

Setting the Stage#

There are no cases I can imagine where a low performer has an opportunity to become a manager (2). Given that, we're going to go with the premise that you are a high performer. Additionally, you're a high performer with medium to high potential (which is to say, your current position is seen as not your terminal position).

Let's summarize.

  • You have been rated a high performer
    • This means that you are very good at your technical domain
  • You are perceived to have potential above your current role

Motivation#

I'm working very, very, very hard at trying to express things, not as absolutes, but as percentages. With that background:

  • If you are not going to have a passion at helping people grow and develop, you absolutely should not be a manager. Full stop.

You need to recognize, your job as a manager is to help people grow. Yes, you'll have to balance business needs, and day to day activities, but those are the modifiers, not motivation.

Pitfalls#

The career road is littered with the corpses of the careers of people who could not transition from Individual Contributor (IC) to manager. Why is that?

Ego#

Ok, it might not actually be ego, but development. You are good at what you do. Heck, you might be great at what you do. All of that success is built on what you can personally do and control. Suddenly, that is taken from you. Your success isn't based on what you can do personally, but what your team can do. One of the failure modes is to just say "Ok, I'll do everyone's work. I'm good enough." If you do this, you will fail.

Additionally, a lot of your personal self-worth is tied up in what you accomplish. This means when you go some period of time without getting "real work done", you will be frustrated, and frustrated does not make for useful or productive. You're going to have to come to grips with this.

  • Adjustment Strategy: There is no getting around the fact that you need to change, but it's hard. The way I worked on my personal journey was to eventually, just take an afternoon to do "real work". Every couple of weeks I would just dig in and go to my happy place. Over time, that stretched into further and further time as I became more adept at the management side.

Working with Different Styles#

Suddenly, not everyone has to just work with how you like to work. With your move to management you need to be able to work with your team, your peers, your bosses, their "work cousins". In order to do that you need to have some flexibility in your style. Generally this is around communication and collaboration.

  • My Strategy: Treat everyone as individuals. I recognize that it's hard to scale. You can't lump people into a bucket and treat them all similarly. Too bad. Remember, your goal is to do this job well, and I just don't see how you can shortcut this. If you don't skew your interactions based on any of the protected statuses (race, religion, marital status, etc) as well as any other perceived status, you'll have the highest chance of success. IMO.

Complexity#

Writing code is complex. Working with computers and infrastructure is complex. It is at least an order of magnitude less complex than working with people and organizations. If you run a program a hundred times, it should produce the same output a hundred times. If you ask a person the same question a hundred times, well, first they're probably going to want to beat you, and second the answer can vary dramatically. Are they tired? Is the weather different? Did they just have an argument? Are they having a great day? Who the heck knows, but it adds incredible variability.

Organizations are the same. Does one group not like another? Is there some backstory you're not aware of? Has there just been a management change? What part of the organization? Again, virtually infinite complexity.

Listening#

Often the job of an IC is to talk. Be asked a question, provide a definitive answer (which is also wrong, but subject for a different section). As a manager, you should work to limit the amount of times you dictate something or provide a definitive answer. Sure, it has to happen, but if you focus on being a better listener, you'll likely end up being a more successful manager.