[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What was your experience like moving from an...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What was your experience like moving from an IC to a
manager role?
At my current job my boss and I have been discussing a potential
move for me into management. I am currently a technical/functional
lead but I find myself more and more dealing with "people"
challenges and helping to unblock others rather than purely solving
technical issues. At this point I'm a little on the fence about
whether becoming a full-blown manager appeals to me. I really like
working on technical issues but at the same time I love being able
to provide some leadership and guidance for those who need it. It
would also give me slightly more weight when it comes to
departmental decisions and high-level strategic goals which I do
find appealing. In general, I'm curious what the transition was
like for most folks who moved from being an individual contributor
to a manager. Did you ultimately end up loving it? Hated it? Any
advice and input is greatly appreciated!
Author : thatsamonad
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-11-17 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
| gremloni wrote:
| Taking what everyone else has said take my hot take at face
| value, going from an IC to a eng mgr and a director has been
| great for me. All my work happens over meetings and I
| surprisingly enjoy dealing with (educated) people.
| vaidhy wrote:
| I have done the transition both ways a few times. Like everything
| else, it depends on the company, team and your managers. The best
| part and the worst part of being a manager is that you are
| responsible for your team members - their well-being, growth and
| their output. You are their mentor, their shield and their
| marketing person. However, your growth can also be stalled by the
| team. I am happy to talk to you about it, if it helps. Email in
| profile.
| jressey wrote:
| Really works for me. I make more money and have a lot more
| influence on my world. I am a total control freak though, and
| really can't get satisfaction if I'm not able to make real
| changes to my organization.
|
| - Nobody will tell you, or even know, if you're doing a good job.
| Meaningful metrics are trailing and your reports will lie to you
| instead of giving you constructive feedback. A lot of the time
| they simply don't think about what kind of feedback will help
| you.
|
| - You will ruin peoples' dinners. You will make decisions that
| will cause people to complain about you at home and be nasty to
| their family members. Sometimes it's because you made a mistake
| and sometimes it's business. Get right back on that horse.
|
| - You are actually in charge, accountable, and responsible for
| some or all of your department. That can cause a lot of anxiety,
| and may result in some uncomfortable time commitments. You might
| coordinate a disaster response and have absolutely nothing to
| contribute except imparting a sense of urgency. It is very hard
| for me to take time off, whereas when I was a dev I could easily
| slack on Thursday that I'm blowing off the rest of the week since
| I met my commitments.
|
| - Time management, oh my goodness. You will start some days with
| an empty calendar and not get off of the phone until 6. Or you
| may actually get a free day and decide it's really important to
| build some workflow automation for your dev team tools. This is
| where having tech chops makes the job super fun.
|
| - Seeing people grow and internalize your advice. Hearing your
| own words or seeing your own behavior in up and comers is easily
| the most rewarding experience I've had professionally.
|
| - You really don't get new information and there are really no
| secrets. I kinda expected to be privy to all kinds of performance
| and comp data but we're all just winging it.
| sumedh wrote:
| > your reports will lie to you instead of giving you
| constructive feedback
|
| because if the manager has ego problems he has the power to
| make your life miserable if you give a honest feedback so the
| best solution for your direct reports is be diplomatic not not
| give a honest feedback.
| lynchdt wrote:
| The best advice I can give is don't treat it like an irreversible
| fork in the road or a path that won't ultimately make you a
| better engineer. Find the right environment and give it a go!
|
| I wrote a bit more detail here:
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/become-better-engineer-try-ou...
| elpakal wrote:
| I was exactly in the same boat as you are roughly a year ago.
| However I was not interested at all in being a manager - I just
| don't see myself being good at that. I was able to land in a role
| of "Technical Product Manager" where I can still code and it is
| nice. Not sure if that's a possibility where you are, but it
| worked out well for me and good luck.
| breckenedge wrote:
| Done it and didn't regret it, but I did end up going back to an
| IC role later in my career. I noticed that I enjoyed coding more
| and didn't want to give that up.
| dd444fgdfg wrote:
| Humans are much more complicated than code.
|
| If you want to be a great manager, you need to be as self-
| interested in learning about leadership and people as you once
| were about the tooling and platforms you used to build on.
|
| Here's a few things I learned over several years and many senior
| leadership positions:
|
| 1. be humble. this is the single most important thing in your
| leadership position.
|
| 2. every problem is a leadership problem.
|
| 3. you lead people, and you manage process.
| spenrose wrote:
| Read Fournier's The Manager's Path and Linda Hill's Becoming a
| Manager, which is about sales people 30 years ago but nails the
| emotional challenges.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| That you never get to look at code any more and that is a
| horrible feeling. Don't do it if you value technical depth.
| pm24601 wrote:
| manager-tools.com : a series of superb podcast. Pay for the
| personal license; $200/year is worth it.
|
| Read "The Alliance" by Reed Hoffman.
|
| My best advice:
|
| - weekly 1:1s - accept that you will not be as knowledgeable
| about everything (lack of time) - establish expectations at the
| very beginning - start off with realizing that no one will retire
| from the current company. Let your directs know that at some
| point you expect they will move on. This is so liberating.
| troebr wrote:
| I'm currently in the middle of that - at my last job I was tech
| lead, took over some management duties after my manager left but
| I was still officially an IC. I had the same concerns as you.
|
| It was trivially easy to run a high performing team in a well
| oiled org. I was basically doing IC work with some career dev and
| 1:1s. Not high stress, processes were in a good spot etc.
|
| Since then I joined a high growth startup as a manager in a brand
| new team, with somewhat under average engineering practices, more
| junior engineers in general, less mature processes etc.
|
| In addition to that my new team had a couple contractors, with a
| couple low performers.
|
| It is a much harder job, managing under performers (coach into
| improving, and then managing them out if it still doesn't work
| out), coordinating process changes, staying away from my
| engineering skills while still trying to nudge engineers into
| taking ownership.
|
| I may or may not go back into ICs, I like both roles, and
| sometimes I miss a good day of technical puzzle-solving or
| cranking out pretty architectures or nice code. I will echo what
| others have said, the org would make or break the role. At an org
| with a bad culture I would rather be an engineer.
|
| I'd say try it, it's made me a better engineer, and I would have
| regretted not trying. You can always go back to IC if you realize
| you don't enjoy it as much. Some of the parts I enjoy less about
| my work were also problems I had to deal with as a
| principal/staff eng anyway (politics, maneuvering to get projects
| rolling, syncs and check ins and scrum of scrums, etc).
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Do you prefer FPS or RTS games?
| dmhmr wrote:
| I went from IC for a few years to manager for a few years to back
| to IC. The switch back to IC was only this year for me. I really
| enjoy both roles and have missed being in either role while
| occupying the other. They are different sets of work and skills,
| but the biggest thing I can say is, if you enjoy seeing others
| succeed and _leaving_ your team for bigger and better things, be
| the best assistant you can to your team so they can get to the
| next point in their career. Funny enough, this raises your
| retention rate when you are actively trying to equip everyone for
| their next job, and when they do eventually leave, you 'll more
| often than not have a great connection from a grateful person
| that you can lean on in the future if you ever looking to change
| jobs or collaborate on a project. Just keep in mind that this can
| be emotionally exhausting, especially if you are an introvert (I
| am). Before I switched back to being an IC I was running 4 teams
| with 24 direct reports. It was an interesting scenario to be in,
| especially when one team was 24/7. You have to manage competing
| priorities between the teams, between the ICs, and the regular
| stakeholder stuff. Learn what metrics make it easy to celebrate
| your people and your team, and teach your team how to celebrate
| their victories loudly. Don't let your team set goals that
| doesn't get them closer to their career goals. Acknowledge from
| the start that everyone at any moment can leave your team/company
| and it isn't personal - so make the most of their time while they
| are there and let them leave as a stronger person. Shield your
| people from politics, shield them from BS work, shield them from
| bad apples, establish a kind culture, become best friends with
| your recruitment team, and enjoy what happens when you celebrate
| your people and team at every milestone they meet.
| samspenc wrote:
| > I was running 4 teams with 24 direct reports.
|
| Wow, 24 direct reports. Didn't your management chain ever
| consider bumping you up from an M1 to a M2 manager and bringing
| / promoting one level of managers under you to manage an
| engineering team of that size?
| dmhmr wrote:
| Hilariously, the reverse is how I ended up in that position.
| The client really liked my results with my single team and
| re-structured 3 other teams so that they would fall under me
| as well. Their former team leads then became "Senior" ICs who
| could step in if I took time off.
| borski wrote:
| Honestly, I did the IC -> manager switch when I ran my company,
| mostly because I had to - we hadn't hired anyone to run the team
| and so I sort of fell into that role as CTO. I echo
| 'flyinglizard's comments entirely - your metrics change, and you
| have to be willing to set aside your ego about being 'the
| smartest person in the room' (was never important to me) and be
| able to glean happiness from watching your _team_ succeed. It 's
| not entirely thankless, as while you don't get credit for
| individual wins, you do get lots of credit for team wins; be sure
| to spread that credit around, though, because you _want_ to
| highlight your engineers ' accomplishments. That's one of the
| best ways to maintain rapport. Also, realize that you now serve
| your team, rather than the other way around; your job is to make
| them more efficient and better, in whatever way you can.
|
| A suggestion: it is 'lonely at the top,' and anyone who says
| otherwise hasn't done it long enough to feel it yet. I highly
| recommend finding someone outside the team who you trust and can
| talk to about team issues, and who won't spread rumors or get
| info back to your team. That may be a different person depending
| on who the issue is with, but you want to have someone to talk
| to.
|
| Also highly recommend Rands' Slack:
| https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/
|
| I've since switched back into an IC role after I got the company
| acquired, but will inevitably end up managing again, most likely
| when I start a new company. Neither is better, tbh; they're just
| different, and you have to adjust your expectations for what
| makes you happy no matter which role you're in.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| You're going to need to judge yourself by different metrics after
| the transition. You go from trying to be the smartest person in
| the room to try to hire people smarter than you. You go from
| taking pride in the great architecture you've designed to taking
| pride in someone from your team doing it. It's a whole different
| game. The better of an IC you were, the more difficult this
| transition is going to be.
| borski wrote:
| A+ comment, and echoes my experience wholly.
| elliottcarlson wrote:
| I had an IC who was interested in moving to a team lead role
| and had mentioned that during their interview process. We
| agreed to give them 6 months and then revisit the conversation
| -- when we spoke about it again, the IC said that they had
| changed their mind, because there were people smarter than them
| on the team. My advice is that you don't need to be the
| smartest engineer to be a lead or manager, but you should be
| able to identify them, and help them grow.
| ragnot wrote:
| 3 big things:
|
| - It really is a brand new skillset. You will probably hate it
| for the first year. Stick with it.
|
| - Remember how you had this big engineering problem so you just
| worked more hours to fix it? You can't do that anymore. The scope
| is just too large, so you can't outwork your problems anymore.
| You have to have a team that can handle it.
|
| - Be good to your team, but remember: if you get fired they
| aren't going to quit with you. This might be the most
| controversial point, but if a team member isn't performing then
| you will have to make the call to shield them. Don't do it enough
| and you will de-motivate your team. Do it too much and you'll
| piss off an exec who will remove you.
|
| Overall, a great experience but it isn't for everyone.
| jtonz wrote:
| I would add another thing that you suddenly have a less clear
| agenda or daily goals to achieve.
|
| Working as a IC you often have a backlog of work provided by
| someone else where it is their job to prioritise and structure
| that work for you. Moving into a management role it becomes
| your job to find and prioritise your own tasks.
|
| It is very easy to feel like you aren't contributing or
| completing productive work as your workload and goals are now
| completely self defined.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > but if a team member isn't performing
|
| But also have a conversation with your team member. This is
| where I see most first-time managers fail, is in difficult
| conversations where you don't feel "qualified" to be commenting
| on another persons performance. I'm sure we've all been through
| that scenario where we got important feedback way to late for
| it to be useful, or your manager's manager had to have an all-
| hands to talk about getting to work on time "but that it's not
| about a specific person" (but we all know it is).
|
| Don't be that manager that waits to give critical feedback. As
| a manager once told me, "if you're doing a good job, no one
| should be surprised if they're fired."
| dpweb wrote:
| It's a good route if you're lazy. I worked my ass off as an IC
| and always joked with manager friends that they don't work too
| hard. They didn't like that, but found out I was right.
|
| It's not for everybody for sure, but if you don't like working
| it's better than solving hard problems.
| nefitty wrote:
| "You can't outwork your problems anymore."
|
| In a managerial role, this was the hardest lesson for me to
| learn, and I doubt my mind ever really learned it. Basically,
| my urge to automate everything hit a short ceiling for
| management tasks...
| romanhn wrote:
| > if a team member isn't performing then you will have to make
| the call to shield them
|
| That is definitely an odd take. If there is something that will
| demotivate a team and cause the best performers to quit, it's
| an ongoing shielding of underperformers. Coaching them to get
| better and not throwing them under the bus at the first sign of
| trouble - of course do that. But let this fester and your
| problem will turn into a bigger problem.
| jedberg wrote:
| Will you be managing your current peers? That can get awkward
| because you'll have to maintain a professional distance, but it
| can be done.
|
| As others have said, it's a completely different skillset, so
| make sure you are ready to learn that skillset.
|
| And lastly, why do you want to move to management? Do you like
| helping and mentoring people, and do you get joy out of seeing
| others around you succeed? If yes, then consider the move, but if
| it's just for more money/power, you'll be miserable.
| tpmx wrote:
| I did this journey at a company a long time ago. It was awkward
| because half of the original small team were relatively close
| friends of mine. They stayed in IC roles, while I ended up
| being more and more (tech) managerial, eventually two levels up
| from them.
|
| It both worked and didn't work. I ended up not spending much
| time with them, because they were never really the people
| needing attention/help/scaling. In retrospect I should have
| spent more time with them, "even though" they were the best
| functioning ICs. It's incredibly hard when you're being pulled
| in what feels like hundreds of different directions, though.
| thatsamonad wrote:
| > Will you be managing your current peers?
|
| Yes, which is another factor I'm considering as part of the
| move. I have a good rapport with my coworkers and I would hate
| to lose that, but I don't think becoming a manager necessarily
| takes that away.
|
| > And lastly, why do you want to move to management?
|
| I've been involved in a large project for the last 7 months or
| so and during the course of it I found myself more and more
| taking on the role of "unblocker" and providing guidance rather
| than delivering features (though I'm still doing that too). I
| like being the one to help talk through ideas and come up with
| a good solution even if I'm not the one ultimately implementing
| it.
|
| I've also found myself "laterally" managing some of my peers so
| becoming an actual manager feels like a logical next step.
| vasco wrote:
| I think going from peer to manager is only a problem if
| there's already no trust. Had that happen to myself and seen
| others go through it and the teams were always happier to
| have someone promoted from within than getting a helicopter
| drop of a random manager. I would think of that as an
| advantage going in.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-17 23:02 UTC)