{"id":11,"date":"2015-03-07T02:23:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T02:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/?p=11"},"modified":"2015-03-07T23:56:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T06:56:14","slug":"so-now-im-a-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/so-now-im-a-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"So Now I’m a Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago I made\u00a0the change<\/em>. My favorite boss had left the company. His boss left. There was a vacuum in management and they were interviewing to promote from within. I know that for many people the idea of going from writing software to managing people doesn’t sound like a promotion. I respect that.<\/p>\n

I wondered if it would be a good fit. I was binge-listening\u00a0to a management podcast called manager-tools.com. \u00a0Sometimes I would get through four casts in a day. (Thank you 2x playback!) So much of it made sense. Could I be making a bigger difference this way?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I applied.<\/p>\n

\n

I promised myself I would give it two years. Two years before I would consider going back into “just” being a developer. Well, here we are. Two years gone.<\/p>\n

I’ve learned a lot. Still so much I don’t know.<\/p>\n

My life has come to revolve around critical thinking, hiring, recruiting, schedules, and maybe, just maybe — on a good day — writing software.<\/p>\n

A couple of months after getting the job as a manager I sat down and tried to capture what I thought my job meant. \u00a0I made this mind-map:<\/p>\n

\"1.<\/a>
My own description of my job as a new manager.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Job one was people. What’s the difference between a manager and a developer? “It’s people, stupid!” I knew I needed to be better at meeting people. Building relationships would be critical. Eventually I was going to have to hire people, give them raises. Maybe I’d even have to fire someone some day.<\/p>\n

Job two is technology. \u00a0I was being made a functional manager. All the people that worked for me would share one thing: web development. \u00a0My job still revolved around technology. I needed to keep my finger on industry trends, stave off corporate stagnation, and give meaningful technical direction to my people.<\/p>\n

Finally came product. While delivery schedules didn’t roll up to me I was still part of making sure product was released. \u00a0How could any other excellence make up for not delivering working product?<\/p>\n

Two years later I’m surprised how much of that diagram is still a challenge. \u00a0Why haven’t I managed to master it all in two years?<\/p>\n

\n

I’ve kept the promise I made to myself. I’ve been a manager for two years. I learned a lot. There’s even more I have failed to learn.<\/p>\n

What now?<\/p>\n

I’m honestly not sure if I’ll be a manager the rest of my career. Maybe I’ll step back into development some day. I’m sure I’ll be a better developer for my time spent on the other side.<\/p>\n

As a teen\u00a0I used a journal to process my life. As an engineering student I used lab notebooks to structure my thinking. I’ll use this venue to collect what I have learned, and to point to some promising ideas and resources.<\/p>\n

Feel free to set me straight. If I post a dumb idea then let’s not let that dumb idea go unchallenged.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago I made\u00a0the change. My favorite boss had left the company. His boss left. There was a vacuum in management and they were interviewing to promote from within. I know that for many people the idea of going from writing software to managing people doesn’t sound like a promotion. I respect that. I… Continue reading So Now I’m a Manager<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","wow fadeInUp","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}