Mostly agree with this article. When I mentor people about managing, some other bits I also usually mention:

1. 'You’re not “part of the team” anymore.' - You're not part of the software dev team, but if you're doing things right, you're part of a team, just a new one. I encourage manager mentees of mine to read a book "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" which talks about figuring out who your "first team" is. Even in environments where you manage an autonomous team, you likely are working alongside other teams towards some bigger goal. Some of the things that worked being part of a software development team continue to work in the new setting, but you also need a new set of tools.

2. It's a two-way door. I've bounced back and forth between IC and manager roles. Some of it is just how the job market is (you look for a job, there aren't manager jobs, you go back to being an IC). Sometimes, people do it intentionally because they like being an IC. It's ok to try out being a manager, and realizing you don't like it.

A lot of what's here isn't specific to managing, and if you advance in your career as an IC, you'll experience similar.

I think this might scare some people off from management unnecessarily.

A lot of what's being described here is important for new managers to understand, but eventually, once you find your footing, you can start to determine where the rules can bend.

For instance, a lot of new managers struggle because they want to keep a foot in the IC world. I think most new managers would benefit from stepping away from the code for an extended period of time. But many experienced managers do eventually return back to writing code while still serving in a management role, although certainly not at the level they did before.

Likewise, it's really important for new managers to understand that friendship dynamics will change. But that doesn't mean that you can't foster very warm relationships with people who report to you. Just like a teacher-student relationship, you can have great fondness for each other while recognizing that there are some lines that absolutely can't be crossed.

This is very accurate. For me personally, I found the difficulties, friction, and stress, have started to eclipse the pros and decided to move back into an IC role after 15 years as EM/SrEM.

The work life balance was also terrible. You really do ruminate and worry about a lot, much of it outside of your control.

All leadership is like that. Even if you're not a people manager.

I'm an IC in a technical leadership position, all of these hold true with the added constraint that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I hold no carrot or stick.

I have to persuade, convince and influence, I have no reports (nor I want them) so to get anything done I need to get people to align and understand the value on its merits.

Missed the part about 100x the stress and politics for 1.2x the pay.

One of the more counter-intuitive parts of management that I've found is that your focus shifts from delivering a technical outcome to care-taking a team that delivers technical outcomes. It's a meta-function.

A related physics metaphor - in general as you move from IC to SR to management, your focus shifts from changing the position to changing the velocity and acceleration of those around you.

The reality is that there is no escaping management. A high level IC is pretty much just an unofficial manager. You are responsible for a large technical area - it's your job to meet with stakeholders, design the roadmap, build durable team processes to maintain velocity, mentor and identify the right work for the right people. You may not have back to back meetings but between 1:1s, stakeholders, projects, and ad-hoc fires they're likely still a majority your schedule. You are expected to lead without authority. Leadership will change priorities and reorganize the teams every six months. If you're focused and deliberate, you can maybe get can your project landed before the next reorg.

Similar when you climb up the technical path as well, beyond staff engineer. It gets lonely, not many peers, not part of a team, you have to be careful about what you say and to whom as your words carry a lot of significance.

I agree with this, but the social dynamic just sucks. I would much rather the manager be part of the team, not feel lonely, be able to joke around about safe things (so, not politics, religion, or identity), and even complain a bit.

>You will not get the training you need

This is just plain unacceptable. It is likely due to companies thinking everyone is replaceable and not investing in their employees though. I don't know how companies can simultaneously want managers to practice the sanitized humanity detailed here while also not providing training to do what they want.

There's a note at the end:

> As always, this blog post is written by me, without any AI, so all errors are my own.

However, the illustrations in the post are clearly made by generative AI, are they not?

I will never forget my dad's response to me telling him that I was becoming a people manager: "Everyone else's problems are now your problems."

> You will encounter business decisions you think are terrible but you still have to sell to your team.

This is incorrect. You don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't.

There can be situation in which stuff will need to happen regardless, yes, but that does not require lying and probably works even better when one does not lie.

The post then continues with more such falsehoods and incorrect learnings one could deconstruct, but the spirit of all of them is mostly the same, making that mostly redundant.

Managing is hard and it's easy to fall into these tropes. But they are just that. Easy tropes. They are not the way.

It also has perks. You can bring your friendly pitbull to work, and no hater will dare to say anything!

This is a lot of asshole puckering over nothing. Is this post really about doing your job, or about protecting your ego? Posturing and a defensive attitude will never be respected by anyone. People just want to trust you to deliver results. They don't care about the rest of you.

There are so many meaningless phrases and words used like "part of the team" and "dumb", "lazy", "tough". There are no examples given of these things. An uncritical reader might let their imagination run wild catastrophizing. Nobody in a leadership role should even have a mind for such quick and empty characterizations. Most of the job is continuous assessment after all.

All that really matters is that you understand the business and the work of the people you're managing. Be flexible with your time and assume good faith in discussions. You're not going to know what you're lacking until you're already in the role.

Mike Tyson quote: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth"

That's why I rather want to have LLM as my manager and not the other way around. Having a middleman is worse than having none.

Pretty spot on. Nice summary.

middle managers only exist because c suite has no idea/dont care what their employees actually need so there has to be someone in the middle to water down their awful plans. its a hard job nobody should have to take on.

the worst part is when someone is forced to be a bad boss from above when they really dont want to do that so they become hated from both sides. nobody sane can work in that environment and not give up after a few years. i guess thats why so many psychopaths end up as managers when all the normal people burn out and quit. they like watching others suffer.

in a perfect world it would all be independent teams with the leader role rotating between members. the problem with that is teams have to agree on things and thats hard when everyone wants the most for themselves. it can only work if everyone wants the company to succeed and that can only happen if they feel like they have real power. basically what im saying is the only type of org that can work without traditional management is a co-op and our economic system is built to make that as hard as possible. respect to everyone stuck in the middle.

Looks like either you are missing the whole point of being a manager or you are selling it for sympathy. Either way it is not all that bad as you paint it. Otherwise why would lot of people dream of being promoted to a manager?

You need to have the taste to enjoy your role. Managers have the power. They are "inside" people for the company while everyone below that level are just workers.

Managers are in the loop for everything. They knew what's going on, they get to know lots of people, they are more visible. They get more opportunities to have some important internal contacts, and show off their leadership skills. People listen to them.

They have decision making power, which means they can turn things into the way they like. They can put people in roles, reward those you like, punish those you don't like. Who don't enjoy that?

You said you bring work home. That's not how a manager works. You need to delegate work. That's' the whole point of having a team. You need to be good at getting work done, not doing it yourself. Just focus on the results.

You don't need to attend daily stand-ups and give status. You fine-tune the calls to your convenience. If you are good, you can create a system that requires minimal effort from you. Automate everything. Assign someone to do that automation. And so on.