Some mistakes I made as a new manager
The article reminded me that I don&#x27;t understand what managers are for :-) Especially if a manager is in fact a software engineer promoted to that role. The promotion likely occurs because a) the person is good at being a developer, and b) the manager&#x27;s position is better paid than his previous one. Which combines a perverse incentive (of course anyone would like a raise) with a completely different set of responsibilities that the person hasn&#x27;t been trained for.<p>I do like the ideas coming out of scrum, some of which would fit well with what the author is describing.<p>For example, the anecdote about a junior engineer struggling with documentation for a new feature sounded like an opportunity for pairing with a more knowledgeable team member, and talking through the feature while planning the documentation for it. When the author said that he instead would write a design doc and the engineer would implement it, he was not acting as a manager, but rather as a software engineer.<p>As another example, the author talks about planning the work, which, in a scrum environment, would involve a product owner (someone from the business side), and the rest of the team, to collectively identify and plan the next set of features. In a (sprint) review, the team, together with other interested parties, can inspect their progress and talk about the roadmap (something that the author is trying to do on his own).<p>I understand the purpose of senior software engineers, or of a product owner. Of a manager, not that much.