Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management
This should be re-written:"You must like dealing with people to be great at management."This is more accurate:"You must like talking with people to be great at management."When I first started managing, I tried to send people a lot of email. I like writing, so email comes naturally. One thing I learned, rather quickly, is that most people don't like writing. Even well educated people don't like writing. Most people find it easier to talk than to write. Most people would rather talk an issue through than write about it. The more difficult the issue, the more that people want to talk.The next line should have been the sub-headline:"Imagine you spend a full day in back-to-back 1:1s talking to people. Does that sound awful or awesome?"This bit is very true:"Unfortunately at many places, you’re roadblocked in advancing your career unless you become a manager. This sadly incentivizes the wrong outcomes, in which people who don’t love dealing with people become bad managers, and both they and their team suffers."I wish this was more true:"In more technical roles, we are fortunate that many companies support separate but equal career tracks, where at a certain level of seniority you can choose to go deep into the craft of your discipline or go into people management."I have mostly worked with startups during the last 16 years, and in all of them the top managers were paid more than the top engineers. The only "exceptions" were the founders who weren't paying themselves. But obviously, their path to renumeration is very different than it is for those of us getting paid a wage.